Lilibet Bombshell's Reviews > Graveyard of Lost Children

I knew where this book was heading, but boy was the journey a hard and uneasy one. Let me put it this way: I don’t let other people drive when it comes to curvy mountain roads or bad conditions. I need to be in control of the car or else I feel completely wracked with nerves and jumpy the entire time, bracing myself to leap into action at any time and the words, “Pull over and let me drive before you crash the car,” on the tip of my tongue for the entire drive. That’s the kind of feeling I had the entire time I was reading Graveyard for Lost Children: I felt like I was watching a train wreck happening right in front of me and I just wished I could reach inside the pages and take control of the situation before it got to where I knew it was going.

Part of this comes from me strongly identifying with the book’s protagonist, Olivia. Like Olivia, I wasn’t quite ready to be a mom when I had my first child, but I was pressured into going through with the birth. Don’t get me wrong–I don’t regret it one bit. I love my older kid more than anything in the world and never experienced the type of mental issues Olivia did regarding childbirth. But when it came to my second child, who was planned (unlike the first), I was pressured into breastfeeding, had a ton of issues surrounding the matter, and felt everything from shame to rage toward everyone in my life, including my baby and myself. While it wasn’t postpartum depression or psychosis (I am bipolar and wasn’t properly diagnosed at the time, so that certainly could’ve played a part into my state of mine back then), I spent that first year of my second (and last) child’s life resenting every time I had to feed him, put lanolin ointment on myself, soaked through the pads I placed in my nursing bra, or times I had to stay home because he couldn’t go more than an hour or two without feeding.

What I appreciated about this book was how author Katrina Monroe used the themes of parental abandonment and the way mothers tend to feel a loss of self-identity when their children are born to bring the elements of gothic fiction to life in this novel, both with Olivia stuck at home with her daughter Flora and with Shannon as she writes her “memoirs” down in her journal while imprisoned at a psychiatric institution for her daughter once she gets her back. Both are stuck within walls, feeling trapped there by people who are supposed to love them while they wither away to nothing. I found it to be a brilliant way to approach a gothic theme and I related so much to it.

In general, the feelings of shame surrounding motherhood are pretty universal. Almost every new mom questions whether or not they’re going to be a good mom. They question it before they get pregnant. They question it during pregnancy, and they doubt themselves constantly in the early days. The bad news? It never goes away. Sure, it calms down some over the years, but my kids are 20 and 22 and I still wonder if I did right by them and if I’m a good mom. I have a feeling I’ll be wondering that same thing on my deathbed. Katrina Monroe takes these near-universal feelings of shame and doubt and crossbreeds them with the mythology of the changeling, a story present in many cultures wherein a human baby is stolen by supernatural or demonic entities and a substitute baby is placed into the parent’s care instead. Depending on the culture, the changeling serves a different purpose and most of the time that purpose isn’t benevolent. In this book, the changeling mythology serves to exacerbate both Olivia and Shannon’s shame and doubt surrounding whether or not they are good mothers, or deserve to be mothers at all.

I don’t know how people who aren’t parents or mothers will feel about this book or how it will resonate with them. I only know how it resonated with me. It was creepy. It made me uneasy. I had to put it down a few times and go hug my kids. I needed to go for a short drive to get some air. It brought up some long-repressed feelings regarding those early days of being a mom. It also made me feel sad for those mothers who don’t have a support system and feel too ashamed to ask for help.

I have to admit the first half of the book was a better read to me than the latter half, but I can admit that others may not read it the same way I did. It doesn’t matter in the long run because it’s a terrific book. Just maybe don’t read it in the middle of the night while rocking your kid to sleep.

I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you.

File Under: LGBTQ Fiction/Gothic/Occult Horror/Horror/Ghost Fiction/Body Horror/General Fiction