They Bloom at Night by Trang Thanh Tran
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I picked up They Bloom at Night for a couple reasons but the primary reason is it’s a finalist for the Hugo Lodestar Award for best YA book.
Unfortunately I do not feel it’s quite up to the benchmark for a Hugo and feel at most 3.5 stars is the best I can give it; even thought I really liked the overall concept and found it very quotable.
”Sometimes we need people to hunt the things we need to die but that we aren’t ready to kill.”
For me, They Bloom at Night drags in place, is a bit overwritten, and definitely too repetitive. Trang Thanh Tran has some quotable passages and great messaging for teens including: passionately talking about loving yourself for who you are and finding yourself over being who society, parents, etc. want you to be. All sentiments I’m passionate about reinforcing, especially for teens. The LGBTQ+ representation here is very well done. Thus it hurts me to give only 3 stars; but the truth is I was bored and disengaged a lot. I felt like I’d more than gotten the message by the 60% mark and didn’t need another 100+ pages to slam it all home.
That said, the story is brilliant, the characters are good, and the plot points are clever; it just doesn’t come together and I’m blaming pacing and writing. The final product is too repetitive and convoluted in its delivery. I know this is a YA book; but I think we need to give teens more credit to read without being reminded every ten pages of the overall messaging and plot of the story. This could easily have been a five star read; but in the end I must be honest and admit that I didn’t love it even though I really wanted to (and felt like I should given its horror focus).
That’s not to say that it shouldn’t be read. I’d actually still buy They Bloom at Night for a well read teen. The overall messaging and presentation of our sucky society and its disappointing expectations is very valuable. I just wouldn’t give it to anyone, teen or not, that struggles to read or isn’t very passionate about reading. I truly believe most will suffer through or just give up. Tran just doesn’t deliver in a way that worked for me which is really too bad.
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My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I picked up They Bloom at Night for a couple reasons but the primary reason is it’s a finalist for the Hugo Lodestar Award for best YA book.
Unfortunately I do not feel it’s quite up to the benchmark for a Hugo and feel at most 3.5 stars is the best I can give it; even thought I really liked the overall concept and found it very quotable.
”Sometimes we need people to hunt the things we need to die but that we aren’t ready to kill.”
For me, They Bloom at Night drags in place, is a bit overwritten, and definitely too repetitive. Trang Thanh Tran has some quotable passages and great messaging for teens including: passionately talking about loving yourself for who you are and finding yourself over being who society, parents, etc. want you to be. All sentiments I’m passionate about reinforcing, especially for teens. The LGBTQ+ representation here is very well done. Thus it hurts me to give only 3 stars; but the truth is I was bored and disengaged a lot. I felt like I’d more than gotten the message by the 60% mark and didn’t need another 100+ pages to slam it all home.
That said, the story is brilliant, the characters are good, and the plot points are clever; it just doesn’t come together and I’m blaming pacing and writing. The final product is too repetitive and convoluted in its delivery. I know this is a YA book; but I think we need to give teens more credit to read without being reminded every ten pages of the overall messaging and plot of the story. This could easily have been a five star read; but in the end I must be honest and admit that I didn’t love it even though I really wanted to (and felt like I should given its horror focus).
That’s not to say that it shouldn’t be read. I’d actually still buy They Bloom at Night for a well read teen. The overall messaging and presentation of our sucky society and its disappointing expectations is very valuable. I just wouldn’t give it to anyone, teen or not, that struggles to read or isn’t very passionate about reading. I truly believe most will suffer through or just give up. Tran just doesn’t deliver in a way that worked for me which is really too bad.
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