Where Darkness Blooms is a uniquely haunting tale that leaves the reader emotionally depleted in the best way. It is a story about a town shrouded in mystery and riddled with secret magic going back to it's founding. With a slew of untimely disappearances and strange events, it was only a matter if time before someone noticed. Eventually, connections are made and the pieces start coming together.

I had no real expectations yet to my utter surprise, I absolutely loved it. The protagonists were all relatable in their own way while the antagonists were the epitome of human monsters. All in all, I'm incredibly glad to have stumbled upon this book and look forward to reading more from this author.

Voluntarily reviewed after receiving a free copy courtesy of NetGalley, the Publisher and the author, Andrea Hannah.

Where Darkness Blooms by Andrea Hannah is set in the town of Bishop, known for its recurring windstorms and sunflowers, as well as the disappearances of several women. When three more women go missing one stormy night, their daughters are left to pick up the pieces of their lives over the next two years while grappling with a lack of answers in regard to what happened to their mothers. With a belated memorial for their mothers looming, Delilah, Jude, Whitney, and Bo are forced to confront the lies they have been told and deal with the secrets they have kept hidden. The town of Bishop is revealed to have a dark history, founded on blood, and when the girls realize that the town is now craving their own they must find a way to either save themselves or become victims like so many before them.

The cover of this one is absolutely GORG and it's what initially drew me in, but the plot was really compelling to me as well! Something about this one reminded me of Practical Magic, which is not to say this is a witchy book, per se, but the vibes were similar. I did struggle through the book to tell each main character and their mothers apart as there was just a lot going on at all times, but over all this is a great YA and I think the target demographic will absolutely love it.

Thanks so much to St. Martin's Press as well as NetGalley for the opportunity to read an advanced copy of this title in exchange for my honest thoughts ahead of its release on 02/21/2023!

First off, that cover!

The town of Bishop was founded on blood and the land is thirsty for more. Famous for the fields of sunflowers, missing women and the wind. When three women go missing, their daughters are left to pick up the pieces and move on. But how?

Where Darkness Blooms is creepy and atmospheric. It is also quite different and unique. Big props to the author for that. But the pacing was uneven in parts. The synopsis piqued my interest, the cover dazzled me and the prologue drew me in, but I was never won over by the rest of the book.

Told through multiple POV’s, we get to know a bit about the four young women - some more than others. They have been living together and as the memorial for the dead mothers is approaching, they begin to uncover secrets and lies. There is a great deal of sexism going on in this creepy town. In fact, the men don't seem to care that the women are going missing.

This is a YA book, so it is light on the horror. The strongest parts of the book for me were the creepy vibes and atmosphere. Although I enjoyed it, I can’t say that I was wowed by it. Others are enjoying this more than I did, so please read their reviews as well.

3 best friends.
3 men that made them mothers and then left.
3 mothers disappear leaving their kids behind.

Sometimes living in a small town makes you feel trapped and never able to get out. Bishop is a town where you literally cannot leave.

Bishop is known for its massive storms and fields of sunflowers….and women who mysteriously die or go missing without a clue.

Three women go missing leaving behind four daughters. Two years later, a memorial is going to be erected for these women. A terrible storm interrupted the ceremony and uncovers a terrible secret. And so begins the search for what really happened to these three women as well as all of the other women that have disappeared from Bishop.

Delilah is the oldest and tries to take care of the other three girls even though she would like to move in with her boyfriend, Bennett, but his touch literally hurts her body.

Whitney not only lost her mother, she also lost her girlfriend, Eleanor, who dropped dead feet from her front door. Whitney thinks she hears Eleanor through a weathervane in the clearing where the memorial was held.

Jude is Whitney’s twin sister. Jude loves so deeply she can feel the town humming like her own heartbeat. She was secretly in a relationship with Bennett before he met Delilah.

Bo just wants answers. She knows that Bishop has a lot of odd things going on and Bo is sure that the townspeople know why.

Bishop was founded on blood and nothing has been able to satisfy it. One of the four girls might be it’s next victim.

This book was so original. I loved the characters. The writing was so vivid and descriptive. Absolutely beautiful writing. The story just grabbed me and would not let go.

I will definitely have to pick up other books from Andrea Hannah.

I received this book in exchange for my honest opinion.

The amount of twists in this book were wild, but incredible to follow along. Murder, betrayal, lust and love - it has it all. Hannah is able to tell this chilling story from many different perspectives which get the reader to be fully invested in all the female characters.

From now on, when I see a sunflower I will think of this book. And there is a good chance it will send a chill down my spine.

I got an ARC.

DNF around 20%.

There were too many narrators that were indistinct. I couldn't tell any of the girls apart. For a while I was convinced they were all sisters, because the text isn't even clear until around 20% that there were three mothers involved.

Cover is by far the best part of the book. I am saying that despite living in Kansas and needing a bloodthirsty sunflower horror to make me enjoy the flowers that are EVERYWHERE. This book could have kept me up and stayed on my mind just because Kansas is really into sunflowers. But I couldn't even finish it.

Book Review: Where Darkness Blooms by Andrea Hannah

Where Darkness Blooms is a young adult supernatural thriller about a cursed town and four young women stuck within it. It also contains elements of horror and mystery.

The town of Bishop, Kansas is known for fields of sunflowers, erratic weather and the unnaturally high death count of women and girls over the years. Twin sisters Whitney and Jude along with their friends Bo and Delilah are living together after their three mothers disappeared two years earlier. Tensions between them begin to mount as the weather becomes increasingly unpredictable and the city wants to honor their mothers with a memorial statue. Each girl is keeping a secret but if they want to survive this town and find their mothers they’ll need to finally work together.

Where Darkness Blooms is kind of a feminist Children of the Corn. There are definitely some parts where you’ll need to suspend disbelief a little to believe that four young women can be this isolated (no field trips? no school shopping in a nearby larger town? no family vacations to Six Flags? no true crime sub-reddits about that a weird deadly town this is?) but it is still an enjoyable atmospheric thriller about what can happen if a greedy family is willing to sacrifice the women and girls they pretend to love to keep the status quo.

I recommend it to young adult book lovers that enjoy paranormal stories with some mystery and horror.

4 stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The town of Bishop is creepy. Surrounded by sunflowers and plagued by random windstorms the population of this town is small and getting smaller, because people just keep disappearing, or showing up dead. The town seems numb to the deaths happening, and almost indifferent to the disappearances happening around them. Women are the ones vanishing for the most part, but there were a number of questions I had regarding some of the men in the town that also disappeared.

First, this novel had a very emotional impact on me. I had to wait a few days (weeks?) after finishing to write my review, because I am still super mad at those moms! To leave your children undefended in a town that you know is sinister really grinds my gears. I'm not a mother, but I just cannot wrap my head around the believability behind three women just leaving their daughters behind (particularly with targets on their back!). But isn't that what one of things a book should do for you? Make you a little bit crazy?

Each one of our main characters had a distinct voice and individual journey during the overarching storyline. It allowed for the reader to connect to each character individually. The tension was great, and I was constantly waiting for tragedy to strike or some sinister revelation, but I had a lot of questions about how this town worked within the contemporary world, which pulled me out a bit. I am confused about the functionality and believability of the setting. Bishop is existing in the contemporary world. The characters watch the same shows that are out now, they have cellphones, access to contemporary products and yet no one can leave the town. What happens during deliveries? When produce and products are brought into the town? Mail? Why are those people allowed to leave, why do we not interact with a single "out of town" character for the duration of the story while we are in Bishop? I'm not sure how the world worked so I wasn't able to full immerse in the story, but I found the overall story enjoyable. It was creepy, diverse, emotional, and kept me on the edge of my seat.

Thank you @NetGalley, @WednesdayBooks and @OrangeSkyAudio for the #gifted ALC of WHERE DARKNESS BLOOMS!

WHERE DARKNESS BLOOMS serves up deliciously creepy Kansas, small farm town, gothic vibes. Is that a sub-genre or did I just invite that?

Either way, I hope that gives you an idea of how this book is. I mean the sunflowers and vines creepily wrapping around a girl on the cover should have been your first clue.

There is something very wrong with the town of Bishop. Women keep dying or just disappear. And strangely, no one seems very concerned about it. WDB is told through the POV of Delilah, Whitney, Jude and Bo. Their mothers all disappeared on the same day two years ago without a trace.

I’m glad that the audiobook had a different narrator for each girl, otherwise I think I would have had a hard time telling them apart. Sometimes they seemed like one character. And I could not keep track of the different boys/men. They all blended together which I kind of wonder if that was an intentional choice by the author.

The first half was intriguing but slow. It wasn’t until the girls finally came together to share what they’d all discovered separately that the plot really picked up.

If creepy, small town mysteries with a hint of magic (and horror) are your thing, then check this one out!

WHERE DARKNESS BLOOMS comes out on February 21st!

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4856921433
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Where Darkness Blooms is an absolute triumph of a novel. Part Wilder Girls, part Wink Poppy Midnight, and part Sadie, the story is a stunning tale of patriarchial violence enacted against generation after generation of women, told in the form of a horrific fairytale. While there were a few plot holes and leftover questions, these pitfalls were quickly overshadowed by Hannah's stunning prose and the four complex girls at the heart of the story. One of the strongest aspects of this book was the use of multiple protagonists, each with their own POV. Just as the girls were trapped by the sunflowers, I found myself unable to escape the twisted town of Bishop until the story was over—and even then, I still couldn't shake the lasting effects of the novel.

The premise of the book is good and it does have some creepy vibes but a large part of the mystery of what is going on happens right in the prologue. So that leaves the reader just trying to figure out who (which seems kind of obvious) and if the girls will get out of town or die trying. I would have liked a lot more creepy stuff going on slowly and build up to something bigger than to get most of the information up front.

The town of Bishop has a sordid history of women going missing, never to return. No one bats an eye when three more women go missing, leaving their daughters behind in a shared house full of memories. But secrets come unburied, and soon the girls will find answers to their town's blood-soaked history.

There's some beautifully gruesome evocative imagery in this book, and it's a solid entry into "girls getting revenge on the patriarchy" subgenre of YA/horror.

In the eerie town of Bishop the sunflowers whisper. From its founding to the present Bishop is a place people don't leave. They disappear. Women specifically. Amidst wind storms four teenagers are on their own as they search for the truth behind the disappearances.

The story gets off to a creepy start in the prologue. The first chapter though slowly creeps along as the characters are introduced. We get a chapter for each of them and this takes up a good amount of time. Because they are all in the same situation the characters and their chapters feel repetitive.

The eerie setting is described well but the story is more mystery than horror. Overall there are things that are not fully explained or believable. There is a message in the story that doesn't quite work for me. It might for others.

Where Darkness Blooms by Andrea Hannah was a suspenseful rollercoaster ride that I didn't want to get off of. This book grabs your your attention from the beginning and never let's go. Each of the characters were so unique and well-written, and I found myself feeling mixed emotions for each of them. The concept of this book was so interesting when unique--women being sacrificed to the land by male descendants to keep the town in their control and protected from being destroyed by the land. It is a different concept for a monster story happening in a small, isolated town. In addition to sacrifice and murder, the story includes rape and physical assaults which can be triggering for some. Overall, I enjoyed this book and look forward to reading more by this author.

Thank you to Netgwlley and the publisher for letting me read an eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This novel had a prologue that hooked me immediately. The story itself was overall enjoyable but I did feel like a lot was unexplained and the story would’ve benefited from more history on the how and why. The characters were interesting but I found Jude to be aggravating and Bennett to be downright inexplicable. The characterization of the men in this novel would’ve benefitted from a more thorough history as their motivation of “appease the town” just isn’t enough.

Thank you to NetGalley and Wednesday Books for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Okay, overall this book took me a little to get in to and left me wanting a tad more from the story - it was a decent read overall. What worked for me was the setting - I thought the author introduced the setting and the creepy vibes started right away. Loved the storms and the sunflowers and the vibes.
What I struggled with was having four girls and four POVS - I thought it took me a really long time to distinguish who they were and the amount of characters we needed to follow and keep track of. I had to go back and figure out who was who a few times until I got used to them.

Hmm, this was a really interesting concept, but sadly, just wasn't for me. The prologue was very creepy, and I was hoping the rest of the book would have a similar feel but it unfortunately didn't.

I think there were too many POV characters for me personally to get invested in each of all of the characters. I did appreciate that it was written 3rd person instead of 1st person though- it made it a bit easier to keep track of what was going on.

I think people will like this, but I personally just never got invested.

3.5 Stars-

It was a book I wanted to love so much but it was very slow moving at times for my personal taste. Additionally there was a lot of POV's and I personally don't like jumping around a bunch like that.

The storyline itself was rather intriguing as the monster is not quite what you'd expect. It's a very well written story with spooky vibes that fell too flat because of the changing perspectives.

I've read some other reviews that were absolutely floored by how amazing this book is so if this book sounds like it's your cup of tea- pick it up! I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Thank you to Netgalley and Wednesday Books/St. Martin’s Press for the ARC. All views reflected are my own.

3.5 stars. This was very interesting as the monster in this novel was an entire town. Bishop, KS is only really hospitable to men. The land has been gorging on the blood of its women for generations. Bo, Jude, Whitney and Delilah seemed to have lost their mothers to this curse. It has been 2 years since they disappeared and no one knows what really happened. Or more like they're definitely not saying. The sunflowers whisper and the wind devastates. Secrets are everywhere and until they're uncovered, no female is safe.

*Special thanks to NetGalley and Wednesday Books for this e-arc.*

The twist and turns in this book were wild. If you enjoy mysteries and strange sentient sunflowers you will enjoy this one. Really reminded me of Rory Powers books with similar vibes. Also don't trust men, that's it. That's all I can really say without spoiling any of the really good twists. Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for letting me read this one early.