Trang Thanh Tran's sophomore novel, They Bloom at Night, may be best described as Annihilation meets Speak. Tran develops a deeply unsettling narrative that takes place in a frightening version of our world where living creatures take on unknowable, monstrous forms.
The small town of Mercy, La., has been almost entirely claimed by a red algae bloom. Anyone who remains survives by the skin of their teeth, including 16-year-old Nhung ("Noon" to non-Vietnamese locals) who ekes out a living by fishing the dangerous tides in her father's boat, Wild Things. Noon's mother refuses to leave Mercy, believing her lost husband and son are still there, alive in different, aquatic forms. When a government scientist goes missing, wannabe despot Jimmy Boudreaux, legal owner of Wild Things, uses the boat as leverage to force Noon and her mother to do his bidding: find the thing that is stalking people from the water or lose their home. Noon's mother wants to refuse, convinced the creature is "gia đình. Family"; Noon simply wants to survive.
As in Tran's first novel, the Bram Stoker Award-winning She Is a Haunting, the author's brilliant, visceral descriptions slink over the skin and dig into the marrow: "One eye has been picked from its socket, leaving the hole bloodred.... I recognize the angle of her pale, peeling jaw." The horror grows as Noon's home, relationships, and even body are broken down and reformed to suit the new environment. Tran fluidly builds a novel that incorporates family trauma, sexual assault, gender identity, and climate change amid a lethal environment where, Noon learns, "the monsters have always been human." --Siân Gaetano, children's and YA editor, Shelf Awareness