And Hemlock Grove, Pennsylvania is kind of like Forks, Washington, or it is like a version of Forks in which Bella and Jacob and whatshisname aren't such a bunch of saps. A few rather twisted graphic novels come to mind. The book invites comparison, and comparison might be the only safe way to sell it without blowing it for the reader: you could think Twin Peaks and you'd be in the Hemlock Grove neighborhood.

Paradoxically, although I want to read this book again for the first time, I also want to read it again for the second time, knowing what I now know.

It is so wonderful to be surprised so thoroughly, I do not want to mess that up for anyone. I had no idea this book was going to go most of the places that it went, and I failed to catch even the giant broad hints it threw at me. Now I think I'd have to say Hemlock Grove, because I was so COMPLETELY unprepared for. There's a standard question people ask in interviews: 'What book would you most like to read again for the first time?' My answer always has been Love & Rockets because I was so totally unprepared for a comic book to turn out to be an actual novel, and because I fell in love with the characters, and falling in love is always a wonderful experience. Except maybe this one because I am not going to say ANYTHING.

Or perhaps it’s Roman, the son of the late JR Godfrey, who rules the adolescent social scene with the casual arrogance of a cold-blooded aristocrat, his superior status unquestioned despite his decidedly freakish sister, Shelley, whose monstrous medical conditions belie a sweet intelligence, and his otherworldly control freak of a mother, Olivia.Īt once a riveting mystery and a fascinating revelation of the grotesque and the darkness in us all, Hemlock Grove has the architecture and energy to become a classic in its own right-and Brian McGreevy the talent and ambition to enthrall us for years to come.ĭO NOT read reviews of this book. Others turn to Peter Rumancek, a Gypsy trailer-trash kid who has told impressionable high school classmates that he’s a werewolf. Some suspect an escapee from the White Tower, a foreboding biotech facility owned by the Godfrey family-their personal fortune and the local economy having moved on from Pittsburgh steel-where, if rumors are true, biological experiments of the most unethical kind take place. A manhunt ensues-though the authorities aren’t sure if it’s a man they should be looking for. The body of a young girl is found mangled and murdered in the woods of Hemlock Grove, Pennsylvania, in the shadow of the abandoned Godfrey Steel mill. An exhilarating reinvention of the gothic novel, inspired by the iconic characters of our greatest myths and nightmares.

Hemlock Grove by Brian McGreevy