Will I love Monstrilio?

A highly original take on loss and grief - not at all what I expected in the best way.

It’s rare to find a book that combines my two favorite horror subgenres–queer horror and parenting horror–but this book does that and more. With four different protagonists who are all, in one way or another, queer, this bizarre family saga delves into the surreality of grief and the questionable choices people make to protect themselves and the ones they love.

The true queerness of this novel goes beyond its characters’ various same-sex attractions and relationships; at its heart, it’s a queer story because it shows how we build families out of the rubble that’s left when the lives we expected… show more.

A grieving mother cuts out a piece of her dead 11-year-old son’s lung and, with the force of her grief, grows it into a carnivorous humanoid—who, in turn, grows up and tries to be a man. From the very moment I read the description of the book, I knew I had to read it, and it absolutely did not disappoint.

This is an absolutely gorgeous book in so many respects. The language. The plotting. Its dissertation on grief and family and Otherness. I love how it uses the horror genre to tell a disturbing and surreal story while also pulling… show more.

This novel explores the ferociousness of grief when a couple loses their child.

The mother places a sliver of her dead son’s lung into a jar and it grows into a monster. A tender and horrific book that explores the limits of love. I loved the different perspectives in the book and found it quite moving to see how each character processes grief in their own individual ways.