What if you always knew you didn’t belong—but no one believed you?

In Overgrowth, Mira Grant gifts us a sci-fi horror that is part alien invasion, part existential exploration, and all heart. From the moment a comet seeds Earth with eerie, sentient flora, Grant roots her narrative in dread and wonder. What grows from those seeds—literally and metaphorically—is a richly layered story about identity, transformation, and the uneasy intimacy of being seen.

We meet Anastasia as a child warned never to enter the woods, and like all the best horror books, she does. What returns is not quite the same girl. Or maybe it is. As an adult, she goes by Stasia, living in Seattle, working tech, and still insisting she’s an alien sent to warn of an invasion. Most treat her story as trauma-induced delusion—until a broadcast arrives from the stars.

What unfolds is a slippery, haunting exploration of what it means to be human when you’ve always felt other. Stasia is a brilliant protagonist: alien in form, alienated in life, cuttingly funny and quietly grieving. Her voice is a balm for anyone who’s ever felt like an imposter in their own skin, or in their own community.

Grant’s prose blooms with strange beauty. The vines crawling beneath Stasia’s skin aren’t just body horror—they’re metaphor made flesh. Trauma and transformation are never separate here; instead, they’re intertwined like roots and memory. The novel digs deep into themes familiar to many queer and neurodivergent readers: disbelieved truths, found family, bodily autonomy, and the terrifying intimacy of letting someone care for you when you feel unknowable.

Even as the ending rushes past in a slightly-too-neat conclusion, the emotional stakes never wither. Overgrowth is less about saving humanity and more about who counts as human to begin with. And who gets to decide.

If you’ve ever been called dramatic for telling the truth—or told you were “too sensitive” when you were just right—Stasia might feel like coming home. Even if, like her, you were grown in a garden meant to devour you. Weird, wrenching, and deeply tender. Highly recommend.

📖 Read this if you love: queer sci-fi, neurodivergent-coded protagonists, slow-burning existential dread, and metaphor-rich body horror that doubles as a meditation on trauma and belonging. 

🔑 Key Themes: Alienation and Identity, Difference and Disbelief, Bodily Autonomy, Found Family, Belonging Beyond Humanity.