I recently decided that I want to explore the horror genre a bit more after being too nervous to do so for years. Sadie Hartmann’s horror rec book put many books onto my TBR but this one has been on my radar for a bit longer so I decided to close out the year with this as one of my last reads.
Synopsis
A sweet sapphic romance takes a deadly dark turn in this sharp-as-a-knife novella from the New York Times bestselling author.
Rosemary meets Ash at the farmers’ market. Ash—precise, pretty, and practically perfect—sells bars of soap in delicate pastel colors, sprinkle-spackled cupcakes stacked on scalloped stands, beeswax candles, jelly jars of honey, and glossy green plants. Ro has never felt this way about another woman; with Ash, she wants to be her and have her in equal measure. But as her obsession with Ash consumes her, she may find she’s not the one doing the devouring…
Review
Bloom was sitting on my kindle for weeks and I kept going back and forth before finally starting it. I’ve been drawn to the cover ever since meeting the author at a con, before the book was even released. I think I have a sticker for it at home even. But as always, horror books have me hemming and hawing before I actually start them. Will it be too scary for me? Or just the right amount of tension that will have me on the edge of my seat without making me terrified of my entire life?
Turns out, this one had just the right amount of tension when things came to a head. I thought I knew where this was going pretty early on despite never having read the description for it. And while I was right on some counts, I was very wrong on others—thankfully. The actual ending was a better fit for the book than the one I was expecting because of the way the story was told.
***The following may be slightly spoilery in regards to how the writing deceives/develops but not about actual plot points***
A few chapters in, I said this felt more like a romance (with some small red flags) than a horror book. I didn’t mean it as criticism. It just was unexpected. Eventually, I realized that this was probably on purpose and it’s now something that I really appreciate about it. The way it pulls you in and makes you root for the participants while also knowing that at some point it HAS to turn darker but never being sure in what sense exactly? I really enjoyed that.
As with so many romances though, I would’ve liked it to be longer so that the emotional development could be in more depth. That’s the only big criticism I can think of though besides maybe the MC being a bit… cliche? The ending the author chose for this worked well despite this though so I’m still really glad I decided to pick this up as one of my last reads of the year. It was a good intro book to horror for me and I’ll be checking out the author’s other books for sure.
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