Savage Blooms by S.T. Gibson – Review

Published: October 7, 2025

Publisher: Redhook

Series: Unearthly Delights #1

Genre: Fantasy, Romance

Pages: 460 (Kindle)

My Rating: 3 Stars

A copy of this book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Synopsis:
Adam has been in love with his best friend Nicola since college, but the closest he can come to admitting his feelings is inviting her to travel with him to Scotland in search of a legendary cave from his grandfather’s bedtime stories. When a storm washes out the road, Adam and Nicola find themselves at the mercy of Eileen, an eccentric aristocrat, and Finley, her brooding groundskeeper. The Americans quickly get more than they bargained for as they become entangled in Eileen and Finley’s world of mind games, kink, and ancient enchantment.

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S.T. Gibson is known for strange stories with tons of sexual tension, but even though that theme is consistent, not every one of them works for me. For instance, I really love The Summoner’s Circle series, but Savage Blooms didn’t quite work for me. To be clear, I love the premise – two friends jaunt to Scotland to uncover family history and they find a reclusive rich woman and her gardener. The Kirkfoyle family is supposedly cursed by faeries that drive each member of the family mad in hopes to do away with all of them so they can take over the lands of Craigmar once again.

This follows Adam and his friend Nicola as they journey to find the connection between the Kirkfoyles and Adam’s grandfather, the only he ever loved. When they meet a large Scottish man named Finley in a pub they go back to weathered and brooding Craigmar with him where they expect to meet the lord of the manor. What they actually find is the lovely Eileen, who styles herself as the lord and romps around in what I imagine to be traditional English riding dressage. This is entirely incorrect of course, but the brain does what the brain does. She’s like a sickly Victorian child, plagued by headaches and chronic illness and the voices of the fae who haunt the Kirkfoyle line and drive them mad. Finley and Eileen are secretly plotting something nefarious but it’s unclear what – they just sort of reference it to one another periodically. Adam and Nicola are entirely sucked in by their strange yet totally hot hosts who like to play games that devolve into sex.

I feel that this entirely sums up the story. Just forget the fae are even there like ninety percent of the time. The whole plot of the book could honestly be summed up as “it’s a weird sex thing”. The fae are extraneous, though when they do appear it is at least threatening and they aren’t sexy winged humanoids. Honestly, if it weren’t for all the spicy bits this book would be awfully boring and I was really hoping for some good plot. If, however, you like character-centric books with copious open-door sex scenes you might really like this.

Savage Blooms was not the book for me, which was kind of a let down. Even though I ultimately didn’t enjoy it (all spice, no substance) it was a breeze to read through. I should have known what I was getting into when I saw the weirdly suggestive plum on the cover. Savage Blooms is also the first in a trilogy and I’m not planning on continuing on, as I thought this story could have easily been told in a single volume.