Publication date:03/07/2023
5/5 Stars
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.