BLOOM, what we all hope we'll have space to do but more often do not

BLOOM
ROBBIE COUCH
Gallery Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: From the New York Times bestselling author of If I See You Again Tomorrow comes a delightful and heartwarming novel about family, love, grief, and one precocious houseplant, that reminds us of the beauty of living a life in full Bloom.

Morris Warner is withering away. After the sudden death of his husband, Fred, he has shut himself off from the world. No more going to movies with friends, or swims in Lake Michigan, instead preferring the quiet loneliness of his history books and Jeopardy episodes with only the cat to hear his answers.

Morris’s stepdaughter, Sloan, feels like she has nowhere to grow. She’s about to get married to the man of her dreams, if only her mother will let her actually plan her own wedding and trust her to build her own life after her father’s death.

Jade is drying out. Literally. As a plant in Morris’s home, she and her plant housemates have been slowly wasting away, leaf by falling leaf, since Fred’s death and Morris’s lack of care. She needs to come up with a plan to make her new owner come back to life, no matter what it takes.

New York Times bestselling author Robbie Couch’s Bloom is a wondrous novel where family, love, kindness, and yes, Mother Nature, triumph.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Masses of w-verbing = one star irrevocably, irretrievably gone.

Y'all need to stop that. Jade wouldn't like it, stolidly practical being that she is. Neither do I.

It's the PoVs...Jade the succulent jade plant, abandoned by Fred's untimely passing and neglected by Morris; Morris the bereft widower of Fred, who's really withering up and giving up his life from grief (been there, bud); and Sloan who's Fred's youngest daughter, stuck in a cesspit of grief for her favorite parent and still going through with her ghastly, Babbitty mother's vision of what her wedding to her one true love Todd ought to be.

It all kicks off as Sloan has a bridezilla moment in the florist shop and runs right TF away from her bickering mother and aunt as each tries to force her own choices on Sloan. Even though she's never been close to Morris, her father's teaching colleague and now his widower she runs to her dad's house to talk to Morris about walking her down the aisle. Maybe a giant middle finger at her mom, who got left by Fred for Morris ten-plus years ago...but also, the more Sloan tries to get up the nerve to ask him for the favor, a damned good idea. She had Morris as a teacher in the aftermath of The Affair, that turned into the happy marriage. Her Babbitty mother was not likely to be supportive of Sloan spending a lot of time with the happy couple. So she has never really been in close contact with Morris for long, and so does not already know how destroyed he was by Fred's death.

It causes Sloan to stop thinking about her rage at her Babbitty mother to begin to do things with and for Morris, starting with rescuing Jade from the dark corner she was absent-mindedly shoved into and forgotten by grieving Morris. It's how Jade survives, even thrives, as the story unfolds with its very grown-up restructuring of family ties among all these players and more. Todd isn't a flashy or noisy character, yet he loves Sloan enough to get along with her Babbitty mother, her snotty sister, her gross brother and invisible brother-in-law.

Deserves a damn medal, does Todd.

I'll cut the book report short to observe the story continues its gentle way through the different parties as each processes the grief and the inevitable regret of loss sinking in, in the most surprising ways that you can never see coming. A lot of old hurts...Sloan was never the daughter her Babbitty mother wanted her to be, Morris was the love of her Babbitty mother's one great love's life with all the terrible pain that brings, Jade is dealt a violence and fears she will actually die this time...all interleafed very deftly, very structurally appropriately. You don't need to know details until you get there.

I'd say the ending felt...irresolute...but it feels exactly like the endpoints of real-life complex family situations feel. It's not The End, it's the place the strands come together, cross into a knot and start a new strand of everyone's interrelationship. If you liked Remarkably Bright Creatures or Love & Saffron, this will appeal to you.