Caffeinated Reviewer | Bloom by Robbie Couch
16th Mar
Narrated by Lee Osorio & Mia Hutchinson-Shaw, Bloom by Robbie Couch is a touching, heartwarming tale about love, loss, healing and new beginnings. Perfect for fans of A Man Called Ove. Psst! Have you watered your plants lately?
Bloom
by Robbie Couch
Narrator: Lee Osorio, Mia Hutchinson-Shaw
Length: 5 hours and 51 minutes
Genres: Fiction
Source: Publisher
Purchase*: Amazon | Audible *affiliate
Rating: 
Narration: 5 cups Speed: 1.3x
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.
All the feels in a good way. This story about loss and new beginnings revolves around three characters. First, we have Sloan, who is mourning the loss of her father and getting ready to embark on a new chapter with her upcoming nuptials. Next we have Morris, Sloan’s stepfather, whose life seemed to stop after the sudden death of his beloved husband, Fred. Finally, there is Jade, one of Fred’s many plants who desperately needs water and is nearing the last days of her life.
I devoured the story Couch brought us and loved the relationship that developed between Sloan and Morris, even as I screamed, water the plants! Loss is never easy, especially when you feel you can’t talk about it, and that is where Sloan is. Fred hurt her family and before things could be resolved he died. Morris’s life had just bloomed when Fred was alive, and now he has shut himself off. He doesn’t realize the impact he has had on others.
I cannot believe the author made me connect with a houseplant(s), but he did. I desperately wanted Jade and the two plants sitting in the picture window to survive, and they became important characters. Even the old tree in the yard had a personality.
While the story deals with grief, I found it uplifting as new bonds and a mending unfolded. If you loved A Man Called Ove as much as I did, that you need to listen to Bloom. Lee Osorio & Mia Hutchinson-Shaw and brought Morris, Jade and Sloan to life as well as the secondary characters from Sloan’s nosy aunt to her siblings. This is a story that will stay with you.
About Robbie Couch
Robbie Couch writes contemporary and speculative young-adult fiction. He is the author of If I See You Again Tomorrow, Blaine for the Win, and The Sky Blues, which was a 2022 Barnes & Noble Young-Adult Book of the Year finalist and Library Guild Selection. Robbie is originally from small town Michigan and lives in Los Angeles.
About Lee Osorio
Lee is an actor, playwright, and audiobook narrator. As an actor, he is a seven-time Suzi Bass Award Nominee and won for Best Male Lead Actor in 2018 for Richard II. He identifies as a queer, Latino, Democratic Socialist, Christian with Buddhist leanings. Lee loves spending time outdoors and his favorite places are National Parks. He has a special place in his heart for the Grand Canyon, and his retirement plan is to be a Volunteer Park Ranger there. He’s a dog dad to two chihuahua mixes adopted from local rescue orgs. Lee holds an MFA in Acting from Brown/Trinity Rep (RIP). He is a proud member of Actor’s Equity and SAG/AFRTRA.
About Mia Hutchinson-Shaw
Mia Hutchinson-Shaw (she/her/hers) is a queer actor based in NYC. Mia creates soulful, saucy, and lovable characters with her arsenal of accents and flare for the fun. She trained in the UK at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, earning a BA in acting with honors, and was raised between Massachusetts and Montana by a ceramics artist and woodworker who moonlight as professors. She crafts narration and characters with lots of heart and big appetites for adventure. When not working as an actor, Mia is thrifting for her next outrageous, colorful clothing item, getting on her soap box about low-waste living, or hunting down handmade jewelers for a new item for her collection of giant earrings. Her favorite is a pair of hot pink Galahs (a bird from Australia). Her favorite genres to narrate are YA, middle grade, romance, classics (give her that chewy language!), fantasy, and LGBTQIA+.
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About Kimberly
Kimberly is a coffee loving book addict who reads and listens to fictional stories in all genres. Whovian, Ravenclaw, Howler and proud Nonna. She owns and manages Caffeinated PR. The coffee is always on and she is ready to chat.
