A Promising Seed Choked by Its Own Vines

⭐⭐

I went into Overgrowth by Mira Grant with high hopes. The premise was strong, and the opening chapter had a tight atmosphere and a hint of something bigger beneath the surface. I was genuinely intrigued for a while—it felt like it might evolve into something creepy and original. But sadly, it didn’t. What started with promise quickly unravelled into a repetitive loop of false tension, over-explained concepts, and characters that talked in circles without ever growing or doing much of anything.

One of the biggest let-downs was the cast. We’re told they’re in their mid-thirties—professionals, survivors, thinkers. What we get are characters who bicker, sulk, and make impulsive decisions like a group of hormonal teenagers. Dialogue that should have felt weighty often just felt whiny, like everyone had something to prove and no one quite knew what. It dragged the pace down, and I kept waiting for the grown-ups to enter the story—but they never did.

And speaking of pace, it crawled. The story spent most of its time meandering. It circled the same points repeatedly, teasing the possibility of action or revelation but rarely delivering. When something did finally happen, it either fizzled out immediately or was buried beneath so much introspection and metaphor that it barely registered. I kept reading in the hope of a payoff that never came.

Then there’s the quoting. Every section—and there are a lot—opens with a quote from H.G. Wells. I get the intention: drawing parallels, setting tone, maybe even paying homage. But it’s overkill. Having a quote at the start of every single section quickly becomes tiresome. One or two well-placed nods to War of the Worlds might have been clever. Dozens start to feel like filler. It’s as if the book keeps stopping to remind you what it wants to be, instead of just being it.

It clearly aims to echo War of the Worlds, full of dread, mystery, and slow-burning horror, but instead, it ends up being killed by its own overgrown sense of self-importance. Or maybe just tripped over its own stack of quote cards.

Disappointing, unfortunately. The ingredients were there, but the execution wandered off, got distracted quoting Wells, and never quite made it back.