In the push and pull factors of migration, there are only two factors that cause people to leave the places where they’re born: climate and employment. (Yes, resources fall under climate.) In They Bloom at Night, the coastal town of Mercy once held a big Vietnamese immigrant population, but in reality Vietnamese immigrants of the 20th century settled mostly in California and then all over the American coastline in varying population sizes so long as they had access to the water. Sugar Land, Texas, would’ve been the largest population closest to the setting in the book due to its proximity to the Padre Islands and the Gulf of Mexico. 

Those immigrants left their birthplace behind, but not their ways. That theme, of being a child in a new world trying to find yourself when your culture has no term for you; really, it has no concept of you, isn’t a new one in this genre, but the way in which author Trang Thanh Tran approaches it from this angle of gender identity and sense of parental apathy really adds a sharp melancholy to the internal struggles and grief that Noon, our protagonist, is weighed down by throughout this whole book. 

That there is the problem: Out of this whole book, I only liked Noon. The Louisiana setting felt too obvious and an easy target for the plotline. The male characters felt like caricatures of rednecks in the deep south and it kept throwing me off. Covey, the main supporting character in the book, felt like a supporting character I’ve seen in several other YA novels in the vein of this one and I felt like I could honestly predict her movements and decisions. Then there was Noon’s backstory, which is one I’ve read before in YA novels with leads of all sorts. What saves this backstory from being called out is how it affects the entire plot and not just Noon. 

I just wished for more from this book. It was one of my most-anticipated reads of the first quarter of the year. 

I was provided a copy of this title by the author and publisher via Netgalley. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. All reviews rated three stars or lower will not appear on my social media. Thank you.