Review of Tonia Brown’s ‘The Blooming’

The Blooming is a story of a group of documentary film producers who take a trip with a botanist to a remote island in the Pacific so that he can record his search for a very rare bloom that he has been searching for most of his professional life. The scientist only reveals that myths indicate that those who touch these blooms will assume the power of the gods. What he does not reveal, but becomes apparent to the crew very rapidly, is that those exposed to the golden, shimmering pollen of these blooms are gripped by a lust like nothing they have ever felt before. Where this lust turns to is revealed in this erotic tale of lust and violence that hits fast and leaves you gasping for air (or gasping for more, dependent on your mood as you read this story).

As a fan of zombie fiction but someone has admittedly not read much in the erotica genre, I have to say that this story definitely titillates as you flip the pages, dreadfully waiting for what you know is coming: the all consuming lust turning into an all consuming need to feed. This combination is potent and left me as a reader feeling vulnerable in a way that other zombie stories haven’t made me feel, because of the potency of the mix. Zombies are very freaky monsters to begin with, but combining our carnal passions with cannibalism almost seems a very disturbing combination. We speak of our desire for flesh as it relates to lust and say we want to eat someone up. We nibble, we bite, we are consumed with passion for both our partners as well as our food. Tonia Brown has made the figurative literal with this story, and if the idea of being cannibalized by zombies had you feeling disturbed before, the idea of being devoured, both literally and figuratively, by your lover should have you pretty much freaked out (or turned on…once again, if that is your thing).

The only complaints I could come up with here is that there were a few typos, which were minor and didn’t distract from the story, and the fact that this story was short. The latter isn’t really a complaint, but I have to say that I wasn’t ready to let go so quickly with this story that I read so quickly and enjoyed quite a bit.

The Blooming can be found on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Blooming-Tonia-Brown/dp/0615362281/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1274810423&sr=1-1