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nightmarebees 's review for:
Savage Blooms
by S.T. Gibson
challenging
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
6/20/25
4.5 people are gonna be polarized on this one but hot girls know that gothic lit is about making you uncomfortable AND horny. deliciously toxic and gayer every second. full review to come
6/21/25
i am begging anyone who picks this up: LOOK AT THE CW LIST FIRST. i can already tell this is the kind of book where people who just plain don't enjoy the themes involved will rate it low for making them uncomfortable when they could've just left it alone. this is a book that is SUPPOSED to make you uncomfortable, and ALSO horny. that's kind of the point of gothic fiction.
and on that, this is gothic romance first and foremost. the rest of the series will likely get more into the fantasy elements, but for this first book at least, the fae magic is very subtle. this actually works perfectly for the scene being set in the manor: nobody, not nicola and adam, not the reader, is fully sure what is going on. are these supernatural tales real? are we being lied to? have our hosts gone mad and believe in their own hallucinations? this is a true gothic trope, not knowing if the monster is even real or if you're the one simply losing your mind.
i devoured this so quickly. gibson makes sure that the heady spell of craigmar is cast on the reader alongside our american adventurers. i am in the middle of three other books but this kept grabbing me by the chin and making me look her in the eye. it reads fast and covers a relatively small period of time, but so much character study happens here.
gibson has done a video explaining this on their insta, but erotic romance is not just "romance with more and more explicit open door scenes." it involves eroticism being part of the plot, part of how we learn about the characters. and let me say as a demisexual biromantic myself that it absolutely works here. the new relationship elements between these four do happen fast, and that's intentional. craigmar casts a spell on her inhabitants, and whether that magic is real or imagined it works for me as a representation of eileen's (and finley's, by association) isolation from the world via aristocracy. the landed elites are by definition living in their own world. a secluded estate becomes its own society, and the fewer people that society dwindles down to, the more claustrophobic and codependent the situation becomes. not unlike humans adrift in faerie lands, when adam and nicola are stranded in eileen and finley's world, there are subject to different rules, different norms, different desires. the rich and the fae are cruel, selfish, hedonistic. how long do you spend among monsters before becoming one?
i loved watching each side of this polycule develop and tangle into each other's hearts and bodies. one of my only complaints for this book is that i hoped for more sapphism, but i got some before the end and have been assured of more to come, as this is only the first installment of a trilogy. the character dynamics are all delicious, eileen and nicola in particular being fascinating to me.
i feel like i could go on for pages about this book but it really just hit at the perfect time for me. my one and only note would be that the prose didn't feel quite as lavish as gibson's vampire books, but that's also due to my own personal tastes and also the fact that savage blooms is contemporary, whereas ADOB and AEIM are both period pieces.
a final note in vehement defense of this book: it's okay if you don't like reading about the topics that this series involves, but that doesn't make it bad or reprehensible. the pseudoinc*st situation here is my main concern with people taking depiction as endorsement. fiction (and kink) is supposed to be a playground for the weird and unsettling, so long as we are not reproducing hate, which this absolutely is not. it's about every dirty, hungry way we experience love.
thank you to netgalley and orbit books for the eARC!
4.5 people are gonna be polarized on this one but hot girls know that gothic lit is about making you uncomfortable AND horny. deliciously toxic and gayer every second. full review to come
6/21/25
i am begging anyone who picks this up: LOOK AT THE CW LIST FIRST. i can already tell this is the kind of book where people who just plain don't enjoy the themes involved will rate it low for making them uncomfortable when they could've just left it alone. this is a book that is SUPPOSED to make you uncomfortable, and ALSO horny. that's kind of the point of gothic fiction.
and on that, this is gothic romance first and foremost. the rest of the series will likely get more into the fantasy elements, but for this first book at least, the fae magic is very subtle. this actually works perfectly for the scene being set in the manor: nobody, not nicola and adam, not the reader, is fully sure what is going on. are these supernatural tales real? are we being lied to? have our hosts gone mad and believe in their own hallucinations? this is a true gothic trope, not knowing if the monster is even real or if you're the one simply losing your mind.
i devoured this so quickly. gibson makes sure that the heady spell of craigmar is cast on the reader alongside our american adventurers. i am in the middle of three other books but this kept grabbing me by the chin and making me look her in the eye. it reads fast and covers a relatively small period of time, but so much character study happens here.
gibson has done a video explaining this on their insta, but erotic romance is not just "romance with more and more explicit open door scenes." it involves eroticism being part of the plot, part of how we learn about the characters. and let me say as a demisexual biromantic myself that it absolutely works here. the new relationship elements between these four do happen fast, and that's intentional. craigmar casts a spell on her inhabitants, and whether that magic is real or imagined it works for me as a representation of eileen's (and finley's, by association) isolation from the world via aristocracy. the landed elites are by definition living in their own world. a secluded estate becomes its own society, and the fewer people that society dwindles down to, the more claustrophobic and codependent the situation becomes. not unlike humans adrift in faerie lands, when adam and nicola are stranded in eileen and finley's world, there are subject to different rules, different norms, different desires. the rich and the fae are cruel, selfish, hedonistic. how long do you spend among monsters before becoming one?
i loved watching each side of this polycule develop and tangle into each other's hearts and bodies. one of my only complaints for this book is that i hoped for more sapphism, but i got some before the end and have been assured of more to come, as this is only the first installment of a trilogy. the character dynamics are all delicious, eileen and nicola in particular being fascinating to me.
i feel like i could go on for pages about this book but it really just hit at the perfect time for me. my one and only note would be that the prose didn't feel quite as lavish as gibson's vampire books, but that's also due to my own personal tastes and also the fact that savage blooms is contemporary, whereas ADOB and AEIM are both period pieces.
a final note in vehement defense of this book: it's okay if you don't like reading about the topics that this series involves, but that doesn't make it bad or reprehensible. the pseudoinc*st situation here is my main concern with people taking depiction as endorsement. fiction (and kink) is supposed to be a playground for the weird and unsettling, so long as we are not reproducing hate, which this absolutely is not. it's about every dirty, hungry way we experience love.
thank you to netgalley and orbit books for the eARC!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Emotional abuse, Sexual content, Toxic relationship
Moderate: Incest, Infidelity