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A review by saguaros
Bloom by Delilah S. Dawson
2.0
I am not sure how to feel about this one partly because I think I just wasn’t in the mood for this kind of book/horror so it definitely colored my reading of it which feels a bit unfair.
(potentially some vague spoilers:)
That said, I think there’s a lot of good things about it: I liked the almost omniscient sounding narration (even though we were in Ro’s POV the whole time), especially at the beginning which made it feel like we were being told a tale, combined with the fairytale elements (goblin market feels, bluebeard elements etc), it really gave the book a certain vibe from the get go. That, and the fact that I appreciated the author not pulling her punches, especially on the ending, as well as basically being the first book I’ve read that I would describe as cottagecore horror, were the things I liked the most.
Unfortunately, I just didn’t get into most of the rest. It was obvious to me what Ash was from the get go and that the vibe setup was to be subverted—a thing I would generally appreciate, but because I saw it coming from the get go I couldn’t really appreciate the switch up. Like I mentioned, I appreciated the ending—the last two chapters or so—but I wish they had happened earlier in the story as opposed to ending on them so we could get more of that visceral horror. As it turns out, we mostly get the slow buildup of a toxic relationship from the POV of someone ignoring all the red flags while we know (or at least I did) what she’s headed for. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but in this case it really struggled to hold my attention and I often found myself drifting to do other things. I did find Ro’s realization that she did ignore so many red flags that she wouldn’t have ignored if Ash had been a man interesting though. It does seem to want to question and play off the preconceptions we have (and that Ro has) about what women are capable of.
So overall, I just don’t think it was quite for me, especially in the way that it was built, but it’s one I might revisit one day when I’m more in the mood for this kind of story, just to make sure.
(potentially some vague spoilers:)
That said, I think there’s a lot of good things about it: I liked the almost omniscient sounding narration (even though we were in Ro’s POV the whole time), especially at the beginning which made it feel like we were being told a tale, combined with the fairytale elements (goblin market feels, bluebeard elements etc), it really gave the book a certain vibe from the get go. That, and the fact that I appreciated the author not pulling her punches, especially on the ending, as well as basically being the first book I’ve read that I would describe as cottagecore horror, were the things I liked the most.
Unfortunately, I just didn’t get into most of the rest. It was obvious to me what Ash was from the get go and that the vibe setup was to be subverted—a thing I would generally appreciate, but because I saw it coming from the get go I couldn’t really appreciate the switch up. Like I mentioned, I appreciated the ending—the last two chapters or so—but I wish they had happened earlier in the story as opposed to ending on them so we could get more of that visceral horror. As it turns out, we mostly get the slow buildup of a toxic relationship from the POV of someone ignoring all the red flags while we know (or at least I did) what she’s headed for. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but in this case it really struggled to hold my attention and I often found myself drifting to do other things. I did find Ro’s realization that she did ignore so many red flags that she wouldn’t have ignored if Ash had been a man interesting though. It does seem to want to question and play off the preconceptions we have (and that Ro has) about what women are capable of.
So overall, I just don’t think it was quite for me, especially in the way that it was built, but it’s one I might revisit one day when I’m more in the mood for this kind of story, just to make sure.