I'm always a little leery of approaching books by this author - because I know they'll hit me like a 2x4 to the face! And indeed, this title was no exception.

Horror readers are just gluttons for punishment, I guess ;)

Another powerful social commentary here, as well as an excellent horror/slasher. I'm inevitably reminded of Chuck Tingle's 'Camp Damascus' because of the strong religious/gender themes, but this is a very different approach to a similar story. Neither pulls its punches, and I'm very glad of that, because the anger behind the writing is an important aspect of Gretchen Felker-Martin's work. I can't imagine her work being in any way 'neutered' by attempting to be 'nice'.

This is fierce, unapologetic, difficult to read at times, and absolutely gripping. I do hope it becomes a movie and circulates wildly (as her previous book did), because we need more of this. Written on the eve of the latest American election, with every finger I have (as a non-American) crossed.

Thank you Titan Books, Netgalley and Gretchen Felker-Martin for the eArc of Cockoo.

My first read by Gretchen and I'll be going back to read Manhunt as soon as I'm able! I really enjoyed this queer horror and the premise of the book. We follow a group of queer teens who have been unwillingly sent to a working "conversion " camp. Parents who have willingly sent their teens are hoping and preying that they will return straight. It becomes very apparent that something isn't quite right at this camp when one of the leaders are seen scurrying around in the undergrowth looking very odd indeed!

This was a quick read that kept me engaged, not only with the detailed gore but the rollercoaster of emotions of what's happening in the camp itself. There is a message in this book, whether you choose to pick up on it will depend on how deep you like to read into things. With the conversion camp itself, it made me feel so many emotions, angry, sad, mad, dismayed, I feel Gretchen has taken something that does /can happen and brought the terror of such camps and slaps you in the face with it!

It's been mentioned about the body snatcher horror elements of this book which has been done really well, the combination of this and what the cuckoo bird species do works really well. The graphic gore makes for some great body horror.

4.25 stars for Storygraph. 4 stars for Amazon, Netgalley and Goodreads

Like Stephen kings it but queer and so gory! It was very fun to read but I struggled to keep track of who everyone was.

I liked the premise of this book and it was trying to give Fear Street vibes, but I really struggled to connect with the writing style. Perhaps it's more aimed at young adults?

Not a bad read, but also not the best.

In the summer of 1995, seven queer kids are abandoned by their parents at the remote and sinister Camp Resolution, a conversion camp in the desert. There, they encounter a malevolent force that wants their bodies and wears their skin. Though they survive, the experience leaves them scarred and changed forever.

Sixteen years later, the survivors, still haunted and broken, must reunite to confront the horror they once faced. The fate of the world depends on their ability to end the evil lurking in the desert before it's too late.

Cuckoo is a chilling horror novel about survival, trauma, and the enduring bonds formed in the face of unimaginable terror.

'Cuckoo' is a stirring piece of fiction that is as unrelenting as it is gruesome. Gretchen Felker-Martin has never been one to pull her punches and this novel offers haymaker after bloody haymaker. Felker-Martin peels back the curtain and reveals the grim reality for so many queer teens out there today. When your family not only don't support who you are as a human being, but actively oppose it, then who is left to support you? 'Cuckoo' presents an all too familiar world where to hold an identity that deviates from the social norm can be a death sentence, or worse.

Stories like this need to exist. Stories so angry and so visceral in their rejection of injustice that page after page feels like gut punch upon gut punch.

You’re forcibly removed from your home by strangers, shoved in the back of a van and driven into the desert. Your destination? Camp Resolution. Welcome to conversion therapy.

The people who signed you up for this horror show? Your family. This is what nightmares are made of.

“There’s something wrong with her.”

I was really looking forward to this read but unfortunately it ended up not being the book for me. While I loved the body horror, I wasn’t a fan of the sex scenes.

This isn’t something that generally happens for me but I got to the stage where I wasn’t always sure which character was which. The initial introductions made me think I was going to connect with at least a few of the teens but there were so many points of view and they switched so frequently that I ended up losing the thread of who was who and what their backstory was.

I usually try to avoid comparing books but one of the reasons I was so keen to read this book was because of how much I loved Chuck Tingle's Camp Damascus. This inadvertently led to unrealistic expectations and disappointment because I set the bar too high.

Reading other reviews, it seems like views are divided. Some absolutely adore this book. Others seemed to struggle even more than I did. I’d encourage you to read some of the five star reviews so you have a better idea of whether this is the book for you.

“Has anyone else been having nightmares?”

Content warnings include child abuse, deadnaming, death by suicide, domestic and family violence, homophobia, racism, mention of self harm, sexual assault and transphobia.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Titan Books for the opportunity to read this book.

When it comes to media I don’t tend to have a lot of triggers beyond a few but I do have to say that Cuckoo did push me a bit. There is a lot of illusions and references to sexual assault (SA) and particularly to younger characters. I understand that this is part of the trauma, that it shows what some suffer and also shows the plight of LGBTQAI+ but at times it did get a little much. Being from the UK our age of consent is sixteen but I know this is set in America and as such again I felt that perhaps some would find the relationships the teens have a little too much.

That said despite the SA I think everything does work. The author manages to combine everything to effectively show the trauma that teenagers, particularly of the LGBTQAI+ community face. Here that trauma is almost given a monstrous face and entity. An entity that partly reminded me of the more parasitic side of games like Resident Evil.

I really enjoyed the wide range of characters and the why they were allowed to be messy and almost unapologetically themselves despite initially being punished for it. If readers enjoy books like IT (that the author sites as inspiration) they are sure to enjoy this one.


As always thank you to Titan Books for the copy to review. My review is honest and truthful.

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.

Not a one I loved unfortunately which I'm upset about. I was really looking forward to it!

I think that it was just to much blocky text and not enough dialogue. I really struggle with little conversation in a book.

A fab premise, don't get me wrong, but just not for me.

Cuckoo is a superb second novel from Felker-Martin - the same sense of brutality in Manhunt now feels more controlled and paired with this fantastic concept set at a conversion camp (equally brutal in its own clinical way). Recommended as part of my queer horror for pride month list on TikTok!

The more I turn this over in my head the better I think it is. I was soooo glad to not be one of the people who visualises when they read because the descriptions of the monster were vile (positive). Thinking about how the horror of conversion therapy IS that the true self is replaced with someone else that isn’t you.

During the second COVID semester, we had this assignment where we had to talk about our feelings during the pandemic and how the literature in the class we were taking related to that (300 level class too absolutely ridiculous scenes) anyways everyone else wrote about how sad and stressed they were and I wrote about being absolutely livid and ticked off at the government. And as I’m typing this, I’m thinking about how I’m still angry, at all the ways that people in power fail marginalised people. My politics are built out of compassion, but there’s also a frustration at the absolute state of the world, at complicity and stagnance and how the few people with the ability to change lives that we literally pay to represent us refuse to prioritise humanity. That’s the kind of anger that Felker-Martin writes with. This is a love letter to queer community punctuated with a furiousness towards the fact that it has to be said. Boiling in the desert out with the campers is a rage that refuses to be silenced. Thought provoking and powerful.

I did think seven POVs was ambitious - Felker-Martin definitely saw criticisms of Manhunt jumping too quickly from one character to another and went fuck off I’m doing what I want. And I think here it actually works quite well. There’s such a well-balanced range of teens, struggling with gender and fatphobia in addition to sexuality, and how all three of these things mesh so beautifully.

The only complaint I have is the graphic sex between teenagers. I understand theoretically teens do in fact have sex more often than not however it does make me feel like a voyeur and a creep to read about it in such detail, but maybe that's a me thing.

Thank you to NetGalley for an advance reader copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!
4.25 stars (maybe 4.5, like I said, it keeps ping ponging around in my brain!)
Note for the publisher - this review has been posted on GoodReads and Storygraph, and will be published on Instagram in a few days.

I wanted to be impressed by this but it just really fell short. I felt the same about Gretchen's last book so maybe she's just not an author for me!

Cuckoo is a wet and gory exploration of being a queer youth, set in an American conversion camp, with meaty doppelgängers abound.

The characters are tenderly imagined, and it's a joy to see LGBT characters allowed the space to be messy.

This is a 3.5 rounded up, however. While there's lots to enjoy, there's long passages of interiority that can sometimes feel repetitive. I also think a lot of the pop cultural references are implemented awkwardly. I won't spoil, but I also found the ending weirdly rushed with a lot of cheesy Action Movie scenes.

Would overall recommend though.

This is how scary I want a horror book to be!

Felker-Martin cites IT by Stephen King as one of the scariest books they’ve ever read and there are a lot of similarities (or maybe they’re homages?) to IT but it’s hard to talk about them without ruining both books!

What I will say is this is horror for me. I felt afraid when I read this which doesn’t happen often. This is the first book I’ve read by Felker-Martin and what a book it is.

Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC

I really enjoyed Cuckoo!
It was a great horror read about seven queer kids in 1995 forced to go to a remote conversion camp who end up face to face with evil and survive. Sixteen years later, they must return to put an end to it.

This is the second book I've read that is a conversion camp horror, and I'm really loving it! I'll definitely be reading more as I really think it's a great setting for horror.
There were many characters to follow in the book, and it could be difficult at times to know who was who, but after a while, it did get easier.
There were also a lot of gory scenes and body horror throughout the book, so I recommend looking into trigger warnings before reading.

I definitely recommend this book especially if you are a big fan of horror!
Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for a review.

A grisly, uncomfortable, and compelling horror about the worst kind of conversion camp (yes, somehow there's a worst kind), Cuckoo pits a group of queer 90s teems against the unsettling horror in the camp's isolated wilderness, before dropping into the 2010s with the survivors who must finish the job.

Multifaceted, dark, and very queer, the blend of intense body horror and queer pain won't be to everyone's liking, but Cuckoo is page-turningly good with a group of characters you'll hope make it out alive.

Conversion Camp horror is all the rage right now; well, there's Camp Damascus and Cuckoo, but that's a lot for a niche subject. The paths split here. Cuckoo is unhinged in all the ways a body horror can be, it's gory and gross, and it has trigger warnings out of the wazoo. There's a lot of heart here, and for the most part it does. a good job of capturing the spirit of 90s American teen angst whilst also making the incredibly large cast of characters largely charming.

You are invested in the outcome, but there's oftentimes a little too much going on. This would make for an exceptional film script, but on the page, it loses a little of the punch. It also could have benefitted from being slightly longer, another 50 or so pages would have allowed the space these characters needed to really come into their own.

Ultimately, I'm not sure who this book is for; for queer people, trauma is something that is often a given - the act of opening yourself to the world is often met with some form of violence and/or rejection - do we want to rip open those wounds? And are CIS people likely to pick up something like this once they're met with the synopsis.

If you take 'Hell Followed With Us' and ramp the intensity and grotesqueness up to max, you get Cuckoo.

Set in the 90s at a conversion therapy camp for LGBTQIA+ teens, Cuckoo follows a central cast of kids trying to survive not only the cruel counsellers and administration, but whatever is lurking in the desert and hunting them.

Much like Tananarive Due's 'The Reformatory', 'Cuckoo' roots itself firmly in real-world horrors where both the human and inhuman are monsters, and the marginalised and vulnerable find themselves at the mercy of carnivorous and systemic abuse. While the 'troubled teen industry' is somehow still legal in the US, with its parent-sanctioned kidnapping and abuses, and despite conversion therapy specifically being labelled as a form of torture, many survivors are speaking out about the mistreatments faced by children in these programmes: horror is inherently a genre with something to say about the societies we live in, and Cuckoo is especially pertinent in a world where these abuses are still taking place.

Lots of the marketing for this book links it to 'Bodysnatchers', and this is a really overt comparison, but there's also a healthy dose of Lovecraftian horror in here, like the sort you'd find in 'From the Mountains of Madness' or 'The Colour Out of Space': the notion that there are monsters out there from the depths of space which are at the top of the food-chain, and dominate humanity in both strength and intellect. Sometimes the novel delves into Lovecraft-esque purple prose, but this is manageable for any horror reader who's handled the ol' HP before. The horror aspects also lends itself very much to grotesque body horror, with parasitic and insect-esque monstrosities dominating the speculative twists, along with plentiful uses of bodily fluids - I can wholeheartedly say this book is not for the squeamish.

Despite the fact that I'm a little iffy in my opinions on prologues, the prologue here was probably my favourite part of the whole book, and honestly functions as a really creepy short story in and of itself. It's also a really nice take on hierarchy and misogyny in fundamentalist religious households, and the tenuous role that the mother takes in an inherently patriarchal world.

Something important to regard about Cuckoo is that it has a very large central cast: the narrative alternates between seven POV characters, and as such, it can sometimes be difficult to get a grip on a character before the perspective switches again, with some characters having more of an impact on the narrative than others. However, this works to a certain extent by showing characters at different stages of transitions (some characters are already trans, whereas others come to the realisation throughout), and by presenting a sense of intersectionality through the wider cast: for instance, Shelby as a Korean-American trans woman and Jo as a Japanese-American lesbian. A particularly interesting take was with Shelby's lesbian parents, whose disgust at her being trans echoes lots of current TERF rhetoric: this was something I would have loved the narrative to delve in a little deeper to.

There were some aspects which I thought dragged down parts of the narrative, but which weren't massive enough issues to make it a bad book. Firstly, there's a weird body-shamey rhetoric to some of the character descriptions, and while I understand the way that the first part of the book is set in the 90s (Gabe in particular demonstrates the 'heroin-chic' body standards of the time with an eating disorder), it become egregious when it's a character's defining trait. John gets almost no description aside from being fat - doubly so since he doesn't have the cultural background of characters like Jo and Shelby - and even after the time-skip, entire descriptions of him are as 'the fat man', which really dissolves suspension of belief after the first few uses. The way that the narrative repeatedly makes vaginas and menstruation repulsive was also something that rubbed me the wrong way, especially in the description of the Cuckoo itself: there's enough of a historical stigma around it, and though I understand how a vagina dentata has its place in horror, I just thought that in a book where there's no phallic equivalent, it's a little much to make your monster disgusting by comparing it to vaginal cavities and discharge.

Overally, Cuckoo was a compelling if not thoroughly disgusting novel, and in the vein of good horror, one with something to say. The use of the parasitic monsters taking over people and crawling on all fours, and tentacles bursting from heads, also reminded me of Marguerite Baker from Resident Evil 7 and the Las Plagas from Resident Evil 4, which is always a win in my books.

Jesus. I love horror. I can do gore. But the horrific SA in this book was way too far for me. Needs a giant warning on the front cover - and I'm not usually one for warnings. For the first time ever I physically retched when reading.