SAVAGE BLOOMS

Ancient fae magic bewitches two friends as they become stranded in a mysterious manor with its seductive inhabitants.

Best friends Adam Lancaster and Nicola Fairweather have been yearning for each other for years, but neither one has made the first move. Following the death of his beloved grandfather in Michigan, Adam decides he wants to find Craigmar, a house that was the location of his grandfather’s magical bedtime stories. The clues his grandfather left behind lead to a small village in Scotland, and Nicola agrees to accompany him there. Both believe that this trip will be just the setting they need to confess their feelings for one another. Their quest takes them to a manor run by Eileen Kirkfoyle and her groundskeeper, Finley Buchanan; a letter left behind by Adam’s grandfather reveals a connection to Eileen’s late grandmother Arabella. When a storm impedes them from driving back to town, and with the promise of searching through the Kirkfoyle family records, Adam and Nicola agree to stay the night. The mood in the manor immediately begins to shift when Adam catches Finley striking Eileen’s bare back with a riding crop in the library, and Nicola’s morning walk with Finley ends in both a “ravenous” kiss and the appearance of a pale figure lurking in the woods. With a mix of kinky sexual exploration and Gothic fae mystery, Gibson knows how to tease in more ways than one. Tension oozes out of every page as the quartet’s attraction becomes more tangled and twisted. A large list of content warnings signals that this is a romance on the darker side, with Eileen assuming the role of puppet master, determined to keep the American tourists close. The book feels like a delicious melodrama, in the most complimentary sense of the term; it’s a magical bacchanalian soap opera where love and hate flip like a switch, with deviance and lust underscoring every interaction.

A toxic polyamorous romance that revels in dark eroticism.