This was the strangest, weirdest, loveliest story I have read in some time. A perfect example of how grief effects everyone different and how we deal with that grief is our own. To some it may not be "normal" or usual, but who can say how we react when we lose someone who was our whole world. This book was brilliant. I very rarely give 5 stars....Those that get 5 while stars are special.

This bicultural tale from Mexico was haunting and vulnerable. Full of grief, family, and metamorphosis, Monstrilio is a must-read.

"Her son was alive and now he isn’t. No thunder, no angels weeping, no cloaked Death, no grace; just his silent body, unbreathing,
and the blunt realization that this is it.

Magos is grieving the death of her son Santiago. Born with a lung defect, Santiago was not expected to live beyond his first day. At the age of eleven he has finally passed. Overcome with grief, Magos cuts open Santiago's body and takes a small piece of his malformed lung. Three months later, realizing she cannot follow her withering husband around like a phantom, Magos leaves her upstate New York home and goes back to her childhood home in Mexico City to stay with her mother. When her mother's housekeeper Jackie finds the piece of Santiago's lung in Magos' suitcase she tells the story of her great-grandmother's cousin who stole a heart from a dead girl in her town and fed it until the heart grew into a man. Magos feeds the piece of lung that night thinking the worst that could happen is that it would rot and then she would be forced to dispose of it. But as it grows, the worst that could happen is beyond anything she could ever have imagined.

Told from the perspectives of Magos, her friend Lena, her husband Joseph and M. The opening chapter is so gut renching. The grief practically weeps off the pages like our protagonist hanging on to her son's death bed. I loved each section of the book being told from a different person's pov and getting to see how one person's grief effects so many people. This was a unique story and was much more tender than I expected. Obviously there were great horror elements as well but really the progression through grief is what made this one so interesting to me.

If you like folk horror, misunderstood monsters, or family dramas then this one's for you.

A grieving mother, Magos, is moved to keep a piece of her son’s dead body. She later hears a folktale of a woman who fed a piece of a dead relative, which then grew to become a man.
Magos aches for her son, and hopes that in feeding the piece of flesh, he will return to her.

A fascinating tale that takes you from Mexico to Berlin. It's so nice to read about other cities.

*** Thank you to NetGalley and ZandoProjects for an advanced copy of Monstrilo in exchange for an honest review. ***

Monstrilio is a moving and deeply empathetic story about grief. The book is split into four separate sections, each told from a different character's perspective including a (section 1) mother and father (section 3) and the embodiment of their grief (section 4). Even though the story is largely about the death of the couple's son, it spans several years afterward and covers a lot of different themes including the many different types of love and friendship, the stages of grief, recovering from loss, parenthood (& esp. motherhood), acceptance, and is at times a coming of age story at well. Monstilio was unlike anything I've read before. I read across two sittings but found at times I had to take a quick break because some of the narrative's events were mildly disturbing, although not to an excessive degree, and were, without a doubt, essential to the story. It had some inklings of Guillermo del Toro at times, and I would recommend it to fans of his work. This was an impressive debut - excited to follow along with this author throughout their career!

The beauty of the writing drew me in, but the understanding of grief, and the different forms it can take was masterful.
If someone is seeking traditional horror, this probably isn't what you're looking for. The book certainly has gore, but it's a very emotive and deeply layered work, no quick scares to be had here.

How can we come to love a monster?
What does it cost for a being to deny their very essence, is a monster ever just a monster? This book makes me think about many topics surrounding otherness, grief, masking, etc. I love a book that makes me think, but this one also made me feel deeply, examining elements of my own life with a child who's had a plethora of health issues, and yet it was not without humor (and body horror).

I really enjoyed seeing the story unfold through the eyes of those who loved Monstrilio, the layers of symbolism and metaphor will stay with me, and likely continue to develop long after the book is closed.  This stands out as my favorite read of 2022, out of more than 100 books. I would have read it in a sitting if life hadn't kept interrupting. Looking forward to more from the author, I'll be eagerly waiting for more! Thank you Netgalley and @Zando publishing for allowing me early access.

Monstrilio is an incredible story about grief, family, friends, and the lengths we go to for the people (and sometimes monsters) we love.

When Santiago dies at a young age due to a congenital medical condition, his parents cope in different ways. Magos, his mother, cannot live without him, and so tries to find a way to bring him back. But as many seasoned horror fans will know, bringing someone or something back from the dead always comes with consequences...
I was initially attracted to this book by the amazing cover, and after reading the synopsis, I was hooked.
The story is told from various viewpoints, traverses multiple cities and spans a number of years. It also explores religion, sexuality and culture, and while I find that incorporating so many big topics (let alone from different perspectives) can lead to none of them being given the time they require or deserve, Gerardo Sámano Córdova has done an incredible job of weaving all of these things together into one cohesive narrative.

This is one of the best debut novels, nay novels, that I have ever read.

It is a beautiful, horrific and poignant study of grief, how we manage it and how it changes us. It is about a parent's love for their child, and perhaps being the mother of a child with a rare and chronic medical condition, at times I felt Magos and Jospeh's pain so viscerally it made my heart physically hurt. However, the story is dispersed with moments of dark humour and sweet interactions, which provide relief from some of the more tragic and horrific elements.

Speaking of horrific, while I am not a person who is easily made queasy, I was eating while reading at one point, and I had to stop reading until I had finished my lunch.

Ultimately, Monstrilio is a book about hope, and moving forward even when you feel like you can't possibly go on. I absolutely loved it and will look forward to reading anything from this author in the future.

Thank you to Zando and NetGalley for the ARC in return for my honest review.

[Blurb goes here]

The Mexican author Gerardo Sámano Córdova, writes a truly unique tale.

Magos and Joseph' son just died. Santiago, an imaginative and wonderful boy, was eleven years old. Born with only one underdeveloped lung, his dead was not a question of how, but when. While Joseph grieves, Magos seems to feel nothing, she just want to keep a part of his child for herself. To her husband's horror, she opens up the body, and cuts a small piece of his son's lung. This is too much for Joseph to handle. Magos discovers that she feels little empathy for the man's suffering, so she decides to go back to her mother's home in Mexico City, carrying the little lump in a small jar.

When in Mexico, the woman who helps her mother with the upkeep of the house finds the jar, and tells Magos a story about a woman who stole the heart of a young dead girl, and feeds it. Soon after, the heart turns into a beautiful man, one who marries the woman...unfortunately, things don't end well for the couple.

This seemingly innocent story, borrows into Magos' brain. What would happen if she feeds the remaining part from Santiago? Would he come back to her? Would it turn into her son, or into something else?

The story is written in first person view, giving a singular voice to each of the characters' narration of events. Not a regular voice, mind you, but one filled with heart and soul. It would seem, at first, that this is a tale about a monster trying to become a man, wrestling his nature, his need to feed on other humans. While this is an important part of the story, it is by no means the core of it.

Gerardo Samano Córdova writes a truly original, and compelling tale. I can't praise this book as much as it deserves to be praised. Read it in one night. It was impossible for me to put it down. There are a few grammar mistakes, here and there, all forgotten and forgiven due to the powerful story, not that of a monster, but in truth, one about loss, grief, family, friends, love...and forgiveness.

Looking for your next great read? Look no further. Monstrilio has more heart in it, than anything I've read as of late.

Thank you for the advanced copy!

First, I just want to thank NetGalley.com and ZandoProjects.com for sending me the advanced reader copy of Monstrilio and airing me the opportunity to review this incredible novel.

Without giving to much way, or repeating the blurb you can find anyone you search the title up, I will say this book is about a mother and father who lose their young preteen child. The mother cuts a piece of the child body off and keeps it in a jar in a kind of ritual attempt to keep a part of him close. Upon hearing a folk story about apiece of someone being grown into a new person, she begins to experiment and sets off a wild, horrifying, incredibly sad, and at times monstrously humorous chain of events. TW: cannibalism(kinda) and some minor domestic wise.

I enjoyed this book so much. It is listed as literally horror, and it fits securely within that genre, but I think emotional family drama is more fitting. Horror is not the point, and it's really not much of the story. The emotions of the characters are at the forefront of the tale. How we hold on to those we love. How we project our losses on each other. The ways we see parts of our lost ones inside others, and how we cling to these sometimes hallucinatory projections. And ultimately, how these losses change us for better or worse and change our relationships with those around us.

The characters feel so real and their emotions, at times, became indistinguishable from my own. They meet head on the traumatic lot they've been dealt, and try to face these events with love, patience, humility, and humor, but often fail. The monster in this story has his own voice and this was some of my favorite part of the prose, told incrementally from 4 different narrator's points of view(Mother, Mother's best friend, Father, and Monstrilio himself.

The narrative was captivating, even exhilarating. I read the entire book in 2 sessions over 24 hours. I couldn't stop reading and almost called off work just to finish the last 50 pages or so. I can't wait until it is released because it is absolutely going to be a hit.

The stylistic choice I mentioned above, telling the story from different narrator's point of view ,was such an interesting and complimentary facet of the tale. Everyone, even Monstrilio himself, deals with their grief, confusion, loss, and general breakdowns of their life while also trying to make sense of each other's pain simultaneously...because they love each other. It's perfectly metaphorical in that way.

All of that said, Monstrilio comes out March 7, 2023 and I hope you go out and get a copy immediately because it is so good.

Conceptually I was reminded of Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi but the emotional range, and the lyricism, and the political ambition of Saadawi's novel feels more successful, to my way of reading. I tend to read at a technical level especially when something is bothering me about the storytelling and it felt to me as I read along that the first-person, present tense used in Monstrilio limits the emotional range available to the author. Saadawi's novel is written in third person, past tense, a choice that allows the narrative voice to become hard and real when that's what the story needs, and at other times to soar lyrically. In contrast, Monstrilio reads almost like a screenplay. I'm sure many readers will prefer this direct style but the choice leaves me less than satisfied where I never quite felt the grief or the horror the way I wanted to.

What starts out as a strange little concept of a mother cutting out a piece of her dead child’s lung to reanimate him, turns into a profound, tender exploration of the complexities of grief, parenthood, love, acceptance and knowing when to let go.

I was hooked right from the start and really loved the way the story is told from multiple points of view, allowing us to get a full portrait of Monstrilio’s family, their feelings and motives. Perhaps most heart wrenching is his mother who is willing to do whatever it takes to bring her ‘son’ back, even if that means harming others.

Overall I really enjoyed this book and will definitely be recommending to others! 3.5 stars ⭐️

Strong horror blurs the line between human and inhuman; Monstrilio does this figuratively through his violence and his strong familial and interpersonal bonds, and then literally--to terrifying effect--with his biological indecision. The novel tricks you into settling into a slower, psychological dread, but returns with vivre for bouts of terror. Each character, grieving parents and entranced onlookers, feel fleshed (no pun intended) in their own ways, and as the trauma and continuing embodiment of grief and hunger escape the geographical bounds of each dwelling, each city, their shared humanity reacts to the strain imposed upon them.

3.5 stars

This is such a strange and unique book. I’m not sure yet how I feel about it. The writing and concept are great and I suppose the fact that I have to stew on it for a bit, speaks volumes. It’s unsettling and sad. It is 100% worth the read though.

I know that we still have a few months to go in 2022 and that Monstrilio doesn't actually publish until next year, but I'm calling it my favorite read of 2022. It tells the story of a grieving mother, who cuts out a piece of her deceased son's lung and then attempts to raise it. It seems like an odd concept, but it is a beautiful story of grief and how far we will go to preserve our loved ones.

The characters we meet along the way all come with their own baggage, but they are all connected by not only the death of the child but also his "resurrection"; even though most of them realize he wasn't actually reborn from the piece of lung. The mother, Margos, finds herself so enshrouded in grief that not even for a second she thinks about the dangers she could unleash on the world by bringing a piece of her son back to life. No amount of reasoning from relatives can stop her, and I can sympathize with this way of thinking. A parent's love is unlike any other.

Monstrilio had me hooked from the first sentence to the last. A must-read for 2023. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for letting me read it early.