You can see it in the way Ari and Hector coexist with each other in the kitchen. It’s the beauty of doing something simple, like baking, with someone you love. Love in Bloom is expressed in the small things. At no point did anyone say a bigoted word or even express any self-angst in regard to this mlm-romance, and it was beautiful and refreshing. That realness also extends to his friends, who talk and interact exactly the way a real group of friends would.īut more than the characters being very human, it touches on very human themes-not knowing what you want, feeling the joy being sucked out of something you once loved because you come to associate it with obligation, the experience of growing up and finding the value in taking responsibility for your own actions.Īs a love story, it embraces a trope that the world could use more of: it’s a queer romance where being queer is not part of the drama of it. Sometimes the way he acts doesn’t match the way he says he feels, and it makes me want to grab him by the shoulders and demand to know why he’s being like this, but essentially it just makes him feel very real. The uncertainty Ari is grappling with is perfectly characteristic of his age-I’ve graduated high school, what now? Ari feels extremely real, especially when he acts in ways that are frustrating.

Ari’s uncertainty about what he wants to do with his future underpins everything-particularly his feelings for Hector, which act as both a complication and a potential solution for Ari’s questions, which ultimately crystallize as “what do I want?”Īs a coming of age story, it’s relatable. I spent time debating if I wanted to categorize Bloom as “ultimately” a coming of age story or “ultimately” a love story. My favorite pages have no words at all, but they convey a sense of calmness and longing that stuck with me long after I was finished reading. It’s simple, even understated, with its two-tone coloring, but it tugs at my emotions in ways I simply didn’t expect. My first reaction to this book was something along the lines of “this is extremely cute and good, oh my god, it’s so cute,” interspersed between incoherent babbling. Hector’s calming presence and passion for baking start to change things in Ari’s life as the two teens, slowly and naturally, fall in love. In an attempt to get him to change his mind, Ari hires someone to help out around the bakery-Hector Gallea, a Samoan teenager who’s as kind as he is strong. Unable to afford to go to music school, he wants to move to the city with his friends to see if they can make something of themselves with their band, but his father won’t have it. Bloom Savanna Ganucheau (artist), Kevin Panetta (writer)īloom is the story of Ari Kyrkos, a Greek teenager who feels suffocated by the expectation he’ll continue working in his family’s struggling bakery.

Bloom kevin panetta age rating