Interesting plot. With the way the setting is described and with the narrator’s inner thoughts, the plot becomes something that you also want to investigate. Throughout you keep wondering if there is actually something out there or if it’s all just a flood with people leaving.
As for the narrator, are they really reliable? Don’t think so, especially if you consider the fact that we’re getting descriptions from someone who has horrible eyesight and who is either constantly losing their glasses or wearing the wrong prescription.
As for the writing style, I would say it’s basic but creepy. Sometimes it’s hard to follow what is going on but overall it’s well done. It’s interesting to learn facts about the Vietnamese culture. And it’s a great way to depict grief, loss, rape and self-discovery.
We have a book full of unsettling, creepy and sometimes disgusting descriptions.
As for the characters, it was great to see a thorough character development in all of them as well as a genuine connection building.
Overall, it’s a coming of age story that depicts a very creepy development of the main character finally accepting themselves for how they are. It’s a found family full of characters that just want to be accepted for who they are and not why/who they should be. A beautiful, yet disturbing, story about fighting and accepting inner monsters.

Thank you NetGalley for this arc in exchange for an honest review!

Reading this book was like a fever dream. I’m still not sure what I just have read, to be honest. But within all some also made sense.

The author is great in writing scenes, in taking you to this whole other world. I can see precisely what she describes and I appreciate that a lot in a writer! There are many beautiful sentences I loved. Like:

“Why haven’t I considered that I might be the dangerous thing? Jailbait since puberty, monster since ruined. I am the hateful witch whose wish right now is for sharp claws. Let’s get the murdering over with.”

Or

“Even violated, I am loved and should love. “

And

“Adults having their shit figured out is an illusion of childhood.”

I could quote so much more. The way the author describes things is just beautiful. They could have been a poet if the would wanted that.

The story takes you with Nhung and her mother after a hurricane destroyed their house and lost their father and brother. A journey she doesn’t want to be on, but is forced to. But she also gets to know herself, meet friends, old and new, to bring her where she is meant to be. Her inner voice, her journey and pain is so relatable. But don’t let this fool you, this story takes dark turns and has gruesome parts.

Like I said in the beginning, this story is like a fever dream. There is so much happening that I have this feeling I forgot a lot. It also took me a long time to get through this book. I could have dnf-ed it because of this. But somehow the story is also too interesting with a lot of dark twists, it keeps you with a longing want to know what is going to happen. Because of that ( and the beautiful writing of particular sentences) I kept reading and it got a 3,5 stars

I lapped this book up like the algae infested water Trang Thanh Tran writes about in ‘They Bloom at Night’. I was completely and utterly absorbed in this epic ocean horror featuring beautiful prose, introspection, queerness, trauma, climate change and so much more - my words don’t do this coming of age, horror novel justice.

This is such a beautifully unique horror book, it hurt my heart and healed something inside too. I found myself highlighting whole paragraphs, something I rarely do. The writing flowed beautifully, calmly, even when Noon was posed with threat. I don’t want to go into the plot - I think this should be something you go into blind and just let it take you in. A gorgeous, will stay with me for a while, easy to give, 5 stars.

A very big thank you to NetGalley & Bloomsbury Publishing for the eARC of this book!

Trang Thanh Tran's sophomore book is GOOD, y'all. REALLY good.

She Is a Haunting was actually a let-down for me when I read it, but every single issue I'd had with that book was not present here.

The characters were rich, the pacing was excellent while still letting the plot and relationships breathe, and the book in general was seeped in an incredible ocean horror/climate horror atmosphere. I looked forward to reading it every time I put it down, and I was never disappointed with what happened on the page.

I can see that some people may struggle with the villain being, for the lack of a better world, too villainesque, or say that some people (like MC's mother) weren't present enough, but I personally didn't care at all. It swept me off my feet and carried me quite like it was a wave. It also pulled off a really great ending for me.

The only reason it didn't get a five star for me is that I wished for slightly more character development. It shined through in a couple of scenes, but I definitely wanted to see more.

Thank you to Netgalley and Bloomsbury for this arc.

They Bloom at Night was truly a unique horror, exploring identity and the societal reinforcement and ultimately the repercussions on relationships, all whilst providing intricate world building and dimensional characters. Overall a fantastic horror that I would easily recommend to those who love the genre.

"They Bloom at Night" is a wonderful YA, queer coming-of-age speculative tale, blending body and ocean horror with incredible depictions of climate change, biological mutations and Vietnamese folklore. The writing is calm and balanced, highly introspective rather than descriptive, even when the situation calls solely for description: all happenings are filtered through the main character's mood, the traumatized Viernamese teenage girl Nhung (called "Noon"), whose highly ambiguous sensibility makes for a tale heavy with emotion and unsettling moments of self-doubt.

The book has a very eerie atmopshere, almost as if everything has been already decided and we're just going through the motions; a feeling of tension combines with an underlying sense of resignation, as Noon's body slowly changes, her mother is seemingly losing her marbles, and the local loan shark (and his right hand, a predator on teenage girls) starts asking for the impossible. In older cultures, this young Vietnamese girl would have been portrayed as a saint: she finds herself facing so many existential challenges, her experience brims with metaphysical anxiety and environmental terror affecting her personality in revelatory ways, forcing her to re-examine her life choices vis-a-vis her mother's crumbling authority and the collapse of her community. In fact, the sense of community is very strong in the book, though the community itself is actually absent: the small town she lives in has been devastated by a hurricane, and is being haunted by mutated red algae ("Mother Nature's menstruation," as the book puts it), monstrously transformed sea life, and the erosion due to the loss of entire families.

Noon's essentially alone, and, inevitably, not even her found family (one member of which is the loan shark's own daughter) will be enough to provide her with a place in the world. She's essentially called upon to create one of her own, and the hurdles she meets on the way drive the plot of the book forward. That said, there are some awkward YA moments (for example, when you see a name referenced enough, you know the character will eventually appear in the novel; initial conflict often leads to romance; trauma is concelaed by bravado), but the author treats the subject-matter with such empathy, attention to detail and insight, it's easy to ignore the typical YA features and enjoy the book irrespective of age, class, and gender: Noon's story is humanity's own story, or it will most probably be so, in the near future.

Though this book is a ya horror, I did find myself feeling unsettled and haunted by the content, which doesn’t always happen with ya. This book was so much more than I thought it was going to be, it explored identity, family, and pressure / expectations. The use of folklore and the haunting ambiguity of the ocean creates a very immersive story that crawls into your brain and clings to you. The relationships and found family in this book were beautifully crafted, developed, and complex. There were moments were the pace slowed, however it does then quickly pick up again.

Overall my expectations for this book were exceeded and I thoroughly enjoyed this read!

Thank you to Netgalley and Bloomsbury for allowing me to read and review this book before publication.

Very unique and different book, slow in some places but often quickly picked up, enjoyed it never the less.

a haunting queer ocean horror infused with Vietnamese folklore and finding your place in the world. a hurricane devistates a small town, causing rising sea waters, mutated wildlife and a red algae bloom. when people start to disappear, Nhung is tasked with finding the sea monster responsible. it's eerie and atmospheric and filled with terror from the environment and those who live there. it weaves together climate change, class, gender, queerness, and found family and though this book isn't out for 5 more months, I can't wait for the authors next tale.


thanks to netgalley for an arc of this book which will be published in March 2025

I have given this a 3* because I did not finish. Something in the writing style just didn't engage me.

The plot and concept were strong and I really wanted to enjoy the book, but I just couldn't get into the rhythm of it somehow.

I really wanted to love this one, the concept was really unique and pretty wild. But, it just didn't quite deliver for me. Maybe it's because it's a YA horror, which isn't my usual genre and I'm not familiar at all with YA books and their style.

Some parts were pretty slow, others I was just yearning for them to continue. There were so many bits of this book that I wish were elaborated more, and some very poignant and thought provoking passages that were really beautiful.

Like I said, the actual concept itself was great, I just wish there was more content on the bloom itself and why it had happened. The story that ran alongside it, I personally thought was fairly weak. So overall, I liked this book, but I didn't love it.

Trang Thanh Tran’s debut She is a Haunting (2023) was a fascinating haunted house novel which took in LGBTQIA+ themes and the struggles of a Canadian teenager to accept and understand her Vietnamese heritage. The book was featured in my own YA Horror 400 almanac and later won the YA Bram Stoker Award. Her second novel They Bloom at Night revisits many of the same themes as her debut, albeit in a completely different context. Instead of having a Canadian on holiday in Vietnam, in this novel the main character is the daughter of immigrant Vietnamese parents who have settled in Louisiana and scrape a living catching shrimp. There was little in the book to date the plot, Nhung’s mother (translated to Noon) does not speak English and they were ‘Vietnamese Boat People’ who arrived in America after the Vietnam War, then the story might be set in the eighties. As there was a lot in the book about sexuality identity and acceptance it might have been better to make the date clearer, as this is something which has changed in recent years. For example, there was a bisexual character who had fallen out with his parents because of his sexuality and it was hard to tell whether this was purely a cultural thing, or because of the time period. If it was set in the eighties then I felt the way the characters addressed sexuality was much too modern and genuine teen readers might find this confusing also.

The story revolves around the appearance of a red algae in the water after a hurricane and the pollution which follows, causing fish to mutate and people to disappear. Noon and her mother are coerced by the local gangster to investigate the phenomenon as its bad for business. The gangster sends his teenage daughter Covey (very farfetched) to join them and after a slow start the novel explodes into full body horror as the small town of Mercy Cove falls under the deadly influence of the algae. Noon was a great lead character, who has trauma in her past, as well as a complex past with her mother, but it was her relationship with lesbian Covey which dominates the book. As Noon is affected by the algae, she also begins to question her own sexuality and the story is a thoughtful meditation of being comfortable in your own skin, or whether you see yourself as male, female or neither. But whether folks thought like this in the eighties, I’m not sure. I thought this was a fascinating book, the slowly collapsing town of Mercy Cove was outstanding, but some of the story was too metaphorical, including the algae, and I wonder whether it will go over the heads of many teen readers. AGE RANGE 13+

In They Bloom at Night, a red algae bloom engulfs the town of Mercy, Louisiana, following a devastating hurricane. The once-familiar waters are now home to mutated wildlife, creating an eerie atmosphere where the line between the ordinary and the monstrous blurs. At the centre of this unsettling landscape is The Cove, a place where Noon’s life took a tragic turn long before the storm, during a party thrown by her older boyfriend.

Now, as she navigates the increasingly submerged town with her mother, who believes their deceased family members have reincarnated as sea creatures, Noon grapples with her haunting memories. The trauma of that fateful night at The Cove weighs heavily on her, as she buries the truth about her identity, feeling that she is “not in the right shape.”

When Mercy's predatory leader coerces Noon and her mother into capturing a creature threatening the town’s residents, Noon reluctantly teams up with his dangerous daughter and a mix of old and new friends. As another storm looms on the horizon, she must confront her past and decide whether to embrace the monstrous feelings stirring within her.

The novel offers a thought-provoking exploration of destruction and the fragments of life that are worth fighting for. It captures the gut-wrenching horror of both raw emotion and external terrors, all while weaving together themes of climate change, identity, and the complexities of being a lesbian teenager. They Bloom at Night is a haunting and beautifully written tale that challenges readers to contemplate the nature of monstrosity and the good that can arise from chaos.

Read more at The Secret Bookreview.