What a hauntingly beautiful tale of friendship, sunflower fields, and love.
Four girls live together in a house on Old Fairview following the disappearance of their mothers two years prior.

Delilah—the mother of the group, a mantle she took up because she felt she had to, despite her all-consuming love for her boyfriend, Bennet—and the growing pain she feels in his presence.

Whitney—plucky, intelligent and kind. Haunted by the disappearance of her mother and devastated over the death of her girlfriend Elenor six months ago.

June—Whitney’s twin sister and the mousiest of the group. The winds torment her, pushing her further into herself with every new storm. And in the middle of Kansas, there are many.

Bo—fiercely independent and changed by the events of the last two years, she fights everything—from her own anger to the neighborhood bullies.

Their mothers are gone. The sunflower fields whisper. The town needs to feed.
Can the girls look beyond what’s in front of them to see the curse below?
Can they save themselves from becoming four more names on the ever growing list of missing women in Bishop, Kansas?
Can they find out what happened to the women of Bishop, and their own mothers?

Andrea Hannah beautifully spins a unique story of a curse, fate, love, and how far one will go to be free. A story I won’t forget any time soon.
4.5 stars!

I received an ARC of this title from NetGalley.
All opinions are my own.

An incredible read. This book had so many layers. It was challenging to reveal each layer and discover more about the town of Bishop. The curse was a horrible thing to read about and even more awful was how many women had disappeared for this curse. The girls left behind by their mothers were so entwined in the curse , they could not see how to escape. As more is revealed, the girls begin to find out what is happening in their small town. The men responsible for the curse want only to keep people from finding out what was goin on. This book was so well written. The reader could feel all the emotions. I cried, yelled and cheered for these girls. The end of the book was so powerful….that only a person can decide where to go from tragedy.

I have to say, the first thing that stood out to me was the cover. I loved the dark forest horror vibes it gave off!! The mood of this book is so perfectly set. It’s ominous and intriguing from the start. I enjoyed getting to know the characters and seeing how the story played out.

I loved the writing and the story concept, but the actual plot and the characters took a bit too long to develop for me. I was definitely interested in the story, but I found myself having unanswered questions and missing context throughout the book. This was a quick read though, and managed to hold my attention regardless of my own issues with the story.

In this dark tale, four teens living under the same roof band together after their mothers vanish to try and solve the mystery of their disappearance. A disappearance in a very long history of dead and lost women and girls in the town of Bishop. Surrounded by a sea of sunflowers and ravaged by a rough wind, Bishop is an isolated town desperate to keep any of its girls from escaping. I liked a lot of aspects of this book. I love the sunflower imagery, and I specifically love Bo’s character and her encapsulation of female rage. I like how this reads a lot like a dark fairy tale, and I thought the overall concept was really original and really cool. I don’t think it works as a whole for me, but I loved the sisterly bond these characters had and how it was complicated and messy, but overall ran very deep. This is a perfect encapsulation of a three star read for me. Not my favorite, but totally fine.

This review will be posted on my instagram @boozehoundbookclub on the pub date.

This review will be short because I didn't really enjoy this one. I had a very difficult time focusing on the story and didn't connect with any of the characters. At times I had to reread paragraphs because I realized I had completely zoned out. This novel definitely isn't for me but I do think others will enjoy it.

Where Darkness Blooms by Andrea Hannah was a book I requested because of the beautiful cover and intriguing concept. I hate to post a negative review. Unfortunately I didn’t connect to the story, the bones of the story were there, along with a lot of characters. The concept of the story was great. Personally, something was lacking. I’m not exactly the audience for this book. It has some hard hitting themes including rape, so be warned. Thanks to St. Martins/Wednesday Books and NetGalley for the ARC.

I read tons of horror and YA books, and this is a really creative and original plot and concept. Creepy, suspenseful, great twists and turns. Characters took awhile to develop but were solid and relatable by the end.

Women going missing or being murdered in a small town is a well-known and well-worn trope, as is that small town having a hidden curse that keeps its people close. In Andrea Hannah's new novel, Where Darkness Blooms, the two are effect and cause.

The very ground in this small town is thirsty for blood; this is a reveal late in the book to the girls, but we're told about it in the prologue. The concept is compelling. In a similar vein to Ann Fraistat's What We Harvest, the prosperity of the land is tied to death. And the town has prospered for over a century on this dusty patch of prairie, especially for the Hardings, who lead the town in more ways than one. Hannah has nailed the way power tends to condense in a small town, so often passed down like a royal title through generations. In this era without cell phones, the isolation and stark deviation between those with the power and those subject to them are even more pronounced.

There are, however, a few things I have questions about. First, why were four sixteen-year-old girls left to fend for themselves for two years? Does Bishop have no social services? The girls don't seem to have jobs; how are they funding this Boxcar Children-like existence? Second, there's a reveal late in the book that there's no clinic or hospital within city limits; did this really only come up as an issue for any one of these girls at the age of 18? No one needed stitches or a bone set before that? Third, part of the ending suggests no one leaves the Bishop city limits, like, ever. Where do they get food? How have they gotten vehicles, clothes, the taxidermy or art supplies that those specialty shops sell in a town with no medical facility?

I think I'm reading more closely into the specifics of the story than Hannah intended. Much of Where Darkness Blooms feels like a fable, with its watchful sunflowers that whisper to each other in the voices of dead women. With its broken hearts and slamming cellar doors and bonfires that light up the summer and autumn nights, who needs a backdrop made of flesh and blood instead of mist? This is a book that leans heavily into concept and character, handwaving over details that don't serve those ends. But the concept and character are strong, so if that will sustain you, Where Darkness Blooms might be your kind of book.

(A slightly longer version of this review will appear on RingReads.com on 21 February 2023 at 2:11 p.m. MST and will be available at https://ringreads.com/2023/02/21/darkness-blooms-with-strong-concept-just-dont-look-too-deep/)

AMAZING. I can never look at sunflowers that same again. There were so many layers to this book. Family, friendships, tragedy, and coming of age in a town with a dark secret. I couldn’t put it down.

What an entrancing and winding story!

In the town of Bishop, Kansas, secrets are rooted deep within the soil and whispered on the wind. Throughout the years, women are dying or disappearing and it has left four teenage girls alone and motherless.

This is the story of their discovery of the terrifying truth. The town wants blood and one of them could be next.

This was equal parts entertaining and aggravating. I loved the story. I loved the way these girls found strength within each other. I had my favorite character and my least favorite. I had one that I completely broke for and she never once disappointed me. But, at times, there are a couple girls that constantly showed selfishness and it infuriated me. That in no way took away from my enjoyment of the story! I felt the necessity of the contradicting nature of the characters because it gave so much to the realism of humanity in a story based in so much fantasy.

I had this book added to my TBR list for 2023 new releases, and I did request an ARC for it, but I can't say I remember what it was supposed to be about. So, I went in completely blind which did allow for me to really get a good sense of what worked and what didn't. When it comes to this book, the negatives ended up outweighing the positives.

I found the book to mostly be bland. You are thrown into the story with very little context in terms of the plot and characters, and what follows was a slow-burn small-town story that didn't catch my interest. On top of that, when the story was picking up I personally didn't like reading about the content. There were content warnings at the beginning, which is always appreciated, but it still wasn't great to read about.

In terms of the world and how it connects to the story, since I do consider that an important aspect of the book, I found that there were some gaps. Some things just weren't explained which you could let slide, but I would have liked for those smaller, but still important, details to be developed and fleshed out. The story itself was also a bit hard to follow due to the four different perspectives you have to follow, which sometimes don't line up perfectly.

Overall, I ended up flying through this but not exactly in a good way. Despite that though, I still think this would appeal to the right audience, I just wasn't part of it.

Thank you, St.Martin's Press and Wednesday Books, for giving me the opportunity to review this in advance. My review will be posted to my blog two weeks prior to the release.

While this genre is not for me, I requested an ARC, because I knew that my students would likely love it. Many of my students are into the psychological thrillers by adult authors, and I would like to see more YA authors create the same genre.

This one will be checked out by many. Great character development and a good plot that kept the reader on edge until the ending.

Bishop, Kansas is a small Midwestern town much like any other tiny enclave of civilization-with one exception: Bishop is hungry. An inordinate number of young women seem to slip away, either into death or into thin air. Surrounded by an unnatural sea of sunflowers and buffeted by storm winds, Bishop tries to keep its secrets buried but the daughters of 3 missing women are determined to dig them up. Delilah, Whitney, Jude and, Bo finds themselves fighting to discover the truth and ultimately fighting for their lives.

Fraught with tension, Where the Darkness Blooms has the same eerie feeling of the fertile fields in Children of the Corn. Between the whispering, relentless wind that can turn dangerous without notice, and the blank, watching faces of the sunflowers you can’t help but feel on edge. The same edginess is felt in the relationship dynamics of Delilah, Whitney, Jude, and Bo where you have four very different young women under one roof, who are all dealing with loss. They each have a part to pay in their group's survival as well as the survival of all women in town. There were really great character developments that allowed the teens to turn their perceived weaknesses or flaws into strengths. The plot of this book was a great way to highlight the oppression of women in a society that often sees them as disposable tools to be used for the ambition of evil men, and to highlight the need for women to work together instead of tearing each other down. There were a few instances near the beginning of the book that had me feeling confused as I had to puzzle out the relationship between the girls, but other than that I found this an enjoyable read.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC! I didn't finish this one as it ultimately wasn't for me, but I know lots of people will enjoy it. I didn't connect with the writing, and it was marketed as a horror when I think it leans more thriller/fantasy. The themes were important and discussed in a sensitive manner as far as I could tell, but I didn't understand the characters' decision making a lot of the time. I'll still be recommending it to customers as this was more of a me problem and I think it could still be a great read for people who don't go into it expecting a super scary YA horror!

May contain light spoilers.

This was such an interesting book. I don't read a lot of thrillers, and I found myself pulled into it immediately and read it very quickly. There are four points of view, and the story rotates between each girl as the four of them seek to figure out what exactly happened to their missing mothers, who were all friends and roommates before their disappeared 2 years prior.

My favorite parts of this book were the sunflower lore, the "Blooms" and the wind lore. I just KNEW the boyfriend was shady. To be honest the only "love interest" I could stand even before the big reveal was Alma.

I feel like I had a few plot questions at the end that I didn't quite find answers to, but that could be intentional. This was an enjoyable and immersive book that I recommend if you like hungry, carnivorous settings and complicated sister-adjacent love and speculative twists in your thrillers. There are some heavier parts referenced, so check content warnings!

Seriously though I hated all the dude in this book.

Love Bo.

Enjoy!

One day, three sets of children are abandoned by their mothers. Two years later, women of Bishop are dying for mysterious reasons. Delilah, Bo, Jude and Whitney work together to solve the mystery of their town and uncover something sinister.
This book was simply con-fuddling in all the good ways. I would become absorbed in the mystery, each twist and turn of the plot sending me deeper into the story. Emerging from Bishop, I would expect to be 70% done with the book, only to be 23% in! The book has the wonderful ability of bending time with the medium pace of the story. Plus, having each chapter be a different perspective adds to it. While reading the book, I filled a notebook worth of facts to keep each of the sister's stories straight.
My only wish is that each chapter was titled with the sister's perspective it is written from. At times trying to figure out the perspective would take away from the story.
10/10 will be adding it to the middle school's library.

I read this in January, and it's already at the top of the list for the most disappointing book of the year. There are some great concepts here, but the execution is not it. The writing it really hard to follow, the chapters are told my alternating characters, and sometimes the next chapter will jump back in time with out warning which made it really hard to orient yourself in the story.

The characters are pretty bland and there's don't have unique voices, I literally had to make a note about how everyone was related to each other because I couldn't keep up.

SPOILERS BELOW

I also just can not accept that THREE parents decided to abandon their daughters in a town that they knew was systematically killing women.

This is such a creepy and surreal story. It was really interesting seeing the pieces of the story that the girls gathered separately and how they put these bits together to figure out what was happening. I do wish there had been a little more communication between the girls, some of the lack of communication was explained but other parts felt more like it was just to draw the plot out. Other then that I did find the plot to be well paced and the characters well written. The setting was definitely the strongest point of the book to the point of it really being its own character. All around this is a really cool story.

Thank you St. Martin’s Press Wednesday Books for granting me an EARC of this book.

I am giving this one 3 stars as I did enjoy the initial building up of this creepy eerie town that was very atmospheric and intriguing. However there were few aspects that did quite do it for me. For instance I felt like beyond the initial premise of the story there are several plot points that take you no where and leave you wanting more. Also the ending felt a little flat for me. Overall the premise, descriptive town and characters were great it was just the plot and finish that lost me a little.