I'm in a love-hate relationship with this book tbh.

I'll give you one paragraph of overall stuff that'll be spoiler free, and then it'll all be spoilers from there. Because this book is a haunted ride in a funfair and it's way funner to experience the thrill first hand when it's fresh.

so. Bloom is the story of Ro, a recently divorced assistant professor in English. Ro lives with her cat and enjoys farmer's markets. And one farmers market, she meets Ash. Ethereal, kind-hearted, attentive, Ash creates and sells soaps, cupcakes, and plants. A flirtation between the two women follows; many cupcakes get eaten, one plant doesn't get killed, and how many soaps does one person need?

Spoilers will begin after the following pet peeve complaint: why was the narration so incredibly rooted in the 2020s? The vocabulary choices made me feel like I was reading instagram infographics or millenial listsicles . Like the cottage core romance thing is already millenial-enough, but I wasn't expecting references to (specific) memes, wellness movements, or any millenial "therapy-speak". I'm not sure how this will age...':)

Spoilers start for real here: I think I have found the book that will be nicknamed the millenial "Misery" and the American "Audition" (both great books about being trapped and literally unable to walk away). The horror tropes were done right, and the pacing during the horror sequences were really solid.

The foreshadowing was delightful, if sometimes a little too on the nose. Those bits with ceramics around the 60% mark had me mentally shouting "it's people! Soylent green is people!". And this is where the novel does something truly stellar: the construction and marketing of this book is a huge risk.

This is marketed as a horror novel. I watched the percentage on my Kobo increase from 40, to 75, to 83.... and no horror. None at all! I knew this was a Bluebeard situation and worried there wasn't enough room left in the back to explain everything and horrify our readers. My heart was racing: I knew that the horror was either going to be spectacular or this would be a book I get angry at when I think about it.

I've read Misery, Audition, watched season 2 of American Horror Story, Hereditary, etc. I trained as a biologist and have done many a dissection - body horror usually doesn't get me. And it might just be a result of my ankle injury (which I got the day after I finished reading Audition...) but this had me crawling out of my skin.


And then I found out that the vibe this story was going for was "handsome female Hannibal" and... I think she nailed it.

I wrote this review with the intention of giving this book like 3.5-4.25 stars, but as I was writing I felt such genuine enthusiasm about the book that 4.5 (rounded up to 5) seems like a better fit. It did, after all, have me reading way past my bedtime.

Recommended if you enjoy psychological horror, books about intense obsessive relationships, and can tolerate the most saccharine cottage-core romance between two milenials. I should've added a disclaimer that I am also a milenials who enjoys farmer's markets.