I loved this book! It was on my to-be-read since it came out and I'm glad to have gotten to it. If you want lovable, heroic main characters, you won't find them here. So were the characters lovable? They were human, which is what I like. It feels odd to say that a gothic horror was 'cozy' but it you can get past the taxidermy and murder and the annihilation of self, it is. After all: “Revenge was a grisly business, but there was no reason not to be civil about it.”  

It's fundamentally about four fathers and two daughters above all else. The setting was so vibrant and I could imagine the moments in the book so clearly. This exploration of this greenhouse as something that, initially is a safe place and eventually became a prison. I felt like there we a lot of great concepts hinted at, where re-reading would let me enjoy the story more. It also did a thing that I love, where my favourite and least favourite character flip partway through the book. 

Is is a perfect read? No. I can tell this is a debut novel. Sometimes the characters act to further the plot and it's not clear why they make certain decisions. The flipping between when Gregor and Simon love/fear their creation doesn't really follow a logic I understand. For me, I was able to write these issues off as unreliable narrators, but I get why some didn't find that satisfying. No murder is investigated or even noticed, it seems. The only one that bothered me was when one character at the end (I'll be vague) leaves and comes back changed for off-screen reasons. I didn't love that and didn't need it. 

So, not perfect, but what I wanted and needed. I enjoyed it and I liked exploring this concept. I can't think of another book that I can so vividly see in my mind's eye.