Review: 'Graveyard of Lost Children' by Katrina Monroe

Motherhood is difficult no matter what. But having the kind of family background Olivia deals with surely doesn't make it easier. Gazing at her own child, she can't help but wonder what brought her own mother to do the things she did. And what if she is the same? What if her child is not, actually, her child? Graveyard of Lost Children is a fascinating and thrilling read which dives deep into thorny motherhood. Thanks to Poisoned Pen Press and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Pub. Date: 05/09/2023
Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press

ONCE SHE HAS HER GRIP ON YOU, SHE'LL NEVER LET YOU GO.

At four months old, Olivia Dahl was almost murdered. Driven by haunting visions, her mother became obsessed with the idea that Olivia was a changeling, and that the only way to get her real baby back was to make a trade with the "dead women" living at the bottom of the well. Now Olivia is ready to give birth to a daughter of her own...and for the first time, she hears the women whispering.

Everyone tells Olivia she should be happy. She should be glowing, but the birth of her daughter only fills Olivia with dread. As Olivia's body starts giving out, slowly deteriorating as the baby eats and eats and eats, she begins to fear that the baby isn't her daughter at all and, despite her best efforts, history is repeating itself.

Soon images of a black-haired woman plague Olivia's nightmares, drawing her back to the well that almost claimed her life—tying mother and daughter together in a desperate cycle of fear and violence that must be broken if Olivia has any hope of saving her child...or herself.

I'm about to hit 30 and as such, motherhood has been on my mind in an interesting way. I'm far from having children, in the sense that I don't have a partner or a plan to stay where I am now for more than a few years. I also don't know if I want children. But as a woman, or for me as a woman, it is nonetheless something that's on my mind. How would I feel, as a mother? Would I still be me or would I become someone new, something different? What parts of me would I recognise in a child of my own? What family legacy would I pass on? What trauma? Would I be strong enough to raise a child, despite the anxiety that already runs through my everyday life? I don't think these are weird questions and I also don't think these questions have "correct" answers. I think parenthood is an insane, intense experience that is a major turning point in a life, no matter where you are in your life the moment it takes place. Since these thoughts are on my mind, however, I am finding myself more and more drawn to novels that explore motherhood, specifically the less-shiny, less-Instagramable aspects of it. The Harpy by Megan Hunter and Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder were two of those books. Graveyard of Lost Children is another, which allowed me to engage with these questions while also giving me a strong dose of thrills and suspense.

Olivia has just given birth to her daughter Flora and she and her wife, Kris, are delighted. But Olivia is also exhausted and on the edge of something. Is she doing this right? Is she failing at being a mother? Why are so many aspects of motherhood so painful to her? Olivia hardly had a great role-model, as her own mother, Shannon, almost killed her due to her belief Olivia had been swapped by a black-haired woman down a well. So Olivia struggles on, and on, until the struggles seem to overwhelm her and there only seems to be one person who might understand what has gone wrong with her. Or rather, what has gone wrong with her daughter. Graveyard of Lost Children switches between Olivia's story and that of her mother, Shannon. While Olivia's is told by a third-person narrator progresses chronologically in "real time", Shannon's narrative comes to us through her diary-entries, written in the first-person, which tells us both of her incarceration in a mental asylum and about her youth. As tension builds inside Olivia, so Shannon's narrative comes ever closer to revealing what made her almost kill Olivia. As their stories intertwine, the plot becomes a little busy, reveal following reveal , which ratchets up the suspense but abandons some of the steady and stark tension which had built up. I was incredibly intrigued by Olivia's journey, how her self-doubt and anxiety overtakes her sense of reality. There is a lot of humanity in her portrayal which threatened to get lost in the end. Something I very much appreciated, however, was how Monroe didn't shy away from the grim realities of motherhood, both in Olivia's 21st-century experience, and that of her mother years earlier. As an unwed teen mom in a big family, Shannon's experience of motherhood was rough from the get go and while Monroe doesn't excuse, she does explain. 

Saying I enjoyed this novel almost feels wrong, due to its rough topic, but I can't deny I was gripped by it. Katrina Monroe's writing really riveted me, from the visceral descriptions of the physical changes Olivia goes through, to Monroe's affecting descriptions of Olivia's mental turmoil. The switch in narration also worked well and the way Monroe played with the growing tension that builds between the information coming from both Olivia and Shannon was also intriguing. The tone of Graveyard of Lost Children wavers between gritty thriller, supernatural suspense, and mental health novel. I enjoy all three of these genres but sometimes found myself wishing Monroe would land more heavily in one of them, solidifying the approach of her novel. I think, however, that in part the wavering, the lack of assurance, the inability to entirely figure out what is up, is the point of Graveyard. Becoming a parent so drastically affects your sense of self, it seems, that a new reality needs to be established in which your priorities are vastly different. The black-haired woman hovers over the narrative, at once utterly real and yet also a metaphor. As the novel works itself towards an end, it comes closer to having to choose between these two. Some elements of the ending didn't really work for me, but the final brief chapter utterly pulled me in again. The final chapter was the kind of ending I had hoped for and which fit the novel overall in its painful but important discussion of motherhood. I will definitely be reading more books by Katrina Monroe!

I give this novel...

4 Universes!

Graveyard of Lost Children is a searing novel about motherhood, family, and inherited trauma. It questions the kind of support mothers receive, about where the line lies between keeping a child safe and keeping them locked up, and whether we can ever be entirely good enough.