Book Summary and Reviews of They Bloom at Night by Trang Thanh Tran

They Bloom at Night by Trang Thanh Tran

They Bloom at Night

by Trang Thanh Tran

  • Critics' Consensus (5):
  • Readers' Rating (2):
  • Published:
  • Mar 2025, 272 pages
  • Rate this book

About this book

Book Summary

The author of the New York Times bestselling horror phenomenon She Is a Haunting is back with a novel about the monsters that swim beneath us ... and live within us.

Since the hurricane, the town of Mercy, Louisiana has been overtaken by a strange red algae bloom. Noon and her mother have carved out a life in the wreckage, trawling for the mutated wildlife that lurks in the water and trading it to the corrupt harbormaster. When she's focused on survival, Noon doesn't have to cope with what happened to her at the Cove or the monster itching at her skin.

Mercy has never been a safe place, but it's getting worse. People are disappearing, and the only clues as to why are whispers of underwater shadows and warnings to never answer the knocks at night. When the harbormaster demands she capture the creature that's been drowning residents, Noon finds a reluctant ally in his daughter Covey. And as the next storm approaches, the two set off to find what's haunting Mercy. After all, Noon is no stranger to monsters ...

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

Media Reviews

"Contrasts the disturbing with the beauty of human connection... . A moving contemplation on queerness and gender identity, the immigrant experience, and moving beyond survival to fight back against oppressors." ―Booklist (starred review)

"A strange and grisly tale of what we can survive to get closer to our truest selves, deeply infused with Vietnamese cultural concepts." ―School Library Journal (starred review)

"Tran fills the pages with sensory detail, creating a haunting setting that immerses readers in their worldbuilding. Noon is a complex and multifaceted protagonist, whose reckoning with trauma and selfhood (especially gender identity and Vietnamese ancestry) is the emotional center anchoring the extraordinary plot events." ―Kirkus Reviews

"Gorgeous, gruesome, and fiercely cathartic, They Bloom at Night is body horror with a beating heart." ―Rebecca Mahoney, author of The Valley and the Flood and The Memory Eater

"A briny, rotting ode to the things we must become to survive and the things we yearn to become when the surviving is over. In elegant, atmospheric prose, Trang Thanh Tran peels back layers of salty skin and sea foam to expose the truth: even when we are wrong, even when we are monstrous, we are whole." ―Courtney Gould, award-winning author of The Dead and the Dark

This information about They Bloom at Night was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Reader Reviews

Write your own reviewwrite your own review

Trisha

A compelling coming of age with elements of environmental horror
A gorgeous cover. A story that tackles coming of age along with the horror elements. There's a lot tackled here, but it felt like it all happened in the last 25. I liked it but somehow didn't feel quite pulled in like I'd hoped.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Author Information

Trang Thanh Tran Author Biography

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Read-Alikes

Read-Alikes Full readalike results are for members only

If you liked They Bloom at Night, try these:

  • The Last True Poets of the Sea jacket

    The Last True Poets of the Sea

    by Julia Drake

    Published 2021

    About this book

    From a stunning new voice in YA literature comes an epic, utterly unforgettable contemporary novel about a lost shipwreck, a missing piece of family history, and weathering the storms of life.

  • Melmoth jacket

    Melmoth

    by Sarah Perry

    Published 2019

    About this book

    For centuries, the mysterious dark-robed figure has roamed the globe, searching for those whose complicity and cowardice have fed into the rapids of history's darkest waters - and now, in Sarah Perry's breathtaking follow-up to The Essex Serpent, it is heading in our direction.

  • The Seas jacket

    The Seas

    by Samantha Hunt

    Published 2019

    About this book

    Moored in a coastal fishing town so far north that the highways only run south, the unnamed narrator of The Seas is a misfit. 

We have 10 read-alikes for They Bloom at Night, but non-members are limited to three results. Join free to see the complete list of recommendations.
Search read-alikes
How we choose read-alikes

More Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History

Browse all Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History books

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

BookBrowse Book Club

Book Jacket
When No One Else Will
by Amanda Skenandore
1940s Chicago nurse risks everything at an illegal women’s clinic during a high-profile trial of courage and sisterhood.

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket
    Look What You Made Me Do
    by John Lanchester
    A propulsive tale of intergenerational tension and revenge from the Booker Prize nominee.
  • Book Jacket
    The Jellyfish Problem
    by Tessa Yang
    A marine biologist rescues a Maine island menaced by a giant glowing jellyfish in this inventive debut.
  • Book Jacket
    Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young
    by Zayd Ayers Dohrn
    Son of Weather Underground radicals recounts life on the run and decades of revolutionary struggle.
Who Said...

A library is a temple unabridged with priceless treasure...

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Book
Trivia
  • Book Trivia

    Can you name the title?

    Test your book knowledge with our daily trivia challenge!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

Q S, S

and be entered to win..

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.