They Bloom at Night
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
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.
'Trang Thanh Tran has a story for everyone who wants to tear off their skin and craves the strange ache of becoming something new. This book molts and chews itself raw under your fingers. It's perfect' – Andrew Joseph White, New York Times bestselling author of Compound Fracture
'They Bloom at Night is a stunning exploration of healing from trauma in nature, relationships, and within ourselves. A mesmerizing novel' – Liselle Sambury, author of Delicious Monsters
Ever since a hurricane devastated the small town of Mercy, Louisiana, a red algae bloom has taken over. Mutated wildlife lurks in the water that rises by the day, but Mercy has always been a place where monsters walk in plain sight. Especially at its heart: the Cove, where Noon's life was upended long before the storm at a party her older boyfriend insisted on.
Now, Noon is stuck navigating the submerged town with her mom, who believes their family have been reincarnated as sea creatures. Alone with the pain of what happened that night at the cove, Noon buries the truth: she is not the right shape.
When Mercy's predatory leader demands Noon and her mum capture the creature drowning residents, she reluctantly finds an ally in his deadly hunter of a daughter and friends old and new. As the next storm approaches, Noon must confront the past and decide if it's time to answer the monster itching at her skin.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Seventeen-year-old Vietnamese American Nhung—or Noon—and Noon's mother live on their boat Wild Things in Mercy, La., where a sinister red algae bloom has mutated the wildlife in the aftermath of a deadly hurricane. Though Noon is desperate to leave Mercy, Mom refuses, certain that Noon's father and brother—whose bodies were never recovered following the storm—are "out there somewhere, reincarnated and waiting for us to rescue them." They make their living catching and selling mutated sea creatures to Jimmy, Mercy's de facto ruler. When people start disappearing, including a scientist studying the bloom, Jimmy threatens to repossess Wild Things unless they find the monster he believes is responsible. Along for the hunt is his daughter, white-cued lesbian 17-year-old Covey, who is also searching for her missing mother. As the trio scour the contaminated waters, Noon contemplates issues of gender identity, struggles to process a previous sexual assault, and contends with inexplicable body changes. While fluid prose occasionally makes for murky, complex plotting, it simultaneously conjures surreal and harrowing atmosphere through which Tran (She Is a Haunting) weaves a pulsing-pounding climate disaster thriller. Ages 14–up.
