Ooooh this book was absolutely fabulous! I know people are referring to Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and I can definitely see that. Conversion camp set in Utah for queer teens set in the 90s, this book shows the physical and psychological horrors of the camp and the supernatural horror of the area as well. The character development, from the use of multiple POVs is extraordinary. Alos, I love that all of the reader's senses are incorporated into this novel in order to make it a more realistic, horrifying read. I am now a fan of Felker-Martin and will be checking out their other works!!!

Cuckoo had the perfect amount of paranoia of who might human and who is not. I took one star because the first half of the book was confusing as we were introduced to too many characters for me to keep track of. They all end up being important in one way or another the later half of the book but keeping track of the names when they were first introduced was challenging. At the end I found myself emotional and rooting for the main characters, they're all flawed but that's what makes them all so likeable.

A rehabilitation facility from the 1990s harboring an ominous, undisclosed agenda? I am intrigued. Is a cohort of LGBTQ+ adolescents bravely confronting a nefarious malevolence? Naturally, I am fully invested. The evocative sensory details crafted by Felker-Martin are particularly striking. The central antagonist is unsettling, with the sense of smell playing a significant role in conveying the unearthly abnormality of the Cuckoo, in addition to its monstrous form. Gretchen does an amazing job scaring us and opening our eyes to the disgusting nature of these camps to steal children’s identities and force them to be the way “God intended”. This book made me feel for these poor teens and those who struggle with this daily.

Cuckoo evokes a unique blend of tenderness and playfulness, yet also delves into the depths of darkness and twistedness. It can be likened to a fusion of an 80's summer camp horror film and Invasion of the Body Snatchers. While not quite reaching the level of exceptional, it is certainly a noteworthy read. This novel may not be suitable for the faint of heart, but it is essential for those who appreciate unsettling and gory horror. In other words, it is a brilliant work.

Cuckoo is one of those books that makes me wish I had: a) Worked out how to actually build my website that I paid for so I could write a long essay about this book and all its themes and other stuff; or, b) Wish I still wrote really long book reviews that I then had to slice and dice in order to fit them into my social media spaces. In my opinion it’s really that good, that captivating, and that intelligent.

It’s giving me Stephen King’s IT, but make the protagonists all queer in one way or another. It’s giving me “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”, but make it body horror to the extreme. It’s giving me cosmic horror, but putting it in the form of brood parasitism (which is a real behavior of cuckoo birds, leading to the metaphor “cuckoo’s egg”).

Why do I love this book other than it’s a queer conversion camp cosmic horror? It comes down to Felker-Martin’s writing, really. Her writing seems to come at you from all sides, all at once, with no quarter given. It’s a full-on assault to your brain in the best way: brutal, gory, inelegant, raw, terrifying, visceral, sensual, erotic, emotional, romantic, heartbreaking, nauseating, and more. When I was reading this book it sometimes felt like I was on an emotional and reactional ride, being carried away with the words on the page almost without consent (but it’s not like I’d have fought the tide anyway).

This was just a terrific read I know I’m going to be recommending forever.

(Be sure to check your TW/CWs thoroughly before reading if you think you’ll need to.)

I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you.

File Under: 5 Star Review/Cosmic Horror/Horror/LGBTQ Horror/OwnVoices

Have you ever read something absolutely disgusting and terrible, but in all the best ways? That was basically my experience with Cuckoo by Gretchen Felker-Martin. Ultimately what this book is is queer horror in its truest form—that our bodies and identities may be taken from us should we not live up to others’ expectations. And that we are somehow immune or exempt from humanity’s most primal bond, because of who we are and who we love. This isn’t an easy book to read. It is terrifying in its ability to normalize filicide, and that is the point isn’t it?
Felker-Martin includes a quote in this book that pretty much encapsulates the entire premise:
“This is what we hear when you mourn over our existence. This is what we hear when you pray for a cure. This is what we know, when you tell us of your fondest hopes and dreams for us: that your greatest wish is that one day we will cease to be, and strangers you can love will move in behind our faces.”
-Jim Sinclair
I can tell you now, I loved Cuckoo. I loved it for its ugly subject matter, and its grotesque body horror. I loved it for keeping me awake at night, and the way it pulled from classic horror media like Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Stepford Wives (the 1975 version as it’s way scarier), updating those primal fears of replacement with newfound evolutions like imposter syndrome and conversion therapy—the dire hope for you to change and become someone or something entirely different. Not for you, but for those that say they love you. Being honest, reading this book was a bad time, but it was one I found incredibly satisfying. Like throwing up during a hangover, or pressing on a bruise to see if it still hurts as bad as it did the day before. Would I recommend Cuckoo? Absolutely. It should be on every queer horror fan’s tbr.

I found that the synopsis was very intriguing and it made me want to read this book. From the very first chapter I knew that I wouldn't like it. The writing style is just not for me. I think I would have enjoyed the story more if it was written a little differently.

This author is problematic and I'm choosing to abstain from reading and reviewing any of their books. I am still thankful to the publisher and Netgalley for granting me access to this book.

Wow, this book was really intense, disturbing and wonderful! It contains echoes of It and The Thing. I felt a lot of sympathy for the main characters. There is a fair amount of gore so not for the faint of heart. Very well done.

Cuckoo by Gretchen Felker-Martin was a great, disturbing, bloody read. I had to take a few breaks, but I'm so glad I finished it. Not for the squeamish.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC.

Set at a conversion camp, this follows a group of teens desperate to escape and what happens when they discover there’s an actual monster in their midst. Full of extremely graphic body horror and very disturbing subject matter. Lots of obvious parallels to It by Stephen King but make it unapologetically queer. The plot was so interesting but the pacing is off and the whole book was bogged down with an insane amount of descriptions about literally everything. The parts that work really work though.

What a novel!!!

I am a huge fan of Felker-Martin and I was SO excited to read this novel. We follow a few different teenagers at a conversion camp in the desert. Truly horrific events take place, and it's a fast-paced, heart pumping ride.

This genuinely was so scary and I loved every second. Some of the pacing issues I had with Manhunt (though I loved it), were worked out here. Highly recommend!

It is a great age for queer horror, and Gretchen Felker-Martin is up there with Chuck Tingle, Caitlin Starling, Tamsyn Muir, Lee Mandelo, and S.T. Gibson. Body horror and queer experiences are some of my favorite things and this book delivers in spades.

I loved this book. The author pulled no punches when it comes to the characters’ feelings of shame and self-doubt in terms of body image, gender identity/expression, and sexuality. It made me feel so invested to the characters(of which there are many and yes, they are a little hard to keep track of, but I wouldn’t want to lose any). These are not one-dimensional characters. You see their soul and every dark spot on it that they would’ve been mortified to share.

In terms of horror, wow. Gretchen Felker Martin excels at body horror. I read horror while I eat everyday on my lunch break. This has been the only book I haven’t been able to stomach. This book made me deeply uncomfortable in the way that horror should.

I loved Manhunt by love Cuckoo 10x more. Part I’m a Cheerleader and part IT, this book has queer trauma, resilience, body horror, and Lovecraftian horror done right. Cuckoo has brutal, disgusting, and visceral images that will haunt my dreams for years to come. Beautiful character development and prose abound, this is now in my top 10 reads of 2024.

For queer people, normal can be its own kind of violence, the pressure to fit in, to hide or change, to become something that goes against every fiber of your being. In Gretchen Felker-Martin’s Cuckoo, that pressure takes on monstrous, oozing forms within the confines of Camp Resolution, a queer conversion therapy youth camp. Like the being that gives the novel its title, Cuckoo is an amalgamation of parts absorbed into the whole. This novel pulls deep from the well of alien and cosmic horror, splashing familiar colors onto the bloody canvas to make something original. I absolutely loved Gretchen Felker-Martin’s 2022 novel Manhunt and was thrilled to get the arc for her upcoming novel Cuckoo in exchange for an honest review.


At its heart, Cuckoo is about the system of violence queer people are subjected to every day and the resilience of queer love in spite of it all. After a lengthy, viscerally memorable, and terrifying prologue, Cuckoo introduces us to Shelby, a Korean-American teen living as a runaway in New York City after her adoptive lesbian parents refused to accept her gender identity. Even though she’s just a kid, she’s living with an abusive adult boyfriend. The relationship comes to a close as Shelby comes home to find strange men hired by her mothers to track her down and violently take her away to Camp Resolution. The men encourage Shelby’s boyfriend to seek help for being gay and tellingly murmur they won’t press charges over the fact he’s sexually involved with a child.


From there, the novel jumps to Nadine, a teenage lesbian who got caught with a girl by her folks. Now, she’s being subjected to the same legal kidnapping by Camp Resolution’s goons. Her family watches with indifference as she fights them tooth and nail, dealing vicious wounds against her attackers before she’s finally subdued. Nadine might get her ass kicked a lot, but she’s almost pathologically incapable of surrender. Her fighting spirit is the wind that carries us through this novel and is the heart of our core group of characters. As she becomes the de facto leader of a small group of rebels, they all come to love her and look up to her. For the kids, Nadine is almost like an adult. It’s only when she’s nearly defeated that they remind themselves, and the reader, they’re all just kids. The banal cruelty and indifference of the world at large towards LGBTQIA+ suffering is a bigger monster than any alien in a basement.


The novel provides a wide diversity of voices for POV characters and explores them with intersectionality. Identities aren’t static in Cuckoo as the characters, having found chosen family, explore and learn about themselves. As the camp subjects these children to forced labor and varying other forms of violence and torture, we start getting flashbacks of each of these children’s lives. We see the abuse that brought them here, that’s now being outsourced to the camp. These kids may long for home, but the novel makes it heartbreakingly clear that home doesn’t long for them. Home wants someone else. Someone imagined.


All of the kids are getting headaches and having strange dreams. Further, there’s something wrong with the camp counselors and upperclassmen, and it becomes apparent that the kids who leave are not the same people who entered. As the brutality begins to take a toll, the kids know they need help or escape, but they don’t know where they are, only that they’re in the desert and that if they leave, they might succumb to the elements or be shot.


Reading Felker-Martin is a master class in imbuing text with physicality. Every unspoken smell, taste, sight, or sound associated with being and knowing human bodies comes to life in explicit detail. One of my writing idols once advised that we need to see more bodies on the page; in Gretchen Felker Martin’s novels, bodies fill every page. Where Cuckoo makes the most use of these corporeal details, is in the descriptions of its titular alien monstrosity. I’d recommend reading about this creature with a barf bag in hand. The Cuckoo is part Pennywise (from the novel IT, not the films), part John Carpenter’s The Thing, part Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I wonder if it also shares some DNA with the oozing mass of corruption in Brian Yuzna’s Society. The point is, this beast was created to gross you out, big time.


Felker-Martin’s text calls out gays who treat their trans siblings the same way conservative Christians would treat them. Shelby’s mother, Ruth, a former victim of a conservative Christian family, doesn’t behave all that differently than some of the other mothers we encounter in this novel. The Camp Counselors and upperclassmen, while many are assimilated, aren’t completely divorced nor ever “cured” of their queerness. They go on harming their siblings in service of a collective alien mind, which seems like a decent allegory. The Cuckoo uses authority figures to do its bidding, hiding its vulnerability and weakness, much like patriarchal, heteronormative society.


Cuckoo, in many ways, is a story about trauma and how it shapes a person. Without spoiling too much, the impacts of what they’ve gone through are made abundantly clear in the latter portion of the novel. The kids grow from hurt and hurt people hurt people. The heroes are no exception, but what allows them to overcome is their mutual support, love, and unwillingness to allow another child to experience their collective nightmare. Cuckoo delivers a satisfying ending, but one that reminds you, for the LGBTQIA+, happy endings still come in a world that is full of cruelty and unease. The nightmares never cease. It shouldn’t be this way.


Cuckoo hits shelves June 11. Preorder it from your local independently owned bookshop. I’ll link a few of my favorite St. Louis stores below.

Cuckoo is raw, visceral body horror at its most nauseating. It is sharply written with a high-octane plot. Unfortunately for me, body horror is not my thing, and although I admire Cuckoo's well-crafted characters and clever prose (and love its unapologetic queerness), it was hard for me to get through. That being said, if you are a fan of gore, grit, and grime, this form of horror will be perfect for you. Highly recommended to fans of body horror à la Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Thank you to NetGalley and Tor Nightfire for the digital ARC!

I was super intrigued by the prologue but was bored of all the conversion camp stuff about fifty pages in. I had trouble with the amount of POV characters, and all the sexual content seemed unnecessarily long-winded and trite. I ultimately didn't finish this one.

I went into Cuckoo blind. I had no idea what I was getting myself into, and this was my first read by this author, so I really had no clue what I was about to go through. And holy cow, I was not prepared.

Right out the gate, this novel gets real and brutal, no holds barred. Then it becomes heartbreaking. My soul ached for every child shipped off to Camp Resolution by parents who only care that they come back "normal". The pain and misery and loathing pours from the pages in word after agonizing word.

And then it changes into something else, something similar but bigger - more cosmic, more monstrous. Suddenly the kids are fighting for their lives and becoming a ragtag little family. I loved what felt like a subtle nod to Stephen Kings "It", with the second half of the book set in the future, the now-adults returning to confront the monster from their past.

Cuckoo is a soaring, wondrous queer coming of age story that will leave you feeling empty but also full, sad but also happy, broken but also triumphant. This is a book that made me FEEL, made me want to weep and scream and also kind of throw up sometimes. And I loved it.

Please check content warnings for this one, as it includes a wide range of both sensitive and graphic horror.

Cuckoo is a love letter to queer resistance.

Felker-Martin explores so many diverse, distinct, and developed characters while maintaining an easy-to-follow central narrative. I especially loved the unflinching examination of gender dysphoria and body dysmorphia as these kids battle both internal and external demons.

There is so much packed into these pages that I thought the book was longer than it actually is...in a good way. I found the details immersive and delighted when they pay off.

I'm grateful to Tor Nightfire for the chance to check this ARC out for free. I'm leaving this review of my own accord.

A group of teenagers are sent to a conversion camp in the Utah desert by their parents in the mid-nineties. These kids are subjected to harsh and abusive methods by religious camp leaders with the intent of eradicating their true sexual identities. The teens sense a mysterious presence in the nearby mountains that invades their dreams, hinting at a dark transformation awaiting those who try to escape the camp.

Even though you don't quite get the description of the monster chasing them, what you do "see" is horrible and grotesque, which I was here for. I did enjoy the idea of it whispering under the floorboards; it was creepy! You could feel the panic and desperation of the characters. It was as if something was always there, with glowing eyes and teeth watching everything. The horror scenes were superb and terrifying.

The author captured the camp's oppressive atmosphere and the desert's desolation. The writing explores horror that affects all your senses, whether you want it or not. Emotional descriptions of the abuse the characters endured were heartbreaking, which shed light on the emotional trauma of not being safe to be who you are. 

Considering the number of characters, I had trouble with all the shifting POVs. I felt lost and had a hard time keeping up. I also thought that the explicit sexual encounters took away from the story and were in weird places in the storyline.

The suspenseful moments will keep the readers engaged. This novel is for anyone interested in LGBTQ+ issues, horror, and mystery thrillers.

I received an ARC copy from Netgalley and Tor Publishing Group in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for the opportunity.