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Cuckoo
Something evil is buried deep in the desert.
It wants your body.
It wears your skin.
In the summer of 1995, seven queer kids abandoned by their parents at a remote conversion camp came face to face with it. They survived—but at Camp Resolution, everybody leaves a different person.
Sixteen years later, only the scarred and broken survivors of that terrible summer can put an end to the horror before it’s too late.
The fate of the world depends on it.
It wants your body.
It wears your skin.
In the summer of 1995, seven queer kids abandoned by their parents at a remote conversion camp came face to face with it. They survived—but at Camp Resolution, everybody leaves a different person.
Sixteen years later, only the scarred and broken survivors of that terrible summer can put an end to the horror before it’s too late.
The fate of the world depends on it.
336 pages, Paperback
First published June 11, 2024
860 people are currently reading
24308 people want to read
About the author
Gretchen Felker-Martin
17 books1,602 followersGRETCHEN FELKER-MARTIN is a Massachusetts-based horror author and film critic. Her debut novel, Manhunt, was named the #1 Best Book of 2022 by Vulture, and one of the Best Horror Novels of 2022 by Esquire, Library Journal, and Paste. You can follow her work on Twitter and read her fiction and film criticism on Patreon and in TIME, The Outline, Nylon, Polygon, and more.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,662 reviews
April 25, 2023
Do you honestly think anything by Gretchen is not going to fuck hard? Like come on, get real.
October 11, 2025
**3.5-stars rounded up**
Cuckoo is an Extreme Horror novel following a diverse cast of Queer characters trying to survive a Conversion Camp and its aftermath. Kicking off in 1995, this book gets in your face and stays there. Warning: there are no limits!
It's guaranteed to make you uncomfortable, cringey, angry, and hurt for 99% of the time that you are reading it. If you're not, you may want to check your pulse.
This is the kind of book that makes me wish I had a BookTube channel, because I could talk about this book for hours. It made me think a lot and really analyze everything that's going on here.
Sadly, my patience for typing isn't as robust as my patience for talking, so I promise, this won't be too long. Most likely, you are wondering what this is all about. The cover doesn't reveal too much and the title could mean anything.
Basically, this story starts in 1995, it introduces us to a group of characters, all Queer, who are forcibly sent to a Conversion Camp by their families.
The very beginning of the novel is interesting, because as you're meeting the various characters it was delivered sort of via vignette style, which I'm not necessarily accustomed to. In a way, it made it feel like I was getting short stories for each of the major players.
Once they are all moved to the conversion camp, we then follow the various atrocities that occur there. Unsurprisingly, as the characters are being submitted to daily abuses, they begin to bond and form connections to one another.
Ultimately, a plan to break out is formed.
In Part II, we fast forward to where these teens are now adults, and they're brought together once again to try to fight the old evil they were exposed to at the camp. What they've come to call, the cuckoo. They want to save the next generation of teens suffering like they did.
The story is much more complex than this basic synopsis lets on, but it is best to go in knowing as little as possible.
However, with this being said, I want to stress that this is an Extreme Horror novel. I feel this is a very important distinction for me to make, because I'm not sure the synopsis, or the way it's currently being marketed, really makes that clear enough.
My concern for this book is that people are going to pick it up thinking it is a Queer Horror novel, which, yes, it is, but there is a very big difference between a mainstream Horror book and an Extreme Horror book.
I feel like people who have never read Extreme Horror before, or maybe aren't aware that is even a subgenre, will pick this up and be traumatized for life.
I read this subgenre regularly, so nothing here surprised me, especially having read Felker-Martin before, I knew what I was getting myself into. I signed up knowingly, willingly and I really enjoyed the journey of this story.
I just want to throw out a friendly warning to anyone else who may not be so prepared. This is extreme, it's graphic, both in a violent and sexual nature, and holds absolutely nothing back.
I wouldn't say this is quite as Splatterpunk as Manhunt, and I actually enjoyed the trajectory of this story more than Manhunt, but this is still full of Felker-Martin's signature style of extreme writing.
One small issue I had though was the pace. I felt like in the beginning, it read fairly slowly, and then by the end, it was progressing too quickly. The lead-up to the final events, I actually wish was more drawn out. While I appreciate the intensity built throughout, I actually would have preferred a more even pace.
Also, I really loved Part II, which followed the characters as adults, but it didn't start until around 70%. I would have loved a more 50/50 split, between following them as teens, and then following them as adults.
Overall, I thought this was great. It was engaging and thought-provoking. I feel like as a piece of Extreme Horror Fiction, it was creative and very well-written.
I enjoyed this more than Manhunt, which was quite a memorable reading experience, and feel like Felker-Martin's style is fine-tuning into something that is distinct in the subgenre. She is wildly-imaginative and not afraid to explore very difficult topics. She pulls no punches.
I listened to the audiobook and would definitely recommend that format. They used full cast narration and it really helped to set the various characters apart from one another.
Thank you to the publisher, Tor Nightfire and Macmillan Audio, for providing me with copies to read and review. I will definitely be picking up whatever this author writes next!
Cuckoo is an Extreme Horror novel following a diverse cast of Queer characters trying to survive a Conversion Camp and its aftermath. Kicking off in 1995, this book gets in your face and stays there. Warning: there are no limits!
It's guaranteed to make you uncomfortable, cringey, angry, and hurt for 99% of the time that you are reading it. If you're not, you may want to check your pulse.
This is the kind of book that makes me wish I had a BookTube channel, because I could talk about this book for hours. It made me think a lot and really analyze everything that's going on here.
Sadly, my patience for typing isn't as robust as my patience for talking, so I promise, this won't be too long. Most likely, you are wondering what this is all about. The cover doesn't reveal too much and the title could mean anything.
Basically, this story starts in 1995, it introduces us to a group of characters, all Queer, who are forcibly sent to a Conversion Camp by their families.
The very beginning of the novel is interesting, because as you're meeting the various characters it was delivered sort of via vignette style, which I'm not necessarily accustomed to. In a way, it made it feel like I was getting short stories for each of the major players.
Once they are all moved to the conversion camp, we then follow the various atrocities that occur there. Unsurprisingly, as the characters are being submitted to daily abuses, they begin to bond and form connections to one another.
Ultimately, a plan to break out is formed.
In Part II, we fast forward to where these teens are now adults, and they're brought together once again to try to fight the old evil they were exposed to at the camp. What they've come to call, the cuckoo. They want to save the next generation of teens suffering like they did.
The story is much more complex than this basic synopsis lets on, but it is best to go in knowing as little as possible.
However, with this being said, I want to stress that this is an Extreme Horror novel. I feel this is a very important distinction for me to make, because I'm not sure the synopsis, or the way it's currently being marketed, really makes that clear enough.
My concern for this book is that people are going to pick it up thinking it is a Queer Horror novel, which, yes, it is, but there is a very big difference between a mainstream Horror book and an Extreme Horror book.
I feel like people who have never read Extreme Horror before, or maybe aren't aware that is even a subgenre, will pick this up and be traumatized for life.
I read this subgenre regularly, so nothing here surprised me, especially having read Felker-Martin before, I knew what I was getting myself into. I signed up knowingly, willingly and I really enjoyed the journey of this story.
I just want to throw out a friendly warning to anyone else who may not be so prepared. This is extreme, it's graphic, both in a violent and sexual nature, and holds absolutely nothing back.
I wouldn't say this is quite as Splatterpunk as Manhunt, and I actually enjoyed the trajectory of this story more than Manhunt, but this is still full of Felker-Martin's signature style of extreme writing.
One small issue I had though was the pace. I felt like in the beginning, it read fairly slowly, and then by the end, it was progressing too quickly. The lead-up to the final events, I actually wish was more drawn out. While I appreciate the intensity built throughout, I actually would have preferred a more even pace.
Also, I really loved Part II, which followed the characters as adults, but it didn't start until around 70%. I would have loved a more 50/50 split, between following them as teens, and then following them as adults.
Overall, I thought this was great. It was engaging and thought-provoking. I feel like as a piece of Extreme Horror Fiction, it was creative and very well-written.
I enjoyed this more than Manhunt, which was quite a memorable reading experience, and feel like Felker-Martin's style is fine-tuning into something that is distinct in the subgenre. She is wildly-imaginative and not afraid to explore very difficult topics. She pulls no punches.
I listened to the audiobook and would definitely recommend that format. They used full cast narration and it really helped to set the various characters apart from one another.
Thank you to the publisher, Tor Nightfire and Macmillan Audio, for providing me with copies to read and review. I will definitely be picking up whatever this author writes next!
January 25, 2024
Like MANHUNT, this is a blisteringly angry book: a constantly burning blow torch pointed at homophobia, transphobia, and, especially, the pervasive scourge of hidden, ignored, and socially approved child abuse. But also like MANHUNT— perhaps even more so— CUCKOO has great tenderness for its immensely damaged protagonists, and also takes the time to flesh out and empathize with some of its odious antagonists. This nuanced characterization provides a necessary counterpoint to the rage that fuels the novel, and makes it more moving and memorable than most other politically charged, hyper-violent works of fiction. There are quiet moments of connection and sorrow that are going to stay with me far longer than the scenes of dynamite explosions and shoot outs with shrieking, starfish-faced cops.
Along with strong character work, Felker-Martin’s vivid sensory descriptions stick out. The primary antagonist is nauseating, with smell doing at least as much to convey the alien wrongness of the Cuckoo as its monstrous appearance. Elements from obvious (and acknowledged-in-text!) pop culture precedents like THE THING and INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS are re-worked into something uniquely grotesque. The more mundane horrors-- a mother slamming her child's fingers in a door as punishment, conversion camp goons beating a sixteen year old girl to get her into the back of their truck, teens dehydrating and blistering with sunburn as they trek across the Utah desert-- are actually harder to read about. In contrast, beautiful evocations of the wild American landscape, the joys of existing in a human body (whether sexual or sensual), and fleeting moments of safety, calm, and interpersonal harmony drive home what the heroes (and the world) stand to lose. This is a queer pulp epic perfectly aimed at the present political moment, for all that it’s set decades in the past.
Along with strong character work, Felker-Martin’s vivid sensory descriptions stick out. The primary antagonist is nauseating, with smell doing at least as much to convey the alien wrongness of the Cuckoo as its monstrous appearance. Elements from obvious (and acknowledged-in-text!) pop culture precedents like THE THING and INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS are re-worked into something uniquely grotesque. The more mundane horrors-- a mother slamming her child's fingers in a door as punishment, conversion camp goons beating a sixteen year old girl to get her into the back of their truck, teens dehydrating and blistering with sunburn as they trek across the Utah desert-- are actually harder to read about. In contrast, beautiful evocations of the wild American landscape, the joys of existing in a human body (whether sexual or sensual), and fleeting moments of safety, calm, and interpersonal harmony drive home what the heroes (and the world) stand to lose. This is a queer pulp epic perfectly aimed at the present political moment, for all that it’s set decades in the past.
June 17, 2024
DNF at 72%.
Cuckoo started off with a prologue that was honestly an excellent short story that could've stood on its own. Unfortunately, I didn't enjoy the rest of the book as much.
The characters were fairly two-dimensional, the plot points repetitive, and there was honestly so much abuse and torture in the build up, that I felt desensitized. The reveal/twist felt underwhelming when I got to it because everything up to that point had already been so gross. There was very little building of tension or atmosphere, which would have made the climax of the book more impactful. Instead, there were descriptors to ensure the reader was grossed out and ended up being quite repetitive (everything smelled a certain way, all orifices or cuts were described as vaginas, etc). These teenage characters were also "SO HORNY," as one reviewer described, which felt jarring when they actively undergoing so much physical torture and trauma while seeking out sex.
I'm sure there is an audience out here for this, but it wasn't me. I like the point the author is trying to make about the normalized horror of conversion camps and juxtaposing it with supernatural horror. The execution just wasn't what I was looking for.
Cuckoo started off with a prologue that was honestly an excellent short story that could've stood on its own. Unfortunately, I didn't enjoy the rest of the book as much.
The characters were fairly two-dimensional, the plot points repetitive, and there was honestly so much abuse and torture in the build up, that I felt desensitized. The reveal/twist felt underwhelming when I got to it because everything up to that point had already been so gross. There was very little building of tension or atmosphere, which would have made the climax of the book more impactful. Instead, there were descriptors to ensure the reader was grossed out and ended up being quite repetitive (everything smelled a certain way, all orifices or cuts were described as vaginas, etc). These teenage characters were also "SO HORNY," as one reviewer described, which felt jarring when they actively undergoing so much physical torture and trauma while seeking out sex.
I'm sure there is an audience out here for this, but it wasn't me. I like the point the author is trying to make about the normalized horror of conversion camps and juxtaposing it with supernatural horror. The execution just wasn't what I was looking for.
December 10, 2025
The prologue is incredible! Felker-Martin knows how to tell a nasty tale, and I was immediately hooked.
Unfortunately, the rest of the book is not as strong as the first chapter. The biggest problem is that there are too many point-of-view characters. It is very challenging to track or invest in all of them. What's more, this is the horniest and filthiest group of kids I've ever read about. I get that they are hormonal, but these kids seem aroused by every human encounter. Coupled with the author's focus on pubes on toilet seats, sweat-soaked clothes, and first kisses in bathroom stalls, I was left confused and disgusted.
The author is clearly influenced by Stephen King, particularly his novel It. The book reads like a what-if version of the book with kids at a gay conversion camp. Sadly, Cuckoo misses the mark. I didn't feel bonded to these characters like I did with the Losers in It. Cuckoo attempts to replicate the structure of the It movies, i.e., having the first half of the book with the characters as kids and the second half with them as adults. This worked in the It movies and miniseries, namely due to them being adapted from such a long book (1,138 pages). It does not work in Cuckoo. The book is too short, and there are too many POV characters to pull this off. One of the characters is even a shameless ripoff of Henry Bowers. To make matters even more confusing, one of the characters transitions in the second half of the book and goes by a new name. The book assumes we know who this character is and doesn't clarify until many chapters later. This makes zero sense since the author tells us right away with another trans character,
The other reason Cuckoo fails where It succeeds is the monster. Pennywise is an epic monster who feeds on fear. The cuckoo...well, not so much. It's more like The Thing without the great body horror moments.
This one wasn't for me, but if you love Stephen King's It or LGBTQIA+ horror, it might be worth checking out. Or for a gay conversion camp horror novel that I did enjoy, check out Chuck Tingle's Camp Damascus.
Unfortunately, the rest of the book is not as strong as the first chapter. The biggest problem is that there are too many point-of-view characters. It is very challenging to track or invest in all of them. What's more, this is the horniest and filthiest group of kids I've ever read about. I get that they are hormonal, but these kids seem aroused by every human encounter. Coupled with the author's focus on pubes on toilet seats, sweat-soaked clothes, and first kisses in bathroom stalls, I was left confused and disgusted.
The author is clearly influenced by Stephen King, particularly his novel It. The book reads like a what-if version of the book with kids at a gay conversion camp. Sadly, Cuckoo misses the mark. I didn't feel bonded to these characters like I did with the Losers in It. Cuckoo attempts to replicate the structure of the It movies, i.e., having the first half of the book with the characters as kids and the second half with them as adults. This worked in the It movies and miniseries, namely due to them being adapted from such a long book (1,138 pages). It does not work in Cuckoo. The book is too short, and there are too many POV characters to pull this off. One of the characters is even a shameless ripoff of Henry Bowers. To make matters even more confusing, one of the characters transitions in the second half of the book and goes by a new name. The book assumes we know who this character is and doesn't clarify until many chapters later. This makes zero sense since the author tells us right away with another trans character,
The other reason Cuckoo fails where It succeeds is the monster. Pennywise is an epic monster who feeds on fear. The cuckoo...well, not so much. It's more like The Thing without the great body horror moments.
This one wasn't for me, but if you love Stephen King's It or LGBTQIA+ horror, it might be worth checking out. Or for a gay conversion camp horror novel that I did enjoy, check out Chuck Tingle's Camp Damascus.
October 8, 2024
Ugh...why??!
At a little over halfway into this book I have decided to DNF it. If the rest of the book had been like the opening chapter then this book would have been very good, however after the first chapter it just became incredibly disgusting, on multiple levels.
I'm a fan of horror and I love a good scream but this is a type of horror I will never enjoy, and apparently it's called 'extreme horror'. At one point I felt like I was reading one disgusting scene to the next for page after page, and I quickly grew disinterested; I suppose I now know I don't need my horror novels to be quite this raunchy, and instead I'd prefer a twisty and scary plot with intriguing characters, which I was hoping would be in this novel, but halfway through it was just too much for me to force myself to keep reading. Essentially the plot in this one is about queer children in the early '90s who are sent away to conversion camps by their parents and upon arrival they almost immediately witness one horror after the next, in between overly-descriptive and raunchy sex scenes, with no real sense of story progression throughout. . All that being said, I will probably not read from this author again, as I also attempted to read Manhunt a while back and felt very similar. I'm sure this is a new type of horror that appeals to very many, but through reading this I definitely discovered I was not one of them!
A bonus that I definitely appreciate and highlight is that this author can definitely write and her meticulous description really made the horrors within the pages vivid, just a little too much so, for myself! This one's probably on me as I should have known exactly what I was getting myself into, and I'm sure I'm in the minority with this opinion, but I can't help but voice my dissatisfaction 🥴.
At a little over halfway into this book I have decided to DNF it. If the rest of the book had been like the opening chapter then this book would have been very good, however after the first chapter it just became incredibly disgusting, on multiple levels.
I'm a fan of horror and I love a good scream but this is a type of horror I will never enjoy, and apparently it's called 'extreme horror'. At one point I felt like I was reading one disgusting scene to the next for page after page, and I quickly grew disinterested; I suppose I now know I don't need my horror novels to be quite this raunchy, and instead I'd prefer a twisty and scary plot with intriguing characters, which I was hoping would be in this novel, but halfway through it was just too much for me to force myself to keep reading. Essentially the plot in this one is about queer children in the early '90s who are sent away to conversion camps by their parents and upon arrival they almost immediately witness one horror after the next, in between overly-descriptive and raunchy sex scenes, with no real sense of story progression throughout. . All that being said, I will probably not read from this author again, as I also attempted to read Manhunt a while back and felt very similar. I'm sure this is a new type of horror that appeals to very many, but through reading this I definitely discovered I was not one of them!
A bonus that I definitely appreciate and highlight is that this author can definitely write and her meticulous description really made the horrors within the pages vivid, just a little too much so, for myself! This one's probably on me as I should have known exactly what I was getting myself into, and I'm sure I'm in the minority with this opinion, but I can't help but voice my dissatisfaction 🥴.
June 17, 2024
Easily the worst book that I've read so far this year. I read the first half hoping that things would improve, and then continued while reminding myself every time I turned a page that I could just put the silly thing down and walk away. Cuckoo almost definitely would have been at least a little bit better if Felker-Martin had focused on one or two members of their unwieldy cast instead of randomly shifting between more characters than they can efficiently manage. They repeatedly substitute random anecdotes for character development, so that none of the characters really feel consistent.
The plot makes little sense. Apparently alien body snatchers are targeting queer kids because they're vulnerable, but at the same time anyone might be a body snatcher? I'm all for queer youth shooting up possessed cops, but I'd also like it if that made sense to the plot. And years go by but the contagion barely spreads?
At times Felker-Martin leans into gross extravagance, but goes so far over the top that it becomes cosmic horror word salad. I did kind of think those parts were fun to read, but not because they were good.
I often feel mean when I write negative reviews, but Cuckoo is bad. Bad.
The plot makes little sense. Apparently alien body snatchers are targeting queer kids because they're vulnerable, but at the same time anyone might be a body snatcher? I'm all for queer youth shooting up possessed cops, but I'd also like it if that made sense to the plot. And years go by but the contagion barely spreads?
At times Felker-Martin leans into gross extravagance, but goes so far over the top that it becomes cosmic horror word salad. I did kind of think those parts were fun to read, but not because they were good.
I often feel mean when I write negative reviews, but Cuckoo is bad. Bad.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 27, 2024
First chapter was soooooooo good. The rest of the book didn’t deliver, mostly descriptions of gross smells and bodily fluids tbh.
March 21, 2024
2.5
This isn't bad and actually had a good plot. But man, it seemed like a lot of characters which took me out of the whole experience. I didn't find a single character likable. I slogged through this...it took me over a week to read this 300-something page book, which is just not like me. There was a sense of redemption in the end, but it wasn't satisfying and didn't really feel that way.
As always, thank you to the Nightfire team for providing me with spooky reads--this one just wasn't for ME, it happens!
This isn't bad and actually had a good plot. But man, it seemed like a lot of characters which took me out of the whole experience. I didn't find a single character likable. I slogged through this...it took me over a week to read this 300-something page book, which is just not like me. There was a sense of redemption in the end, but it wasn't satisfying and didn't really feel that way.
As always, thank you to the Nightfire team for providing me with spooky reads--this one just wasn't for ME, it happens!
June 21, 2024
This was for me the most utterly joyless, miserable, pointless slog of any book I have read in the past two years. And I have read over 50 books by trans authors in the past two years, including Felker-Martin's earlier "Manhunt". I was perhaps not in the right, in forcing myself to finish this text.
Structurally, this book has some serious authorial issues which make it just generally a poorly built tale, with too many characters too chaotically juggled to allow for their development to be enjoyable or smoothly conducted. But more generally, it just suffers from its having been written by a seemingly miserable person who seems to want to foist misery and hate and loathing and disgust on all of her characters at all times, in an endless stream of highly repetitive utmost unpleasantness.
I give this work a begrudging one star because I must grant that there are surely others out there as miserable and devoid of joy or hope or love as Felker-Martin herself, who wish to hear their joyless, hateful miserable disgust at humanity and trans lives mirrored back at them. But for me, I do not need the trans experienced given its most hateful and joyless and self-loathing form. That does not enrich my own trans experience, and it is admittedly very difficult to see or understand how it could enrich anyone else's.
Structurally, this book has some serious authorial issues which make it just generally a poorly built tale, with too many characters too chaotically juggled to allow for their development to be enjoyable or smoothly conducted. But more generally, it just suffers from its having been written by a seemingly miserable person who seems to want to foist misery and hate and loathing and disgust on all of her characters at all times, in an endless stream of highly repetitive utmost unpleasantness.
I give this work a begrudging one star because I must grant that there are surely others out there as miserable and devoid of joy or hope or love as Felker-Martin herself, who wish to hear their joyless, hateful miserable disgust at humanity and trans lives mirrored back at them. But for me, I do not need the trans experienced given its most hateful and joyless and self-loathing form. That does not enrich my own trans experience, and it is admittedly very difficult to see or understand how it could enrich anyone else's.
August 3, 2024
sorry but i don’t want to read about a twelve year old boy’s dick and sexual turn ons, or about teenage girls period blood or sexual ventures, even if it’s an adult book it still feels icky
June 1, 2025
Harrowing, but I appreciate what this book is doing. Cuckoo is a horror novel about queer teenagers in the 90's sent to a conversion camp where, as if the abuse and trauma wasn't enough, something that isn't human wants to wear their skin....
I don't know that this is a book I can recommend widely because it is both intensely traumatic and contains a lot of extremely disgusting horror elements. But it's also doing something significant in laying bare the very real trauma and abuse experienced by far too many trans and queer youth (and showing the lasting impact those things have into adulthood) while also exploring how queer youth might be exactly who a monster might target because of people ignoring their pain and pushing them to the margins. Especially in the 90's, but also today in far too many places. There is a rawness to this novel that is difficult to read at times but for valid reasons. And it demonstrates how homophobia and transphobia intersect with things like race, class, misogyny, and anti-fat bias.
I don't know that this is a book I can recommend widely because it is both intensely traumatic and contains a lot of extremely disgusting horror elements. But it's also doing something significant in laying bare the very real trauma and abuse experienced by far too many trans and queer youth (and showing the lasting impact those things have into adulthood) while also exploring how queer youth might be exactly who a monster might target because of people ignoring their pain and pushing them to the margins. Especially in the 90's, but also today in far too many places. There is a rawness to this novel that is difficult to read at times but for valid reasons. And it demonstrates how homophobia and transphobia intersect with things like race, class, misogyny, and anti-fat bias.
August 3, 2024
A really cool premise, but not so great execution. If this wasn't for a book club, I would have dropped it.
I love the idea of a monster horror story set in a conversion camp. Taking an already horrible, traumatizing situation and adding supernatural evil creatures? Fantastic. Unfortunately, the actual execution deviates too far from the promise of the summary for me. And maybe I would have liked this more if I hadn't been expecting a different book.
From the premise, I was expecting a story where the biggest horror and threat came from the people running the camp. And, therefore, we would get strong ties to themes of religious trauma and abuse. But instead, we got a monster, reminiscent of Stephen King's It, body-snatching book that was set in a conversion camp. I can't say the camp was inconsequential to the plot--I do think it would be very hard to remove and still have the story work, but it would not be impossible to remove the camp. And that is a problem for me. I wanted the camp to be the main antagonist, not just a place for the plot to run out.
Again, maybe it is not fair to judge this based on the book I would rather be reading, but this is just want I gathered from the plot summary on the book. And, I think that promise would have been a much stronger book.
I also have to agree with other reviewers, there were way to many pov characters. It was too many people to keep track of and the switching between characters was confusing. Especially since the names and pronouns used for characters changed based on who's pov we were in. I had to keep notes just to keep people straight. Also, because there were so many characters, none of them really got the chance to stand out. I found it hard to connect to and care about them because none of them got the chance to develop much.
I also found this frustrating in terms of the character's relationships development--or lack thereof. This book clearly wants to have a chosen family element--common with queer stories--but does not take the care to actually show these relationships develop. We are told they are 'real friends' but never see scenes of that happening. In one chapter, Felix is reiterating how he needs to keep his head down and not get involved, never making the effort to talk to the other campers. In like the next chapter, he is thinking how nice it is to have 'real friends' for once...........ok? so why did he change his mind? Why are any of them friends now? Why are Shelby and Nadine acting like they're in love when they've basically never spoken?? Why should we believe they care about each other??? Don't tell me they're a chosen family, show me! So much of this book is dedicated to fever dream hallucinations and grotesque body horror descriptions that so little is left to actually develop the characters we are following. Which really is my biggest problem with the book.
The writing feels like one consistent block of gross description after gross description. There is no building of horror, or ramping up of stakes. We start at 100 and continue until we crash into an ending. It feels like an exercise in horror writing rather that a cohesive book. I think this would have worked so much better if we start at what seems like a normal conversion camp, still horrifying but in an expected way, and then over the course of the book things get steadily more intense and unfamiliar. When the level of horror and abuse is consistent throughout the entire book, I start to feel numb to it. It is just reading the same thing over and over. And some of it really just felt shocking for the sake of it--so by the end it has lost it's impact entirely.
Overall, I can see what Felker-Martin wanted to make. But it ends up being a muddy and confusing mess of a million characters, repetitive and gross descriptions, inconsistent themes, and derivative horror beats. Clearly she has a passion for horror, and she isn't a bad writer--the parts that work work. I think it could have just benefited from more passes in editing. A more clear vision.
I love the idea of a monster horror story set in a conversion camp. Taking an already horrible, traumatizing situation and adding supernatural evil creatures? Fantastic. Unfortunately, the actual execution deviates too far from the promise of the summary for me. And maybe I would have liked this more if I hadn't been expecting a different book.
From the premise, I was expecting a story where the biggest horror and threat came from the people running the camp. And, therefore, we would get strong ties to themes of religious trauma and abuse. But instead, we got a monster, reminiscent of Stephen King's It, body-snatching book that was set in a conversion camp. I can't say the camp was inconsequential to the plot--I do think it would be very hard to remove and still have the story work, but it would not be impossible to remove the camp. And that is a problem for me. I wanted the camp to be the main antagonist, not just a place for the plot to run out.
Again, maybe it is not fair to judge this based on the book I would rather be reading, but this is just want I gathered from the plot summary on the book. And, I think that promise would have been a much stronger book.
I also have to agree with other reviewers, there were way to many pov characters. It was too many people to keep track of and the switching between characters was confusing. Especially since the names and pronouns used for characters changed based on who's pov we were in. I had to keep notes just to keep people straight. Also, because there were so many characters, none of them really got the chance to stand out. I found it hard to connect to and care about them because none of them got the chance to develop much.
I also found this frustrating in terms of the character's relationships development--or lack thereof. This book clearly wants to have a chosen family element--common with queer stories--but does not take the care to actually show these relationships develop. We are told they are 'real friends' but never see scenes of that happening. In one chapter, Felix is reiterating how he needs to keep his head down and not get involved, never making the effort to talk to the other campers. In like the next chapter, he is thinking how nice it is to have 'real friends' for once...........ok? so why did he change his mind? Why are any of them friends now? Why are Shelby and Nadine acting like they're in love when they've basically never spoken?? Why should we believe they care about each other??? Don't tell me they're a chosen family, show me! So much of this book is dedicated to fever dream hallucinations and grotesque body horror descriptions that so little is left to actually develop the characters we are following. Which really is my biggest problem with the book.
The writing feels like one consistent block of gross description after gross description. There is no building of horror, or ramping up of stakes. We start at 100 and continue until we crash into an ending. It feels like an exercise in horror writing rather that a cohesive book. I think this would have worked so much better if we start at what seems like a normal conversion camp, still horrifying but in an expected way, and then over the course of the book things get steadily more intense and unfamiliar. When the level of horror and abuse is consistent throughout the entire book, I start to feel numb to it. It is just reading the same thing over and over. And some of it really just felt shocking for the sake of it--so by the end it has lost it's impact entirely.
Overall, I can see what Felker-Martin wanted to make. But it ends up being a muddy and confusing mess of a million characters, repetitive and gross descriptions, inconsistent themes, and derivative horror beats. Clearly she has a passion for horror, and she isn't a bad writer--the parts that work work. I think it could have just benefited from more passes in editing. A more clear vision.
June 24, 2024
This is like a cross between Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Stephen King's IT, except it's queer and takes place at a gay conversion camp instead of in the sewers.
When a group of teens are forced into a camp because of their sexuality, they'll be faced with harsh conditions in the middle of the desert, staff who physically and mentally abuse them, and threats of pain if they don't comply with instructions.
But that's just the beginning of their nightmare. Once they discover the true significance of this camp and what its true purpose is, a small group of kids realise they will have to escape or never be the same again.
Years later, their inner and outer scars from their time there still linger. And when one of them informs the others that whatever lurked in their time at camp is back, they will have to get back together to try and kill it once and for all.
This novel not only paints a horrifying picture of these so called "Christian" conversion camps but also ramps up that terror with a monstrosity that wants to replace their true selves with something supernatural, evil, and blood thirsty.
From the very first chapter, you know you're in for a creepy frightening ride as it begins with an oozy bang and never eases up on the tension throughout.
And, if you've read Manhunt by this author, you know that nobody writes about queer angst, anger, and horror like Gretchen Felker-Martin.
I highly, highly recommend this epic novel. I received an ARC of this book through Netgalley with no consideration. This review is voluntary and is my own personal opinion.
When a group of teens are forced into a camp because of their sexuality, they'll be faced with harsh conditions in the middle of the desert, staff who physically and mentally abuse them, and threats of pain if they don't comply with instructions.
But that's just the beginning of their nightmare. Once they discover the true significance of this camp and what its true purpose is, a small group of kids realise they will have to escape or never be the same again.
Years later, their inner and outer scars from their time there still linger. And when one of them informs the others that whatever lurked in their time at camp is back, they will have to get back together to try and kill it once and for all.
This novel not only paints a horrifying picture of these so called "Christian" conversion camps but also ramps up that terror with a monstrosity that wants to replace their true selves with something supernatural, evil, and blood thirsty.
From the very first chapter, you know you're in for a creepy frightening ride as it begins with an oozy bang and never eases up on the tension throughout.
And, if you've read Manhunt by this author, you know that nobody writes about queer angst, anger, and horror like Gretchen Felker-Martin.
I highly, highly recommend this epic novel. I received an ARC of this book through Netgalley with no consideration. This review is voluntary and is my own personal opinion.
June 1, 2025
Second attempt for book club:
Super messy. Biggest issue for me was the point of view changes were too rapid. I had a hard time keeping track of the characters. This just didn’t work for me. I would like to see this as a movie or mini series. Took it from two stars to one.
Super messy. Biggest issue for me was the point of view changes were too rapid. I had a hard time keeping track of the characters. This just didn’t work for me. I would like to see this as a movie or mini series. Took it from two stars to one.
July 5, 2024
Intense and disturbing at some parts. Want to read more by Gretchen Felker-Martin
June 30, 2024
Thank you to Goodreads and the publisher for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
My Selling Pitch:
Gretchen: hey, can I copy your homework
Stephen King: sure, just change a few things so it’s not obvious
Camp Damascus if it was actually horror. King’s It but now everyone’s ~explicitly~ not straight.
Pre-reading:
I loved Manhunt last year. For all its flaws, it lives rent-free in my brain. This is one of my most anticipated releases for the year, but I am weirdly intimidated by it. I’ve had the arc for a little bit but kept putting it off. I really hope it’s good. It’s got another killer cover.
Thick of it:
One of these things is not like the other 🎶
Anyone who picks this book up and says this author can’t write is lying.
We’re already going in on the satire, and I’m live laugh loving.
If you tell me she’s gay because she got baby raped I’m out. (What is it with queer horror implying this this year?)
Oh no.
What the fuck is in the box? My gut just sank. (We never find out. Unfair.)
Hell yeah, hyenas!
You make me do too much labor🎶
I know a lot of people demonize these anti-religion books, but it’s just like this is the reality for so many people. This is what your religion has done. And even if you didn’t experience the abuse to this degree, you can spot echoes of it in your own home life.
And that’s on undiagnosed postpartum depression.
chivvy
I am uneducated and had to Google the Turner Diaries. Very different from the Princess Diaries.
Detritus sin
It’s my dick in a box🎶
Ew ew ew
Now this is what I was expecting from C. J. Leede’s new religious horror book!
This is creepy. This is scary. This is so good. I smell five stars. (SIGH.)
Are you kidding? That was just the prologue? That was so good!
I love the chapter names. This has such menacing voice to it. It’s so good.
Love how she writes gore.
This is what I was expecting from Camp Damascus.
What is it with the overlap between Christians and Peanuts? Is it just because they did the Christmas movies? It’s wild to me that every single religious trauma horror with a Christian skew brings up the Peanuts. And like I relate, my parents were obsessed.
The cast is too big for me to keep track. Oh no.
I’m already invested in these children, and I want good things for them. Oh no.
I like John a lot. And Malcolm even though he’s an ass.
A Sam!
This is gorgeous imagery.
Jo feels expendable so it’s not looking good for her
Ayyy Dune! Still hate that book lol.
Not me fresh off the Ernie mysteries and trying to decipher these letters like they’re something I can solve.
I mean, it’s not a braid, but you do have convergent evolution…
I’m having a really hard time keeping track of names and genders and it doesn’t matter for the book but it does matter for the summary so that I get pronouns right and it’s stressing me out a little bit. It’s such a big cast.
One time, Regina punched me in the face. It was awesome.
Every book is about bears
Detritus sin again
Don’t love how we’re playing sexual trauma bingo for the kids’ backstories. Like I know they’re all very real instances that have been in the news, but it’s heavy to read, and it kinda reads like people’s sexualities and gender identities only come about because of their trauma. No likey.
My brain also autocompleted Ghostbusters.
Stochastic
Big fan of Nadine.
This would make a good Goonies-esque TV show.
The Glovers as in body gloves omg.
Really wish everyone was 18+ if we’re writing orgies and trying to make it sexy. Call me a prude but I’m aging everyone up in my head. College-aged if we’re fucking. Thanks!
Title drop
Not the dog!
Detritus sin again, jesus.
I imagine the villain is somehow their dead daughter, but I don’t know how it’ll work.
This really is like a Camp Damascus rewrite.
Oh, the audiobook voices got CREEPY.
OK, so it is saying an alien crash-landed in Utah and learned to make its body parts out of what it eats. Duskwalker-y. Never like aliens or supernatural as explanation. I think it’s lazy.
Man, we’re only halfway! How much more fucked is this gonna get? I feel like we were wrapping towards a conclusion, but like I’ve still got another half of the book!
Malcolm‘s humor is so good.
That’s the wrong there. That’s irritating.
I hate that this basically amounts to a femcel woman’s fault.
Oh man, she’s a monster fucker haha
Oh Nadine, you absolute badass. I like her so much. If she dies, I’m gonna be pissed.
These creatures are hard to picture.
I love that the horror is seductive. Like the creepy line is I’ll show you true love. That is excellent horror.
Oh, I bet that’s Malcolm and the dynamite. (It’s somebody and the dynamite. You were half right.)
Goddamnit, I liked Nadine so much!
I love you here feels cheesy. Like you shouldn’t be in love after a day or two.
But Gabe’s been body-snatched, hasn’t he? Are we playing some sort of alien long game and he’s gonna hide in plain sight and kill them all off to end this book? That’d be a bummer.
This book feels so hopeless now. I miss Nadine. I don’t wanna book without Nadine.
It’s very Goonies, very It.
Oh fuck, what if Jo got body snatched too?
Don’t trust Jo. This is too convenient. I think she’s a cuckoo. (Wrong.)
Humus
How are we not referencing It? Or the Goonies? Could they not get the IP?
There’s a lot of body shame commentary in this book.
In the nicest way, it is so hard to keep track of who is who when you have such a large cast and you have memories overlapping, and you have dead names and different pronouns for everyone based on who’s talking. It’s really fucking hard.
Props to this book for not forgetting periods during a disaster.
Oh c’mon, you’re telling me that’s not It? It’s literally in the sewers.
I love Kesha.
I don’t like that Mal is mean to John.
Ayyy Manhunt!
So you’re saying Jo exhibits parasitic behavior. Interesting. I think I’m so right that she’s Cuckoo. (You are so wrong.)
Mal is such a hard character because I love their humor, but I can’t stand that they’re mean to John because John is so nice. He deserves good things.
That’s gotta be a nod to the Winchesters, no?
sclerotic
I have a collie too.
OK, we’re even referencing King. Like this is just It.
I don’t know why I’m struggling to get through this book so much. I’m enjoying it. It’s not even that long, but it feels so long.
Why does this car chase matter?
This ending is really falling off. Like it feels kind of pointless, like we’re circling the drain. Just get to killing the monster. I don’t need all this getting from point A to point B stuff.
I’m bored. It’s not scary anymore. You faked us out with death twice now. Like I don’t care.
Where are we going with this x3
Okay, Katniss.
It’s so frustrating because the first time we got the gore descriptions, it was new. It was novel. It was interesting. It was horrifying. But now we’ve described it the same way every single time so I’m just desensitized.
Literally how is this not It. This is the exact same ending.
I genuinely think the first half of this was four stars and then it is literally just a rewrite of It so it’s down to two.
Post-reading:
I want you to look me in my eyes and tell me this isn’t It fanfiction.
The prologue? A stunner. Viscerally creepy with the right amount of caustic satire. I was genuinely hoping we were about to get some mommy horror in the vein of Grady Hendrix’s Guide to Slaying Vampires or Ainslie Hogarth’s Normal Women. There was a book there that would’ve been unique and new and exciting. I don’t think I’ve seen anything published that falls into the intersection between horror and social commentary on motherhood and queerness. And you’d be doing all that with the biting undercurrent of religious criticism. Girl, in this political landscape? Fuckin’ gimmie.
But that’s not this book. Instead, we’re trying to make teenagers sexy again. Can y’all knock it off already? Tell a love story, but don’t sexualize minors. There’s a difference between talking about teen sexuality and trying to make underage characters’ actions sexy for adults to read. It upsets me every time, and you can call me a prude, but I don’t like it.
There’s a lot of sexual horror in this book. For some reason, that’s trendy right now. It seems like it’s been trendy since American Horror Story started. I think it’s cheap and 99% of the time gratuitous. This book is no exception. The sex scenes feel like they’re in the book for shock value or to titillate an audience. There’s no emotional weight to them.
This book has a gigantic cast. I would argue that it’s way too big to be digestible to the reader. There’s a lot of nothing side characters, but we still try to name them. But even if we ignore all those one-off characters, the main cast is incredibly unwieldy because we’re dealing with trans characters with dead names who use different pronouns and who get purposely misgendered within the book depending on whose point of view we’re in. It was so hard to keep track of who was who and what backstory went to which character. But the abundance of queer characters is the point of this book, and I’m not suggesting we eliminate them to make the book more palatable. I just think they probably could’ve been consolidated down. I think we should’ve referred to characters more consistently throughout the text.
Now the characters themselves are decently developed, although I hesitate to write that because most of their development comes from tragic backstories. Every single character had one. It started to feel a bit like we were playing sexual trauma bingo. What’s sad is that these backstories are all real incidences that have been in the news lately. Children suffered these fates. You just get habituated to it. If everything is sad, nothing is sad. It also starts reading like these characters’ sexual preferences and gender identities only came about because of their trauma. And that’s not an argument you wanna be making.
But fuck me, I’m real easy. I loved Nadine. Loved. I would’ve taken an entire book just about her. I loved John. I loved Malcolm. I hated that they ended up together. John deserves so much better, and Malcolm deserves to heal. I also didn’t love that most of the characters ended up being trans and all in love with each other. It gets back to that differentiation struggle. They all started to feel the same. They all started to have the same voice.
For as many pretty bits of imagery as there are in this book, there’s also sequences with the alien where I just had no idea what to picture. The descriptions for the gore and the monster also got so repetitive. They were deliciously gross the first time around. They were grating by the sixth.
I thought the book’s dialogue was excellent. The kids had snappy banter, especially Malcolm. He added such needed levity and humor to the book. It was a perfect tension breaker. They were genuinely funny.
But we’ve got to talk about how this book is a blatant rip-off of It. We have a group of kids suffering together during the summer and having a weird orgy together. They’re facing off against some alien creature. One sacrifices themselves. One tries to commit suicide. They have to go after the alien again in a part two where they’re adults now. The author even talked about how the alien was in the sewers and name-dropped King. I don’t understand if this book was trying to do a Maeve Fly where it’s a love letter to another work, but Maeve is distinctly its own story echoing American Psycho whereas Cuckoo felt like it was copy-pasting the original.
In this book’s defense, I don’t like King’s It. I think aliens or the supernatural as explanation is lazy fucking writing. I don’t like the fact that a grown man chose to write about children having an orgy. That’s fucking weird. What’s wrong with you? And if you’re like Sam, it’s weird that you’re cool with dead kids over kids fucking, I don’t know what to tell ya. Call me weird then.
And unfortunately, the ending and how similar it is to It really ruined the book for me. I felt like I knew what was coming. It didn’t feel like anything had stakes anymore. If you break that sense of dread in a horror book, it’s over. Death fakeouts are jumping the shark in books. You get one chance and then you annoy your audience. They don’t trust you as the narrator anymore.
I think it was a huge mistake to kill off Nadine. It really soured me on the book. I liked her so much that I didn’t care anymore once she was gone. It felt very pointless. I didn’t like any of the other characters enough to root for them to survive. I may not have wanted them to die, but I wasn’t actively pulling for any of them to live.
The book has a little bit of a pacing issue as well. The prologue nails it. Part one feels a little slow and clunky because we’re introduced to so many characters so rapidly. We don’t have a chance to bond to any of them before we’re thrown to another one. It almost feels info-dumpy, like you’re not sure who to pay attention to. And then if part one is too slow, part two is way too fast. Part two is another tragic backstory info dump, meandering traveling from point A to point B that is actually pointless and adds nothing to the novel, and then a bit of a deus ex machina conclusion that has to work because we’re out of pages and need to get to the end.
The ending itself is bitter. I understand that it’s an angry, reactionary book. The world does not treat queer and trans people fairly, but I think continuing to rehash the us versus them mentality only furthers the divide. It’s not a hopeful message. It’s deliberately othering, and I’m not sure if that’s the best message to leave your readers with especially when this book veers a little towards YA because of the age of its protagonists and their struggles and in spite of its graphic violent and sexual content.
Ultimately the book just leaves a bad taste in your mouth because it feels like It fanfiction. It’s a bit of a bait and switch. You prime your audience for stellar religious horror satire with that prologue and then you never deliver. It’s a messy read. And yet when this book was good, I was loving it. If you read for concept and not execution, it’s worth picking up, just bear in mind that it’s going to quickly devolve into feeling like something you’ve already read.
Who should read this:
Queer horror fans
It fans
Camp Damascus fans
Do I want to reread this:
Nope, but I will always pick up this author’s books
Similar books:
* It by Stephen King-this is the same book
* Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle-gay teens sent to pray the gay away camp vs demons
* Maeve Fly by C. J. Leede-book that’s an homage to a classic horror movie, horror satire
* The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix-horror satire
* Godly Heathens by H. E. Edgmon-queer ensemble cast, YA magical realism
My Selling Pitch:
Gretchen: hey, can I copy your homework
Stephen King: sure, just change a few things so it’s not obvious
Camp Damascus if it was actually horror. King’s It but now everyone’s ~explicitly~ not straight.
Pre-reading:
I loved Manhunt last year. For all its flaws, it lives rent-free in my brain. This is one of my most anticipated releases for the year, but I am weirdly intimidated by it. I’ve had the arc for a little bit but kept putting it off. I really hope it’s good. It’s got another killer cover.
Thick of it:
One of these things is not like the other 🎶
Anyone who picks this book up and says this author can’t write is lying.
We’re already going in on the satire, and I’m live laugh loving.
If you tell me she’s gay because she got baby raped I’m out. (What is it with queer horror implying this this year?)
Oh no.
What the fuck is in the box? My gut just sank. (We never find out. Unfair.)
Hell yeah, hyenas!
You make me do too much labor🎶
I know a lot of people demonize these anti-religion books, but it’s just like this is the reality for so many people. This is what your religion has done. And even if you didn’t experience the abuse to this degree, you can spot echoes of it in your own home life.
And that’s on undiagnosed postpartum depression.
chivvy
I am uneducated and had to Google the Turner Diaries. Very different from the Princess Diaries.
Detritus sin
It’s my dick in a box🎶
Ew ew ew
Now this is what I was expecting from C. J. Leede’s new religious horror book!
This is creepy. This is scary. This is so good. I smell five stars. (SIGH.)
Are you kidding? That was just the prologue? That was so good!
I love the chapter names. This has such menacing voice to it. It’s so good.
Love how she writes gore.
This is what I was expecting from Camp Damascus.
What is it with the overlap between Christians and Peanuts? Is it just because they did the Christmas movies? It’s wild to me that every single religious trauma horror with a Christian skew brings up the Peanuts. And like I relate, my parents were obsessed.
The cast is too big for me to keep track. Oh no.
I’m already invested in these children, and I want good things for them. Oh no.
I like John a lot. And Malcolm even though he’s an ass.
A Sam!
This is gorgeous imagery.
Jo feels expendable so it’s not looking good for her
Ayyy Dune! Still hate that book lol.
Not me fresh off the Ernie mysteries and trying to decipher these letters like they’re something I can solve.
I mean, it’s not a braid, but you do have convergent evolution…
I’m having a really hard time keeping track of names and genders and it doesn’t matter for the book but it does matter for the summary so that I get pronouns right and it’s stressing me out a little bit. It’s such a big cast.
One time, Regina punched me in the face. It was awesome.
Every book is about bears
Detritus sin again
Don’t love how we’re playing sexual trauma bingo for the kids’ backstories. Like I know they’re all very real instances that have been in the news, but it’s heavy to read, and it kinda reads like people’s sexualities and gender identities only come about because of their trauma. No likey.
My brain also autocompleted Ghostbusters.
Stochastic
Big fan of Nadine.
This would make a good Goonies-esque TV show.
The Glovers as in body gloves omg.
Really wish everyone was 18+ if we’re writing orgies and trying to make it sexy. Call me a prude but I’m aging everyone up in my head. College-aged if we’re fucking. Thanks!
Title drop
Not the dog!
Detritus sin again, jesus.
I imagine the villain is somehow their dead daughter, but I don’t know how it’ll work.
This really is like a Camp Damascus rewrite.
Oh, the audiobook voices got CREEPY.
OK, so it is saying an alien crash-landed in Utah and learned to make its body parts out of what it eats. Duskwalker-y. Never like aliens or supernatural as explanation. I think it’s lazy.
Man, we’re only halfway! How much more fucked is this gonna get? I feel like we were wrapping towards a conclusion, but like I’ve still got another half of the book!
Malcolm‘s humor is so good.
That’s the wrong there. That’s irritating.
I hate that this basically amounts to a femcel woman’s fault.
Oh man, she’s a monster fucker haha
Oh Nadine, you absolute badass. I like her so much. If she dies, I’m gonna be pissed.
These creatures are hard to picture.
I love that the horror is seductive. Like the creepy line is I’ll show you true love. That is excellent horror.
Oh, I bet that’s Malcolm and the dynamite. (It’s somebody and the dynamite. You were half right.)
Goddamnit, I liked Nadine so much!
I love you here feels cheesy. Like you shouldn’t be in love after a day or two.
But Gabe’s been body-snatched, hasn’t he? Are we playing some sort of alien long game and he’s gonna hide in plain sight and kill them all off to end this book? That’d be a bummer.
This book feels so hopeless now. I miss Nadine. I don’t wanna book without Nadine.
It’s very Goonies, very It.
Oh fuck, what if Jo got body snatched too?
Don’t trust Jo. This is too convenient. I think she’s a cuckoo. (Wrong.)
Humus
How are we not referencing It? Or the Goonies? Could they not get the IP?
There’s a lot of body shame commentary in this book.
In the nicest way, it is so hard to keep track of who is who when you have such a large cast and you have memories overlapping, and you have dead names and different pronouns for everyone based on who’s talking. It’s really fucking hard.
Props to this book for not forgetting periods during a disaster.
Oh c’mon, you’re telling me that’s not It? It’s literally in the sewers.
I love Kesha.
I don’t like that Mal is mean to John.
Ayyy Manhunt!
So you’re saying Jo exhibits parasitic behavior. Interesting. I think I’m so right that she’s Cuckoo. (You are so wrong.)
Mal is such a hard character because I love their humor, but I can’t stand that they’re mean to John because John is so nice. He deserves good things.
That’s gotta be a nod to the Winchesters, no?
sclerotic
I have a collie too.
OK, we’re even referencing King. Like this is just It.
I don’t know why I’m struggling to get through this book so much. I’m enjoying it. It’s not even that long, but it feels so long.
Why does this car chase matter?
This ending is really falling off. Like it feels kind of pointless, like we’re circling the drain. Just get to killing the monster. I don’t need all this getting from point A to point B stuff.
I’m bored. It’s not scary anymore. You faked us out with death twice now. Like I don’t care.
Where are we going with this x3
Okay, Katniss.
It’s so frustrating because the first time we got the gore descriptions, it was new. It was novel. It was interesting. It was horrifying. But now we’ve described it the same way every single time so I’m just desensitized.
Literally how is this not It. This is the exact same ending.
I genuinely think the first half of this was four stars and then it is literally just a rewrite of It so it’s down to two.
Post-reading:
I want you to look me in my eyes and tell me this isn’t It fanfiction.
The prologue? A stunner. Viscerally creepy with the right amount of caustic satire. I was genuinely hoping we were about to get some mommy horror in the vein of Grady Hendrix’s Guide to Slaying Vampires or Ainslie Hogarth’s Normal Women. There was a book there that would’ve been unique and new and exciting. I don’t think I’ve seen anything published that falls into the intersection between horror and social commentary on motherhood and queerness. And you’d be doing all that with the biting undercurrent of religious criticism. Girl, in this political landscape? Fuckin’ gimmie.
But that’s not this book. Instead, we’re trying to make teenagers sexy again. Can y’all knock it off already? Tell a love story, but don’t sexualize minors. There’s a difference between talking about teen sexuality and trying to make underage characters’ actions sexy for adults to read. It upsets me every time, and you can call me a prude, but I don’t like it.
There’s a lot of sexual horror in this book. For some reason, that’s trendy right now. It seems like it’s been trendy since American Horror Story started. I think it’s cheap and 99% of the time gratuitous. This book is no exception. The sex scenes feel like they’re in the book for shock value or to titillate an audience. There’s no emotional weight to them.
This book has a gigantic cast. I would argue that it’s way too big to be digestible to the reader. There’s a lot of nothing side characters, but we still try to name them. But even if we ignore all those one-off characters, the main cast is incredibly unwieldy because we’re dealing with trans characters with dead names who use different pronouns and who get purposely misgendered within the book depending on whose point of view we’re in. It was so hard to keep track of who was who and what backstory went to which character. But the abundance of queer characters is the point of this book, and I’m not suggesting we eliminate them to make the book more palatable. I just think they probably could’ve been consolidated down. I think we should’ve referred to characters more consistently throughout the text.
Now the characters themselves are decently developed, although I hesitate to write that because most of their development comes from tragic backstories. Every single character had one. It started to feel a bit like we were playing sexual trauma bingo. What’s sad is that these backstories are all real incidences that have been in the news lately. Children suffered these fates. You just get habituated to it. If everything is sad, nothing is sad. It also starts reading like these characters’ sexual preferences and gender identities only came about because of their trauma. And that’s not an argument you wanna be making.
But fuck me, I’m real easy. I loved Nadine. Loved. I would’ve taken an entire book just about her. I loved John. I loved Malcolm. I hated that they ended up together. John deserves so much better, and Malcolm deserves to heal. I also didn’t love that most of the characters ended up being trans and all in love with each other. It gets back to that differentiation struggle. They all started to feel the same. They all started to have the same voice.
For as many pretty bits of imagery as there are in this book, there’s also sequences with the alien where I just had no idea what to picture. The descriptions for the gore and the monster also got so repetitive. They were deliciously gross the first time around. They were grating by the sixth.
I thought the book’s dialogue was excellent. The kids had snappy banter, especially Malcolm. He added such needed levity and humor to the book. It was a perfect tension breaker. They were genuinely funny.
But we’ve got to talk about how this book is a blatant rip-off of It. We have a group of kids suffering together during the summer and having a weird orgy together. They’re facing off against some alien creature. One sacrifices themselves. One tries to commit suicide. They have to go after the alien again in a part two where they’re adults now. The author even talked about how the alien was in the sewers and name-dropped King. I don’t understand if this book was trying to do a Maeve Fly where it’s a love letter to another work, but Maeve is distinctly its own story echoing American Psycho whereas Cuckoo felt like it was copy-pasting the original.
In this book’s defense, I don’t like King’s It. I think aliens or the supernatural as explanation is lazy fucking writing. I don’t like the fact that a grown man chose to write about children having an orgy. That’s fucking weird. What’s wrong with you? And if you’re like Sam, it’s weird that you’re cool with dead kids over kids fucking, I don’t know what to tell ya. Call me weird then.
And unfortunately, the ending and how similar it is to It really ruined the book for me. I felt like I knew what was coming. It didn’t feel like anything had stakes anymore. If you break that sense of dread in a horror book, it’s over. Death fakeouts are jumping the shark in books. You get one chance and then you annoy your audience. They don’t trust you as the narrator anymore.
I think it was a huge mistake to kill off Nadine. It really soured me on the book. I liked her so much that I didn’t care anymore once she was gone. It felt very pointless. I didn’t like any of the other characters enough to root for them to survive. I may not have wanted them to die, but I wasn’t actively pulling for any of them to live.
The book has a little bit of a pacing issue as well. The prologue nails it. Part one feels a little slow and clunky because we’re introduced to so many characters so rapidly. We don’t have a chance to bond to any of them before we’re thrown to another one. It almost feels info-dumpy, like you’re not sure who to pay attention to. And then if part one is too slow, part two is way too fast. Part two is another tragic backstory info dump, meandering traveling from point A to point B that is actually pointless and adds nothing to the novel, and then a bit of a deus ex machina conclusion that has to work because we’re out of pages and need to get to the end.
The ending itself is bitter. I understand that it’s an angry, reactionary book. The world does not treat queer and trans people fairly, but I think continuing to rehash the us versus them mentality only furthers the divide. It’s not a hopeful message. It’s deliberately othering, and I’m not sure if that’s the best message to leave your readers with especially when this book veers a little towards YA because of the age of its protagonists and their struggles and in spite of its graphic violent and sexual content.
Ultimately the book just leaves a bad taste in your mouth because it feels like It fanfiction. It’s a bit of a bait and switch. You prime your audience for stellar religious horror satire with that prologue and then you never deliver. It’s a messy read. And yet when this book was good, I was loving it. If you read for concept and not execution, it’s worth picking up, just bear in mind that it’s going to quickly devolve into feeling like something you’ve already read.
Who should read this:
Queer horror fans
It fans
Camp Damascus fans
Do I want to reread this:
Nope, but I will always pick up this author’s books
Similar books:
* It by Stephen King-this is the same book
* Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle-gay teens sent to pray the gay away camp vs demons
* Maeve Fly by C. J. Leede-book that’s an homage to a classic horror movie, horror satire
* The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix-horror satire
* Godly Heathens by H. E. Edgmon-queer ensemble cast, YA magical realism
June 24, 2024
A boiling pot of character soup seasoned with genitalia, janky af narrator switches, and a heaping helping of - where is this scene even taking place in the first place???
Stephen King’s It meets gay conversion therapy with a flat cast of trans/queer characters who you’ll instantly confuse as dead names, similar backstories, constant narrator hopping, and over all, one dimensional-ness blur them all together in one massive pile of flesh monsters.
Honestly, I’m not sure why I expected this to be better than the author’s previous book, Manhunt. Similar to Manhunt - the ideas and gore lured me in, the execution and character soup left me utterly confused and not really paying attention the entire time.
This book follows like…idk 7? 8? Maybe even more? Different characters who are all stuck in a conversion camp filled with alien body snatchers. Sounds hella interesting to an LGBTQ horror nerd like me. But between the piles of slimy tentacles and christian moms, I found myself lost not in how creepy and icky this book was, but in asking myself who the hell was I even reading about??? Which also lead to questions like - What is happening right now? How did we get here? What building in the camp even is this? Are we above ground or below? And, once again, whose perspective am I even reading???
Overall, I feel like if you read Manhunt and thought that one had issues…don’t even bother with this one. It’s the same exact issues (for me at least) of wayyyyyyyyyyy too many narrators, all with kinda similar trauma stories of abuse and Christian parents, who lash out at their peers in very similar and toxic ways, who just all wind up feeling like the same exact person but with different sets of pronouns; and wander through set pieces and scenes that are written without any proper descriptive anchor points to give your mind something to latch onto between the piles of blood and genitals being splattered on the walls. In general, this was a fun idea of - what if invasion of the body snatchers took place on a conversion camp?, but the whole thing dissolved into a massive pile of flesh, tentacles, and character POVs that really don’t feel all that different from each other.
P. S. just a little tidbit, did anyone else die laughing with that final line? It definitely felt quite ominous and creepy, but the “meaning” of this whole book being thrown right in my face with that final line really just made me lose it after everything this book put me through. Like…felt as though the author knew you didn’t pay attention at all and weren’t going to use any extra brain power to sift through the “meaning” of any of it, so they just spoon fed it right to ya. And if you don’t want to read this book, at least read that final line. The author had the decency to summarize 350 pages into one single line :D
Stephen King’s It meets gay conversion therapy with a flat cast of trans/queer characters who you’ll instantly confuse as dead names, similar backstories, constant narrator hopping, and over all, one dimensional-ness blur them all together in one massive pile of flesh monsters.
Honestly, I’m not sure why I expected this to be better than the author’s previous book, Manhunt. Similar to Manhunt - the ideas and gore lured me in, the execution and character soup left me utterly confused and not really paying attention the entire time.
This book follows like…idk 7? 8? Maybe even more? Different characters who are all stuck in a conversion camp filled with alien body snatchers. Sounds hella interesting to an LGBTQ horror nerd like me. But between the piles of slimy tentacles and christian moms, I found myself lost not in how creepy and icky this book was, but in asking myself who the hell was I even reading about??? Which also lead to questions like - What is happening right now? How did we get here? What building in the camp even is this? Are we above ground or below? And, once again, whose perspective am I even reading???
Overall, I feel like if you read Manhunt and thought that one had issues…don’t even bother with this one. It’s the same exact issues (for me at least) of wayyyyyyyyyyy too many narrators, all with kinda similar trauma stories of abuse and Christian parents, who lash out at their peers in very similar and toxic ways, who just all wind up feeling like the same exact person but with different sets of pronouns; and wander through set pieces and scenes that are written without any proper descriptive anchor points to give your mind something to latch onto between the piles of blood and genitals being splattered on the walls. In general, this was a fun idea of - what if invasion of the body snatchers took place on a conversion camp?, but the whole thing dissolved into a massive pile of flesh, tentacles, and character POVs that really don’t feel all that different from each other.
P. S. just a little tidbit, did anyone else die laughing with that final line? It definitely felt quite ominous and creepy, but the “meaning” of this whole book being thrown right in my face with that final line really just made me lose it after everything this book put me through. Like…felt as though the author knew you didn’t pay attention at all and weren’t going to use any extra brain power to sift through the “meaning” of any of it, so they just spoon fed it right to ya. And if you don’t want to read this book, at least read that final line. The author had the decency to summarize 350 pages into one single line :D
June 21, 2024
Rating: 1/5 Stars ⭐️
•
Woof. The dreaded one star. This was just not it.
•
The premise of Cuckoo sounds awesome. Conversion camp gone horror, love it; the representation, love it. The prologue was on freaking point. Then as I continued to read I actually couldn’t wait for it to be over.
•
I think my biggest issue with this story is the writing, sorry not sorry. I think that there was such an emphasis on being descriptive that it completely took away from what could have been a really awesome story about destroying a conversion camp. I think mostly the book was all for shock value - and let me say shocked I was… The main “monster” I couldn’t even tell you what it was supposed to look like, as it was described as way too many things.
•
There are a ton of characters, and it got to the point I had a hard time trying to figure out who was who. The teens in this are one dimensional and honestly not very likable, but not only that but, holy shit, are they HORNY. I mean, okay I get it but the amount of sexual fantasies and overuse of sexual innuendos just gave me second hand embarrassment and honestly it was pretty cringy. Cuckoo is being marketed as a YA Horror, but I would definitely not consider it that. Maybe more along the lines of “smut horror?” is that a thing? Can I make it a thing?
•
I listened to this via audio. It was a full cast which was a huge treat. Amy Landon, Avi Roque, Grace Rolek, Kirt Graves, Nicky Endres, Sena Bryer, Torian Brackett and Zim Avaltrades were all phenomenal. I love a full cast narration.
•
Overall, this was not for me. It’s not really something I can recommend but I will say if you are into body horror - this definitely has that, and if you want to check out a LGBTQIAP+ horror - read it (though I am sure there are much better options out there). Huge thank you to NetGalley, Gretchen Felker-Martin and MacMillan Audio for the ALC in exchange for my honest review, unfortunately this one was a miss for me.
•
Woof. The dreaded one star. This was just not it.
•
The premise of Cuckoo sounds awesome. Conversion camp gone horror, love it; the representation, love it. The prologue was on freaking point. Then as I continued to read I actually couldn’t wait for it to be over.
•
I think my biggest issue with this story is the writing, sorry not sorry. I think that there was such an emphasis on being descriptive that it completely took away from what could have been a really awesome story about destroying a conversion camp. I think mostly the book was all for shock value - and let me say shocked I was… The main “monster” I couldn’t even tell you what it was supposed to look like, as it was described as way too many things.
•
There are a ton of characters, and it got to the point I had a hard time trying to figure out who was who. The teens in this are one dimensional and honestly not very likable, but not only that but, holy shit, are they HORNY. I mean, okay I get it but the amount of sexual fantasies and overuse of sexual innuendos just gave me second hand embarrassment and honestly it was pretty cringy. Cuckoo is being marketed as a YA Horror, but I would definitely not consider it that. Maybe more along the lines of “smut horror?” is that a thing? Can I make it a thing?
•
I listened to this via audio. It was a full cast which was a huge treat. Amy Landon, Avi Roque, Grace Rolek, Kirt Graves, Nicky Endres, Sena Bryer, Torian Brackett and Zim Avaltrades were all phenomenal. I love a full cast narration.
•
Overall, this was not for me. It’s not really something I can recommend but I will say if you are into body horror - this definitely has that, and if you want to check out a LGBTQIAP+ horror - read it (though I am sure there are much better options out there). Huge thank you to NetGalley, Gretchen Felker-Martin and MacMillan Audio for the ALC in exchange for my honest review, unfortunately this one was a miss for me.
February 4, 2024
A 1990's conversion camp with a sinister secret? Sure, sign me up. A group of queer teens battling a horrific evil? Uhm, of course I'm all for it.
Cuckoo is simultaneously tender and cheeky but also quite dark and twisted. Imagine an 80's summer camp horror movie and Invasion of the Body Snatchers mashup and you'll get the gist. It's not write-home-to-mother good, but it's definitely worth a read.
Cuckoo is simultaneously tender and cheeky but also quite dark and twisted. Imagine an 80's summer camp horror movie and Invasion of the Body Snatchers mashup and you'll get the gist. It's not write-home-to-mother good, but it's definitely worth a read.
July 19, 2024
This book is strikingly terrible.
The author evidently thinks that being slapped or peeing pants creates the emotional gravitas for any situation. They happened so often that you could play a drinking game by it. By page 30, I was laughing out loud at a slap on average every 2.5 pages.
The threat isn't defined until page 200. And then everything before that was quickly forgotten. Weird things that happened early on were never explained or mentioned again. For instance, there was supernatural-inspired incest in the first few pages and that was never explained and didn't make any sense with the eventual truth of the situation.
The author has a strong fascination with describing genitals, especially of the trans characters. The characters themselves aren't expressing dysphoria so it feels painfully voyeuristic. It's often not relevant to the scene at all. It feels like the author was trying to process something and the reader is unfortunately witnessing it.
I would imagine that the author knows that readers of this book are likely going to be LGBT and/or have sexual trauma of their own, so the frequent casual mentions of CSA and fixations on natal genitals were especially jarring and did nothing to develop the plot or characters.
The premise of the book on the back cover was interesting. But this reads like a first draft. It needs a lot of plot and pacing help at the very least.
The author evidently thinks that being slapped or peeing pants creates the emotional gravitas for any situation. They happened so often that you could play a drinking game by it. By page 30, I was laughing out loud at a slap on average every 2.5 pages.
The threat isn't defined until page 200. And then everything before that was quickly forgotten. Weird things that happened early on were never explained or mentioned again. For instance, there was supernatural-inspired incest in the first few pages and that was never explained and didn't make any sense with the eventual truth of the situation.
The author has a strong fascination with describing genitals, especially of the trans characters. The characters themselves aren't expressing dysphoria so it feels painfully voyeuristic. It's often not relevant to the scene at all. It feels like the author was trying to process something and the reader is unfortunately witnessing it.
I would imagine that the author knows that readers of this book are likely going to be LGBT and/or have sexual trauma of their own, so the frequent casual mentions of CSA and fixations on natal genitals were especially jarring and did nothing to develop the plot or characters.
The premise of the book on the back cover was interesting. But this reads like a first draft. It needs a lot of plot and pacing help at the very least.
Read
July 9, 2024Felker-Martin's follow-up to her debut horror novel Manhunt surpasses that novel in a number of ways, while also having a mouth full of just as many—and just as sharp—teeth. Cuckoo is separated into two parts, with Part 1 being set in 1995 and following a group of queer teens who have been abducted and taken to a conversion camp in the heart of the Utah desert. In Part 2, we learn what happened to these kids when they grew up.
Cuckoo reads like the monster child of Stephen King's IT and the 1970s movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers (which is referenced more than once in the novel. In this desert lives a strange and dangerous thing that can wear the skin of those it preys upon, and it is hungry for these kids. They must band together to survive this monstrous predator, all while being tortured and "reeducated" by the just-as-monstrous people who run the camp.
Like Manhunt before it, Cuckoo is a visceral, raw, and nasty work of horror, drenched in copious amounts of blood (and plenty of other bodily fluids besides), but unlike Manhunt it's a horror novel with a focus on love and companionship—our protagonists continue to love themselves and trust one another in spite of everything.
My full thoughts: https://booksandbao.com/terrifying-qu...
Cuckoo reads like the monster child of Stephen King's IT and the 1970s movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers (which is referenced more than once in the novel. In this desert lives a strange and dangerous thing that can wear the skin of those it preys upon, and it is hungry for these kids. They must band together to survive this monstrous predator, all while being tortured and "reeducated" by the just-as-monstrous people who run the camp.
Like Manhunt before it, Cuckoo is a visceral, raw, and nasty work of horror, drenched in copious amounts of blood (and plenty of other bodily fluids besides), but unlike Manhunt it's a horror novel with a focus on love and companionship—our protagonists continue to love themselves and trust one another in spite of everything.
My full thoughts: https://booksandbao.com/terrifying-qu...
January 7, 2024
the absolute EDGE of my tolerance for gross out shit (which isn't super high but isn't nothing) but that's what it's supposed to do just know that going in
the star is off because i had a really hard time with the names of the none pov characters being thrown in after they didn't appear for several pages so i would have a hard time remembering who was who
the star is off because i had a really hard time with the names of the none pov characters being thrown in after they didn't appear for several pages so i would have a hard time remembering who was who
July 6, 2025
Filled with fury, this novel feels like a stranglehold that won’t let up. With a large and diverse cast that is really exciting to spend time with, if at times feels a little unwieldy, and a relentless insistence on not looking away from the places that scare and hurt you, Cuckoo is a thrill ride right from the start.
That side, there are a few things that kept this from being a great book for me. Let me share what I really enjoyed, first. I think the characters are great. They are diverse and feel real and valued. It is a large cast, and that means we don’t get to have quite as much of an interior journey with some of them as I would have liked. But they feel real and whole, even in their various stages of being broken. I will say it seemed like a lot of them had childhood trauma and abuse, which almost felt a little reductive… But considering all of these characters come from the kind of families that would send them to an abusive and violent conversion camp maybe it makes sense those are the same families with disproportionately high levels of abuse. The abuse is never lingered on, usually mentioned in passing, but it did feel like relying on an easy way to create sympathy for the characters. Still, the cast feels distinct, in both their teen and adult permutations. The whole idea of the story, an angry mash-up of The Thing and It with a little Camp Damascus and some extra bodily fluids thrown in for good measure, is great. The antagonists are also great, acting with a single-pointed focus that is both simple and terrifying. And, of course, the writing is descriptive and gory and gooey and full of all sorts of oozing juices. Oh, and a lot of graphic violence enacted on teenagers from hateful and indifferent adults, delivered with a painful naturalism that was far harder to read than any of the supernatural elements. The writing feels propulsive, lingering on descriptions, reveling in revulsion, but always feeling like it was pushing forward, not simply being gross for the sake of it. The tone and atmosphere of the world-building were definitely heightened by the graphic nature of the narrative, both in terms of violence and also sex, and I think it worked really well.
What didn’t work for me as much was that the narrative felt too big, at times. The cast of characters was so big that sometimes they felt to outrun the narrative. And I really enjoyed how the POV shifted across characters and gave us all of their experiences, individually and collectively, but sometimes that actual logic of the narrative seemed secondary to the visceral experience of the actions on the page. I am happy for ambiguity when dealing with supernatural/non-human entities, but there just seemed to be a lot happening that didn’t make sense, narratively. Antagonists were making decisions, or putting the characters through things that didn’t seem to line up with any of their stated goals. And there is a giant time jump about 2/3 of the way through, which was effective in many ways and allowed for a wonderful exploration of the characters. But the way the antagonists’ world changed over those sixteen years, that just didn’t feel real given the world already introduced. I think the narrative was ambitious and I loved it for that but sometimes it felt like it needed to be restrained. Not the violence or the body-horror or the sex or even the scope, none of those needed to be restrained, I enjoyed how wild and dark and free they were, but the narrative world itself needed more structure.
That said, wild, dark and ambitious all feel like appropriate descriptions of this story. Because there is something wildly inhuman about conversion therapy and there is an unimaginable violence enacted on young people even today, thirty years after the main timeline of this story. These days there is more psychological violence than physical in these kinds of programs, though there is surely enough of that, too. Felker-Martin has torn down any pretense of care, and this story reminds us how the vulnerable are preyed upon, still. It is also incredibly tender and affirming, in its way. Yes, these characters are treated horribly and abused, and even some of the protagonists can be shitty to each other on occasion, but there is an almost immediate solidarity among them. They do not question who they are or who they desire, and they don’t dismiss or deny each other’s autonomy. In the face of perpetual violence they constantly validate one another, and across the multi-decade storyline they continue to show up for one another. Not always perfectly, and never with anything that feels saccharine, but with a recognition and bond that is deeper than what the world throws at them. This story cares about the experiences of some of the most marginalized and moth disenfranchised members of society, and in that way it feels revolutionary and empowering even as they are being subjected to some pretty gnarly situations. How much of yourself are you willing to give up to meet societal expectations? Is it worth killing off those parts of yourself that make you unique if lets you blend in and escape scrutiny or judgment? There is a deadly beast of the status quo that has the desire to consume us all, to sand away all our rough edges and refuse our unique humanities. How far are you willing to go to prevent that from happening?
(Rounded from 3.5)
That side, there are a few things that kept this from being a great book for me. Let me share what I really enjoyed, first. I think the characters are great. They are diverse and feel real and valued. It is a large cast, and that means we don’t get to have quite as much of an interior journey with some of them as I would have liked. But they feel real and whole, even in their various stages of being broken. I will say it seemed like a lot of them had childhood trauma and abuse, which almost felt a little reductive… But considering all of these characters come from the kind of families that would send them to an abusive and violent conversion camp maybe it makes sense those are the same families with disproportionately high levels of abuse. The abuse is never lingered on, usually mentioned in passing, but it did feel like relying on an easy way to create sympathy for the characters. Still, the cast feels distinct, in both their teen and adult permutations. The whole idea of the story, an angry mash-up of The Thing and It with a little Camp Damascus and some extra bodily fluids thrown in for good measure, is great. The antagonists are also great, acting with a single-pointed focus that is both simple and terrifying. And, of course, the writing is descriptive and gory and gooey and full of all sorts of oozing juices. Oh, and a lot of graphic violence enacted on teenagers from hateful and indifferent adults, delivered with a painful naturalism that was far harder to read than any of the supernatural elements. The writing feels propulsive, lingering on descriptions, reveling in revulsion, but always feeling like it was pushing forward, not simply being gross for the sake of it. The tone and atmosphere of the world-building were definitely heightened by the graphic nature of the narrative, both in terms of violence and also sex, and I think it worked really well.
What didn’t work for me as much was that the narrative felt too big, at times. The cast of characters was so big that sometimes they felt to outrun the narrative. And I really enjoyed how the POV shifted across characters and gave us all of their experiences, individually and collectively, but sometimes that actual logic of the narrative seemed secondary to the visceral experience of the actions on the page. I am happy for ambiguity when dealing with supernatural/non-human entities, but there just seemed to be a lot happening that didn’t make sense, narratively. Antagonists were making decisions, or putting the characters through things that didn’t seem to line up with any of their stated goals. And there is a giant time jump about 2/3 of the way through, which was effective in many ways and allowed for a wonderful exploration of the characters. But the way the antagonists’ world changed over those sixteen years, that just didn’t feel real given the world already introduced. I think the narrative was ambitious and I loved it for that but sometimes it felt like it needed to be restrained. Not the violence or the body-horror or the sex or even the scope, none of those needed to be restrained, I enjoyed how wild and dark and free they were, but the narrative world itself needed more structure.
That said, wild, dark and ambitious all feel like appropriate descriptions of this story. Because there is something wildly inhuman about conversion therapy and there is an unimaginable violence enacted on young people even today, thirty years after the main timeline of this story. These days there is more psychological violence than physical in these kinds of programs, though there is surely enough of that, too. Felker-Martin has torn down any pretense of care, and this story reminds us how the vulnerable are preyed upon, still. It is also incredibly tender and affirming, in its way. Yes, these characters are treated horribly and abused, and even some of the protagonists can be shitty to each other on occasion, but there is an almost immediate solidarity among them. They do not question who they are or who they desire, and they don’t dismiss or deny each other’s autonomy. In the face of perpetual violence they constantly validate one another, and across the multi-decade storyline they continue to show up for one another. Not always perfectly, and never with anything that feels saccharine, but with a recognition and bond that is deeper than what the world throws at them. This story cares about the experiences of some of the most marginalized and moth disenfranchised members of society, and in that way it feels revolutionary and empowering even as they are being subjected to some pretty gnarly situations. How much of yourself are you willing to give up to meet societal expectations? Is it worth killing off those parts of yourself that make you unique if lets you blend in and escape scrutiny or judgment? There is a deadly beast of the status quo that has the desire to consume us all, to sand away all our rough edges and refuse our unique humanities. How far are you willing to go to prevent that from happening?
(Rounded from 3.5)
June 18, 2024
Cuckoo is horrific, grisly, utterly unapologetic and incredibly evocative. The prologue is amazing and it raised my expectations for the rest of the novel that were unfortunately not reached.
The premise of Cuckoo: seven queer kids are abandoned in a remote conversation camp in Utah for the summer by their parents, is nightmarish on its own and the addition of an evil creature that seeks to claim their bodies only heightens the tension.
The abduction scenes prior to the arrival to and several scenes within the camp are immensely difficult to stomach, as the characters experience: abandonment, emotional abuse, graphic physical abuse, racism, fatphobia, homophobia, transphobia and dehumanization. Gretchen Felker-Martin’s descriptions are unflinching and-at times-quite disgusting and the aspects pertaining to the inevitable body horror are also intense and vivid.
The multiple viewpoints of Cuckoo sometimes made it difficult to keep track of every character, though the audiobook’s different narrators did provide more of a distinction. The representation was also very well done, though with so many characters, some inevitably had stronger impacts upon the story than others.
The amount of graphic sexual content within Cuckoo also made me uncomfortable, as the characters are teenagers and some of the scenes seemed unnecessary. The pacing of the story-which is divided into about seventy percent focusing upon the time spent in the camp and thirty percent taking place fifteen years later-is also slightly uneven and made wish there was more of a balance between the two timelines.
The various narrators did an excellent job bringing: their characters, the malicious “counselors,” the husband and wife in charge of the camp and the monstrous Cuckoo, to life. I’m not sure if I’m the right reader for Gretchen Felker-Martin’s future works, but I am grateful to Macmillan Audio, Tor Nightfire and NetGalley for providing access to this ALC.
The premise of Cuckoo: seven queer kids are abandoned in a remote conversation camp in Utah for the summer by their parents, is nightmarish on its own and the addition of an evil creature that seeks to claim their bodies only heightens the tension.
The abduction scenes prior to the arrival to and several scenes within the camp are immensely difficult to stomach, as the characters experience: abandonment, emotional abuse, graphic physical abuse, racism, fatphobia, homophobia, transphobia and dehumanization. Gretchen Felker-Martin’s descriptions are unflinching and-at times-quite disgusting and the aspects pertaining to the inevitable body horror are also intense and vivid.
The multiple viewpoints of Cuckoo sometimes made it difficult to keep track of every character, though the audiobook’s different narrators did provide more of a distinction. The representation was also very well done, though with so many characters, some inevitably had stronger impacts upon the story than others.
The amount of graphic sexual content within Cuckoo also made me uncomfortable, as the characters are teenagers and some of the scenes seemed unnecessary. The pacing of the story-which is divided into about seventy percent focusing upon the time spent in the camp and thirty percent taking place fifteen years later-is also slightly uneven and made wish there was more of a balance between the two timelines.
The various narrators did an excellent job bringing: their characters, the malicious “counselors,” the husband and wife in charge of the camp and the monstrous Cuckoo, to life. I’m not sure if I’m the right reader for Gretchen Felker-Martin’s future works, but I am grateful to Macmillan Audio, Tor Nightfire and NetGalley for providing access to this ALC.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 3, 2024
Look, no one is more surprised about that 3-star rating than I am.
Cuckoo was probably my most highly-anticipated release of 2024--I read Manhunt right after it came out, and it was the best book I couldn't wait to be done reading because it fucked me up--and up through the first quarter to third of reading, I was fairly sure that it would be my favorite book of the year. As others have noted, the prologue is a well-crafted thing of gooey (in the way of slime, not emotions) genius, and that opening slides you right into harrowing scenes of queer teenagers being kidnapped by conversion therapy camp staffers (kids whose parents, it should be noted, paid said staffers good money to kidnap them).
Over the next little bit, you meet the different kids at the camp and get snippets of their various traumatic backstories interspersed with the trauma of their current plotline, watching them interact and go from distrust to desperate friendship (and attraction). Some readers have noted that there are too many POVs bouncing around, and there is a lot of that, but it didn't bother me as much because it serves the theme of .
But around the midway point and the , Cuckoo started to lose me a little and never fully recovered. I started to wonder if Gretchen ran into time constraints and the latter chapters didn't get as much workshopping, because while the first 70% of the book is fleshed out well, the last third crams in so much more than you would expect it to in such a small space:
The result is a bit threadbare. I wanted more character development, more showing, more time for the story to unfold. There are many shades of IT here, and I think that to have the kind of richness the ITs of the world need to work well, you maybe gotta give them 1,000 pages or so.
There are also a couple of pet-peeve kind of things at play, so your mileage may vary here. But there's a horny edgelord tone to the writing that didn't quite land with me, not because I'm anti-horny edgelordiness (I've been known to dabble in such notions myself), but because it got very repetitive and abrasive. This might have exacerbated my other peeve, which was that the longer I read, the more I realized that I didn't actually like most of the characters. They weren't unlikeable in ways that I found compelling. They were just annoying in the way of queer drama and yes yes yes, that was probably the point, and they are probably deeply relatable to a lot of queer people, but dear reader, I am something of a misanthrope and despite my queerness do find a lot of us deeply annoying IRL, too.
I don't want to leave this review on a negative note, so I will say that this book does both real-life horror and creature feature horror very well. I am a legendarily hard scare, but there are scenes that made my heart beat faster. I kept thinking about how much I would love to see Cuckoo adapted into a gross movie, full of sopping wet puppets and buckets of slime and fake blood.
So there you have it. My shockingly complicated feelings about Cuckoo. If "IT and Invasion of the Body Snatchers and They Live, but make it queer" sounds good to you, go for it. Because I know that this will be a 5-star book for other people, and I'm open to hearing why.
Cuckoo was probably my most highly-anticipated release of 2024--I read Manhunt right after it came out, and it was the best book I couldn't wait to be done reading because it fucked me up--and up through the first quarter to third of reading, I was fairly sure that it would be my favorite book of the year. As others have noted, the prologue is a well-crafted thing of gooey (in the way of slime, not emotions) genius, and that opening slides you right into harrowing scenes of queer teenagers being kidnapped by conversion therapy camp staffers (kids whose parents, it should be noted, paid said staffers good money to kidnap them).
Over the next little bit, you meet the different kids at the camp and get snippets of their various traumatic backstories interspersed with the trauma of their current plotline, watching them interact and go from distrust to desperate friendship (and attraction). Some readers have noted that there are too many POVs bouncing around, and there is a lot of that, but it didn't bother me as much because it serves the theme of .
But around the midway point and the , Cuckoo started to lose me a little and never fully recovered. I started to wonder if Gretchen ran into time constraints and the latter chapters didn't get as much workshopping, because while the first 70% of the book is fleshed out well, the last third crams in so much more than you would expect it to in such a small space:
The result is a bit threadbare. I wanted more character development, more showing, more time for the story to unfold. There are many shades of IT here, and I think that to have the kind of richness the ITs of the world need to work well, you maybe gotta give them 1,000 pages or so.
There are also a couple of pet-peeve kind of things at play, so your mileage may vary here. But there's a horny edgelord tone to the writing that didn't quite land with me, not because I'm anti-horny edgelordiness (I've been known to dabble in such notions myself), but because it got very repetitive and abrasive. This might have exacerbated my other peeve, which was that the longer I read, the more I realized that I didn't actually like most of the characters. They weren't unlikeable in ways that I found compelling. They were just annoying in the way of queer drama and yes yes yes, that was probably the point, and they are probably deeply relatable to a lot of queer people, but dear reader, I am something of a misanthrope and despite my queerness do find a lot of us deeply annoying IRL, too.
I don't want to leave this review on a negative note, so I will say that this book does both real-life horror and creature feature horror very well. I am a legendarily hard scare, but there are scenes that made my heart beat faster. I kept thinking about how much I would love to see Cuckoo adapted into a gross movie, full of sopping wet puppets and buckets of slime and fake blood.
So there you have it. My shockingly complicated feelings about Cuckoo. If "IT and Invasion of the Body Snatchers and They Live, but make it queer" sounds good to you, go for it. Because I know that this will be a 5-star book for other people, and I'm open to hearing why.
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June 10, 2024big ups to Macmillan Audio and NetGalley for coming through with the audiobook arc with expediency.
this title hits shelves tomorrow, june 11th, 2024.
--
i think the issues that i had with this book are possibly mostly me issues.
i do jump at the chance to read anything set in a conversion camp. Camp Damascus by chuck tingle was an exemplary example of everything that i could want in conversion camp horror - actual horrific moments that explored the hatred, fear, and psychotic behavior of those who subject their children to it/support it, really authentic characters, and a bit of fun.
i'm not familiar with felker-martin's work, though i wanted to pick this up because she's trans and with conversion camps regaining popularity in the states, particularly targeting trans people, i was hoping for a great, own-voices perspective of some of the atrocities that are committed by them.
here's where i think this book may not be for me - this book is 90's set and to felker-martin apparently that means fatphobia so fucking rampant that it completely overshadowed the plot of the book for me. the fatphobia is written like someone taking a frying pan to your head. i got to 28% and i can't even begin to count the number of comments about someone's "fat and disgusting" body that were made. and i get it, fatphobia is very real and deserved to be explored, particularly in the 90's era of no-fat, no-cal snackwell's cakes and deifying the heroin chic look of calvin klein models, but i felt like this wasn't representative of the times it was straight up gratuitous and unnecessary.
i also had a weird issue with the sexual nature of this book. the graphic grotesque of body parts for no reason, weird bodily fluid stuff, etc. like. none of these people felt real and the magnification of that just happened through needless description of various body parts. the whole thing just felt edgy. and maybe that's someone's bag, but it's not personally mine.
i am able to say that there was some misgendering (expected, at a conversion camp) and i thought for what i read there was instances of a character being misgendered and within the narrative referring to themselves as the correct pronouns. so i don't think this is a BAD book - i simply didn't get far enough in to formulate an opinion about the plot - but i do think it'll work better for someone that likes much edgier horror than i do.
this title hits shelves tomorrow, june 11th, 2024.
--
i think the issues that i had with this book are possibly mostly me issues.
i do jump at the chance to read anything set in a conversion camp. Camp Damascus by chuck tingle was an exemplary example of everything that i could want in conversion camp horror - actual horrific moments that explored the hatred, fear, and psychotic behavior of those who subject their children to it/support it, really authentic characters, and a bit of fun.
i'm not familiar with felker-martin's work, though i wanted to pick this up because she's trans and with conversion camps regaining popularity in the states, particularly targeting trans people, i was hoping for a great, own-voices perspective of some of the atrocities that are committed by them.
here's where i think this book may not be for me - this book is 90's set and to felker-martin apparently that means fatphobia so fucking rampant that it completely overshadowed the plot of the book for me. the fatphobia is written like someone taking a frying pan to your head. i got to 28% and i can't even begin to count the number of comments about someone's "fat and disgusting" body that were made. and i get it, fatphobia is very real and deserved to be explored, particularly in the 90's era of no-fat, no-cal snackwell's cakes and deifying the heroin chic look of calvin klein models, but i felt like this wasn't representative of the times it was straight up gratuitous and unnecessary.
i also had a weird issue with the sexual nature of this book. the graphic grotesque of body parts for no reason, weird bodily fluid stuff, etc. like. none of these people felt real and the magnification of that just happened through needless description of various body parts. the whole thing just felt edgy. and maybe that's someone's bag, but it's not personally mine.
i am able to say that there was some misgendering (expected, at a conversion camp) and i thought for what i read there was instances of a character being misgendered and within the narrative referring to themselves as the correct pronouns. so i don't think this is a BAD book - i simply didn't get far enough in to formulate an opinion about the plot - but i do think it'll work better for someone that likes much edgier horror than i do.
June 15, 2024
3.5
the first 20 pages (prologue) were probably the best 20 pages of story I’ve read all year
but after that idk I liked it but the story was a bit all over the place and the characters were so vast as in there were prob 15 POVs throughout and they were different but all seemed to have the same motivations/goals………
Idk idk but I enjoyed overall
the first 20 pages (prologue) were probably the best 20 pages of story I’ve read all year
but after that idk I liked it but the story was a bit all over the place and the characters were so vast as in there were prob 15 POVs throughout and they were different but all seemed to have the same motivations/goals………
Idk idk but I enjoyed overall
July 25, 2024
your greatest wish is that one day we will cease to be, and strangers you can love will move in behind our faces.
these words (from jim sinclair’s “don’t mourn for us,” 1993) serve as the epigraph for part I of cuckoo, and you can feel this as the root of inspiration underpinning the book as a whole. not to ~~pit beautiful women against each other~~, but for my money, between this and camp damascus, gretchen felker-martin’s is the stronger horror novel about conversion camps.
fee fi fo fum, don’t do drugs, have sex, or cum.
gfm is a good fucking writer! she’s got a good turn of phrase and a good sense for plot! and she’s good at writing about nightmares, which few writers do well.
BUT. I need to add the caveat that felker-martin’s writing IS NOT FOR EVERYONE. I’ve read a few critical reviews, and a lot of them seem to boil down to “this book was really gross and explicit and scary.” yeah! yes, it is! that’s the kind of book it is! that is what it is trying to do! I am pretty well enured to horror, but the ick-and-nasty factor in this is pretty high; at one point I was trying to read while eating and was like yeah nope I can’t do this. so please know that before going in!! I feel like it would be hard to miss that, but I think somehow there are quite a few people who did.
but while her writing might not be for everyone, it certainly is for me, and how.
if the cardinal of utrecht and the cardinal of bamberg build a summer house in naples, will it help the leper’s stammer?
if the moon is waxing gibbous and the limpid limpets shimmer, who is watching from its zenith as the bursar carves its dinner?
maybe it goes without saying, but felker-martin writes about transness with such...tenderness. not to get too cheesy and throw too many adjectives at it, but this shit is aching and raw.
he wondered when he’d be able to think of himself as a woman, when it would feel anything less than mortifying to think “she” instead of letting the leaden weight of “he” drop from his tongue.
oof, and I really appreciate the way she handles fatness and addresses the ways in which people’s fatphobia influences people, whether fat or not, and the relationships between them.
gfm acknowledges many of her pop culture inspirations and touchstones (invasion of the body snatchers, stephen king, etc.), but I just want to say that this also made me want to reread camp jellyjam lol. other noteworthy pop cultural bits: escaflowne mention!
I hear people’s complaints about the imbalance, lengthwise, between parts I and II, but I was okay with it.
a thing that had seemed like the end of the world until life in its wake kept unfolding with its relentless, monotonous procession of bills and work and dates and oil changes, until years of dodging truant officers and landlords and the dead-eyed drones from california’s child and family services department left it lumped alongside the wars in iraq and afghanistan and the subprime mortgage crisis and the opioid epidemic and penal slavery and every other miserable thing you had to ram into the back of your mind to get out of bed in the morning and push yourself through another day emptying grease traps.
finally: the book hammers home, again and again, the point that it is who are the most vulnerable of us all. and god, does it capture that.
he’d never thought it would wind up here, kids held at gunpoint by grown-ups, a toe on the last line of the unspoken pact between their worlds: if you obey me without question, I won’t kill you.
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