This book felt familiar to me, and a bit too predictable. I feel like the author was trying to create suspense, but it wasn’t delivered. There was a definite creep factor to this story, I’m just not sure I loved it enough.

This was fantastic! I really enjoyed the spooky vibes. I found I had a bit of a hard time connecting with the plot, but the lush atmosphere of the world more than made up for it.

As I was reading this, I felt like I had read it before. I had. Only The Dead and the Dark was much better. We've got small town "horror" with the tiniest sprinkling of LGBTQIA+. And I mean the tiniest. The cover is gorgeous, which is the first sign I should've not requested this.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher.

Scheduled to post 3/11/23.

There are going to be spoilers in this review. I don't think I can talk about the issues I had with it without spoiling. So if you don't want to be spoiled, stop reading now.

WHERE DARKNESS BLOOMS is Children of the Corn but with grown ass men instead of kids and sunflowers instead of corn. It certainly has the threads of being creepy but the motives, the underlying theme, and the character development all make this story fizzle out to little more than a disappointing deflated balloon.

The underlying theme of Handmaid's Tale-esque subjugation of women (in this case without the forced birth and with ritualistic slaughter) is just a tired trope at this point, made all the more tired because we're still dealing with this nonsense today. So if the author isn't doing something particularly inventive with it, it's just old and boring and I absolutely found myself thinking "oh, this again?" when I was reading. From the intro I hoped it wasn't going to just be women and that the dude's wife was just convenient, but nope. It's women in perpetuity. So that's cool.

When we discover that the girls' mothers are still alive, I was hoping for them to be incapacitated somewhere, but nope. They're all living together in a house, just sitting around and gardening, waiting for the day their daughters come through the corn, I mean, sunflower stalks to safety on their own. And the reason they didn't do anything? The sunflowers wouldn't let them. I'm sorry, what? The thing was, there was no reason for them leaving their daughters behind. They just up and left and saved themselves and hoped nothing bad would come of their kids. I'M SORRY, WHAT? And the girls were like oh yeah, totally. That's fine. We're cool. No worries. It was so absurd and so beyond the realm of suspension of disbelief that I couldn't. Those women didn't tear the earth apart trying to find a way to get to their daughters? THOSE WOMEN JUST UP AND LEFT THEM, SAVED THEMSELVES, AND CROSSED THEIR FINGERS THAT THEIR DAUGHTERS WOULD BE OKAY IN A TOWN THAT SYSTEMATICALLY SLAUGHTERS WOMEN? And they didn't contribute to that same patriarchal system . . . how? Either they didn't want their kids and were really good at pretending, or they're just awful parents and probably shouldn't have had them to begin with.

And then the climax of the story was just one giant deus ex machina. The only character who did anything to save anyone was Bo, and it wasn't even on page. Not that I need blood and gore and vicious revenge or anything. But to have that pivotal moment that actually did save the girls just be fade to black was mind boggling to me. The rest of it, the ghosts just randomly appeared after not being present aside from a faint whisper the entire story and led them out of town. WHY NOW? There was no answer for that other than because reasons. Because the book needed to end and there was no real way for them to get out except for those ghosts, I guess.

The town itself is, as I'm lead to believe, inaccessible to people from the outside and people inside can't leave. So . . . everyone's inbred? How many people can possibly be in that town, let alone people who are capable of procreating something other than a Hapsburg? I wasn't under any impression that Bishop was anything other than a modern, albeit rural, town. If they're cut off, how are they stocking their shelves? How do they have cars? Cell phones? Computers? Televisions? How does any of this exist in this town? It didn't even have a paved road. And apparently no real medical anything. This doesn't make any sense.

The characters themselves were largely interchangeable. Bo was the only one who really stood out because she had some anger issues. But only just. The four of them, plus the three mothers, didn't appear all that necessary as stand-alone characters. I had a hard time keeping track of who was who pretty much up until the end, again, aside from Bo. Same thing with the guys. Even now I don't remember which is Evan and which is Caleb. They were interchangeable in the story.

I'm not sure what the selling point of this book is. I'm guessing the language it's written in, but it's not something that stands out. I didn't find it particularly flowery in a way that I would enjoy. I could see it was trying. But among the very poorly built world, the tired tropes, the lackluster motivations, and the bland characters, the most beautiful writing in the world wouldn't have saved it for me. WHERE DARKNESS BLOOMS was just a total disappointment. So much potential and the execution was just undercooked and unseasoned, at best.

1

I need more books that give of Children of the Corn vibes. I feel this struggled with having too many perspectives, but was overall creepy enough to make up for it.

I really enjoyed this book and it had a few twists and turns I didn’t expect. I loved getting to see all four girls’ perspectives and seeing how each of them affected the story.

Women of Bishop constantly go missing, and it’s no big deal. Even when three mothers go missing two years before, leaving behind their daughters. Delilah, Bo, Whitney, and Jude have adjusted to life without their mothers. Soon they’ll uncover the secrets of Bishop.

There is huge potential for this YA horror book. The storyline is interesting (though the synopsis and the prologue is a little spoilery).

Whitney is a great YA LGBTQ+ character. She’s represented rather well, and it was one of the things I appreciated about the book.

The multiple POVs all ran together. It was difficult to tell most of the girls apart, as there was no differentiation between them. Each scene is also retold every time through the different perspectives. This made the story rather slow, but also too fast.

Overall, there was so much room for this to be an intriguing horror novel, if the prologue was left out and there was distinction between the characters.

Thank you Netgalley, and Wednesday books for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

"Bishop just wasn't the kind of place that could satisfy restless, hungry women with sharp edges."
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Starting with the characters.. I feel like each girl had a distinct trait/personality that defined them in a sense but also had a common roughness to them that made them all relatable and realistic. They just weren't interesting enough for any of them to feel like a true MC. It was kind of confusing actually. None of them felt strong enough to be an MC but they weren't so weak that they felt like side characters or were truly boring either.
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The atmosphere was dark and eerie and so descriptive it was like being transported into the eye of the storm. Literally. I swear I could feel the crackling electricity in the air, smell the impending rain, hear the whispering wind through the sunflowers. Beautiful.
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I see what the author was going for and the concept is definitely there but I never got the hard hitting "wow" moment that I hoped for which made the story itself seem average. It was a bit too predictable and slow overall for me. The ending was interesting and I feel like it was left a bit open ended but I'm still questioning some things and just asking "Why?" For a debut, though, I'm not upset at all and could see others thoroughly enjoying it.
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Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher and the author for providing me with an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This book was so different than I originally was expecting, but still just as good.

This one reminded me a lot of House of Dust by Noah Broyles. Taking place in a creepy old town where something dark is hiding, and has been for a very long time. It also had a Wilder Girls type feel where the girls are in a claustrophobic type setting and stuck away from the outer world, with these terrible things happening just to them.

I really liked how the sunflowers played a big role in the storyline. The way they first start popping up, the Whispers and their watching ways. I also loved how not only the sunflowers, but the wind had human-like qualities. It made for such a creepy vibe.

From start to finish, this book sucked me in, and it was so interesting how it all came together.

The idea was interesting, the cover gorgeous of course, but the idea falls apart in the writing. I was absolutely worried about the writing not being strong enough to carry it apart from other YA writings. I will probably check out the author's other works in the future.

A town where woman seem to disappear every 6 months.
4 girls who mother's disappeared live together and try to unravel the mystery.
Sunflowers that want blood
Evil men
Too be honest nothing is really explained

This book was one with great atmosphere. The setting is well done to the point it almost feels like a fantasy setting. The mystery is well-built and interesting. The characters and differing POVs give the story depth. The use of the flowers was enjoyable and it made the story feel symbolic without being something that takes itself overly-seriously.

'Where Darkness Blooms' is an atmospheric YA horror with four female protagonists: Delilah, Jude, Whitney, and Bo. The girls are left in the wake of their mothers' disappearances, trying to scrape together a life in the town of Bishop. Bishop is an eerie place, prone to mysterious accidents, deaths and disappearances which only seem to impact women.

This was a good, thrilling book with a fast-pace and engaging unraveling of the plot. It was difficult to keep the girls straight at first, but their personalities did shine through as the story progressed. I think my struggles came down to the quick introduction of so many characters so quickly. I appreciated the implicit and explicit diversity throughout the book. There were a few scenes in which I found it hard to keep up with all of the four girls, rushing in and out back-to-back. This made the overall timeframe of the book hard to track for me too. One of the girls would mention that an event that I thought had happened that same day had actually happened "a few days ago". This wasn't a book-breaking issue for me, since generally these kinds of twisty-turny horror books can benefit from an element of confusion and disorientation. The biggest issue I did have with the book regards the ending and some of the "justification" for why characters didn't reach out to the girls. A little bit more magical explaining away could have helped, even if it was just that- magic.

I enjoyed the overall messages the book had to offer through the lens of each girl's journey. There were points at which I was nervous the antagonists wouldn't be punished or that they'd be redeemed in some way. I'm glad that Hannah didn't try to force redemption or sympathy arcs for characters who, in my opinion, didn't deserve it.

Delilah, Bo, Whitney, and Jude have been living together in a little Kansas town called Bishop ever since their mothers disappeared two years ago. Now there's talk of a memorial, even though there's never been a conclusion about if their mothers took off or died. But Bishop has a history of women dying suddenly or disappearing, and each of the girls is finding that out in her own way... and sometimes it's whispered by the big yellow sunflowers that seem to grow everywhere...

I really enjoy this genre of horror where plants are creeping in - this would sit nicely on shelves alongside Burn Our Bodies Down, What We Harvest, and Blood and Salt. The multiple narrators made it a little hard to really connect to any of the main characters, although it did allow for some great tension especially between Jude and Delilah, who are into the same guy. There was just enough of all the horror tropes that I love - library research, weird notes, wind storms, stalking plants - to keep the pace fast. I would have liked to go a little deeper into the history and how exactly this pact with the land was forged, but overall it was a fast-paced read for those who like rural horror.

“It wasn't so much Bishop itself that she had to be afraid of. It was at the edges where bad things happened.”

Bishop is a small town surrounded by sunflowers that is plagued with missing and dead women. The story revolves around four girls and their quest to discover what happened to their mothers, even as their own secrets come to light.

This was such a deliciously creepy story! I loved the spooky small-town atmosphere and the characters. It was so hard to put down and it's just beautifully haunting.

The town of Bishop is known for two things: its sunflowers and its missing women, so when three mothers go missing, nobody bats an eye and the case is closed. Instead, it’s up to their daughters to uncover the startling truth.

Where Darkness Blooms by Andrea Hannah is an atmospheric Midwest gothic that transports readers to the rural, small town of Bishop.

I first fell in love with the book's incredible surrealist cover and the opening prologue where we get the town’s origins completely hooked me in.

However, as the story goes on, the premise itself really strained my suspension of disbelief. For instance, it baffles me that Bo waited two years to investigate her mother’s extremely suspicious disappearance when time is of the essence for a missing persons case.

And then there’s the big plot twist reveal.

We learn at the end that the mothers are actually alive but the sunflowers barred their return. I mean, phones exist. Why couldn't they have called? Why would loving mothers let their daughters live in a town where women and girls are used as human sacrifices and not do anything about it? This would have made more sense if the story took place in the pre 1900s or if the story had taken place over a shorter period of time and the power had temporarily gone out.

Overall, the writing is gorgeous at a sentence level, but the story itself contains way too many glaring questions for it to feel believable to me.

Thank you, NetGalley and Wednesday Books, for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

3⭐️

<b> Besides, missing women were as much a part of Bishop as the sunflowers and storms.</b>

Whitney, Jude, Delilah, and Bo’s mothers disappeared without a trace 2 years ago in their town that has a history of women mysteriously disappearing or dying. The town is plagued by severe winds and sunflowers that seem to watch you. It’s up to the four of them to uncover Bishop’s secrets and find out the truth about their mothers.

Overall, this book was just okay. I was bored for a lot of it and had a hard time getting into it. The premise is really interesting, and I like the idea of the sunflowers being the women who have died over the years, but it was hard to be creeped out by sunflowers.

Thank you for the opportunity to read this title. I enjoyed the story for the most part, but found some moments a little hard to get through. I feel like there should have been a warning that there were triggering scenes that could be upsetting for some people. Other then that I did enjoy it.

This felt like it was lacking something. I did enjoy the start of the story and the ending was ok. But I just felt like the story overall was just missing something to make it really good.

Quick and Dirty
-YA horror
-gothic fiction
-eerie AF
-Midwestern setting/vibes

Musings
Wow, y’all! This book was a wild ride! I didn’t quite know what to expect when I started the book, having only briefly read the synopsis months ago when I requested the book. I knew it was YA, so my hopes, honestly, weren’t that high. I don’t have the greatest record with YA fiction, but I was willing to get this one a shot. I mean, have you seen the cover? Who wouldn’t want to read a book with that gorgeous cover? Nevertheless, I went in with my eyes open and expectations low. Lucky for me, this book was terrific! I thoroughly enjoyed the premise and the presentation. The book is written from the POV of all four girls, with each girl getting dedicated chapters (which were short, btw). I loved how the story constantly switched between the four characters but still remained linked and linear. The pacing was perfect for me, tense when needed and more relaxed when setting the stage for future events to unfold. There came a time in the book, probably midway, when I legit did not want to put this down. I walked around my kitchen trying to make dinner with a Kindle in my hands (didn’t work very well) because I was so engrossed in the story. But, all good things must come to an end, and, sadly, the ending was a little bit of a letdown for me. I completely understand why the author did what she did, but I wanted a different outcome. The way things tidied up seemed a bit YA for my liking, rather tidy despite the rest of the book is a mess of trauma and grief (in a good way). Overall, I still think this was a terrific read that YA horror fans will love and anyone who has an interest in earth magic will appreciate it. Big marks to this author for such a creative story! I will be on the lookout for more of her work, for sure.