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.