Boring or Provocative? A Look at Savage Blooms by S.T. Gibson
Information
- Goodreads: 3.71 out of 709 Ratings
- Age Range: Adult
- Genre: Romance, Erotica, Gothic, Fantasy Romance
- Series: Unearthly Delights, Book 1
Summary
Adam and Nicola are best friends who definitely aren’t in love with each other, why would you ask? He takes her on a trip with him and it ends with the two being left at the mercy of Eileen and Finley. They waste absolutely no time getting into kinky stuff and completely ignore the obvious signs that Eileen and Finley are probably up to something. Also, there’s faeries.
I wish I could say this was fun, but I found it to be so, so boring. S.T. Gibson says that this is porn with plot. Fun, I can get behind that. I have an entire post about letting women read porn. I love a spicy read every now and then. So I went into this with expectations of at least enjoying Gibson’s vibes and spicy scenes. For something that is porn with plot and a ton of content warnings, the scenes in this felt so lackluster to what they could’ve been. More so, the plot was basically no where in sight. The characters were annoying. There was nothing about this that felt like S.T. Gibson to me other than the atmosphere- which was as phenomenal as she always does.
Review
Starting with the characters, there’s some good things here. All of Gibson’s characters have something about them that I think can be relatable, even if its exaggerated or the kind of qualities we have in the back of our minds but try really hard to not act on. Gibson is phenomenal of bringing characters to life in a way that makes them feel flawed and so real, even if we desperately wish they weren’t. That being said, they just aren’t interesting. Which is weird because we have a boy who is seeking to see the magical place his grandpa always told him about, a girl who grew up in the system and has an intense fear of abandonment and an air of whimsy, a man who both loves and hates the woman he grew up with and has a relationship with, and a woman with a chronic illness doing whatever it takes to save herself. These people should not be boring, but they are. I just could not find it in myself to care about anything they were going through.
Gibson’s prose is always stunning. It hasn’t quite gotten up to A Dowry of Blood for me, but it’s gorgeous. She has a way of weaving in a heady atmosphere that almost keeps the reader in a chokehold. Before you know it, you’ve finished the book. She’s insanely talented and wonderful. Unfortunately, only the atmosphere of this book was what I enjoyed. There is no plot, unless maybe you count the first and last chapters. It’s quite honestly just porn, but not even really porn that’s great? It was a bummer for sure.
I don’t really have a lot more to say about this one. I was looking forward to it and I can see why people will enjoy it. There’s a group relationship – 2 main ‘couples’ that enjoy one another – and the dynamics between them are interesting. I like that there’s not really a ‘hierarchy’ – everyone is interested in each other. But there’s also a lot of jealousy, miscommunication, abuse, and toxicity. There’s also somewhat-but-not-quite incest which I couldn’t get into. A couple who grew together as brother and sister and call one another brother and sister and then a couple that are kind of cousins by legality but not blood. Not fond of that. But it is stunning, it’s atmospheric, it’s spicy, and it’s got deadly faeries. I’d say give it a try, but be cautious of your expectations.