thank you netgalley for the arc! unfortunately, i came to this book with too high expectations and chasing a high i haven’t been able to get from s.t.gibson’s work post “dowry”. for a novel promoted as steamy and full of fae folklore, all i got was bland, repetitive prose, and new-speak cringe dialogue. the lack of plot armor or rhyme or reason really showed at the very end with eileen’s “grand reveal” on how she intended to save herself and the house. the ending felt like a looney tunes skit, you could even hear the “yoooink” sound when [redacted] fell through [redacted].

i obviously didn’t read “savage blooms” for the plot but even pwp has some redeeming qualities. here? there was nothing likable about the characters, they were unfleshed cliches walking around. individually and as couples/group they had as much charisma and chemistry as a wet paper towel slapped against the crumbling walls of plot & world building. the book is marketed as a plethora of kink and exploring bdsm but all the scenes were so heteronormative and vanilla. the execution was poor and had too much porn logic, instead of sexy we got cringe, and everyone being horny for each other from day one because reasons. at one point when a character went to interact with another, i was 99.99% sure there will be fingering, and guess what, reader? there was. so much fingering…i didn’t expect to be queerbaited by an s.t.gibson book but here we are. this was a swingers’ sloppy night out (with a dash of family curses and yet another big house run by two people, and zero hired help, okay). the cast is repeatedly revealed to be bi/queer but has almost nothing to show for it.

wish saint had invested more in setting the mood and premise, making the house a character (like you know, following the gothic blueprint), added feelings of dread and confinement, made eileen and finley creepy but charismatic hosts with a secret agenda, not whatever this was. i wish i could rate it more than 1 star but alas.

3.5 stars rounded down to 3.

As a big fan of S. T. Gibson’s Summoner’s Circle series, I was extremely excited to get an early copy of this, so much so that I started it the same day I got approved on Netgalley. But unfortunately this one didn’t really hit for me and I was a bit disappointed…

My main problem was that both the characters and the plot felt bland. It’s especially frustrating when I KNOW the author can write so much better and I just wish this had been through a few more rounds of developmental edits before being published.

The plot itself (what little there was) was really interesting as well… I’m a sucker for a crumbling Manor House tucked away in the bleary countryside with magic bleeding into it. I adore wicked, fairytale-esque fae who may or may not be trying to murder the MC’s. But the plot was so light touch and seemed more focused on trying to shove together romantic pairings any which way the quartet of main characters would have them. I just really wanted more plot and more world building to balance out the smut that oftentimes, just felt shoe-horned in.

The ending however slapped and I wish that had happened about halfway through so I could have read about what happens next because it felt like something interesting had finally happened.

So yeah, bland plot and characters, with smut that felt shoe-horned in. Overall, it was fun, I enjoyed myself but I wouldn’t rush to pick this one up.

Thank you Little, Brown Book Group UK for the arc!

Sadly this book was a dnf for me. 2 stars because I absolutely loved the setting and the vibes! A gothic mansion in the remote Scottish countryside where wicked and evil faeries hide in the underground waiting for their time to overtake the land - right up my alley! I even enjoyed the characters, especially the mysterious vibes around the owner of the mansion and her groundskeeper.
Sadly it’s mostly p*rn with a plot, too little plot for my liking, and I could probably have tolerated that if the relationship between the characters wouldn’t have been insta lust. Worse insta love. Between all the character pairings individually. For me it felt lazy and unbelievable, and made me so annoyed I put the books down.

This book? Immaculate, give me 14 of em. Gibson has a range and God damn does it work.
Savage blooms was 100% 🔥 and needs to be on everyone's shelf.