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.

WHERE DARKNESS BLOOMS is a YA paranormal thriller that showed great promise, but failed to execute its quad-narrated, long-winded tale. The novel is riddled with plot holes, heavy-handed metaphor, and side quests that ultimately don't move the story forward.

Where Darkness Blooms is a supernatural young adult thriller about a town settled a few generations back and the land tamed with a heavy payment many are willing to pay — but not all.

Hannah sets up an interesting premise and a wide variety of characters — all featuring and centering on four young women working hard to solve the mystery that has cursed their town and taken their girls and women from them. Hannah sets up a dark and sinister town, and the eerie atmosphere hangs in the background for much of the novel. But, beyond the premise and initial setting, this novel left me wanting. The tone and approach is on the incredibly juvenile side of YA — complete with bell-tolling lines to close out each short chapter — an intermission that often only feels like a brief commercial break from an 90s TV show and the action simply shrugs off this interlude to continue on the next page.

The characters, along with the plot, are more than a bit smudgy, and everything seems to get lost in the idea that was probably the springboard for this story. Hannah loses all the characters in and around each other — the four young women, Bo, Jude, Whitney, and Delilah (two of whom were sisters, but I can't remember which two) were not recognizable from each other. Nothing particularly individual set them apart, and I struggled with trying to figure out who said what to whom and when.

The lack of total connection to the outside world was a problem for me, too. This small, isolated town could only be so isolated in reality. Where were the state investigators? Where were the news specials on decades' worth of missing women? Or we could just get down to brass tacks — was this town self-sustaining? Did they provide all their own food? All their own work? All their own banking? All their own manufacturing? It was just too difficult to ignore the true reality of what this situation would prompt.

This one was difficult to read at time. I found it incredibly slow and dull. There were also several plot holes that didn’t make sense and were never explained. I think this could have been really well executed but fell flat.

Thanks to NetGalley for an ARC of this book.

It’s taken me nearly six months to finish this book, which I feel says a lot on its own. As someone who can devour a 500 page book in less than two days, taking six months to read something less than 300 pages is very indicative that I didn’t really love it.

The concept is really great, and that cover? Stunning!

The story itself, however, definitely left me wanting. I found it really difficult to differentiate between Bo, Jude, Whitney, and Delilah throughout the story. They somehow all blended into each other, which was unfortunate and confusing.

There was also a lot of flowery writing (pardon the pun) that seemed to weigh the story down, just a lot of over describing that seemed quite cloying. I

The second half of the book was also just…too much. There was so much physical violence and so many injuries that, even with the help of magical sunflowers, I just couldn’t believe these four girls were still walking. Delilah running towards the mothers’ house only hours after her neck had been sliced open and stitched together, Bo somehow still able to open either of her eyes after she’d been taken out at least twice in 24 hours, and Jude somehow still being upright after being shot in the leg.

Never mind Delilah’s absolute hypocrisy towards Jude kissing Bennett when she’d just been kissing Evan and being high and mighty about it.

I also could only suspend my disbelief at the lack of external concern. You’re telling me a town is known to be weird and spooky af, women go missing on the regular, and there’s no state investigation? I’m also wondering how big this town was if a) there’s enough of a population to keep going without bringing in newcomers and b) there was a wait list for an English class? Doesn’t quite add up.


Overall it felt like too much time was spent crafting elegant phrases instead of making sure the story connected together a little bit better. Which is really unfortunate because I do like a spooky/slightly gothic read but I kept having a lot of questions as I read and never really got really gripped into the story.

A huge, huge thank you to 'NetGalley' and 'St. Martin's Press, Wednesday Books' for the digital ARC of 'Where Darkness Blooms' by Andrea Hannah.

Let me start by saying this book was the right kind of horror that deserves to be turned into a movie.

Delilah, Whitney, Jude, and Bo live in a town that craves blood, and like clockwork women of the town keep going missing. This backdrop, along with the shifting perspectives between the four girls also help highlight more serious world issues such as rape, the exploitation of women, and the silence that women keep out of fear.

This is a book I think most of my students would be able to appreciate in some way, whether it's because of the horror/supernatural factor, or the tackling of real world issues in a way that's easy to digest.

Definitely adding this to my personal collection as well.
5/5

Couldn’t get into it. Characters were uninteresting and I didn’t really care for the setting either.

DNF. Nothing bloomed for me - overwritten, plot holes big enough to drive several trucks through.

eARC provided by publisher via Netgalley.

This was atmospheric and good for fans of Sawkill Girls.

I think the teen you would recommend this to are the ones who look for creepy places and witchy vibes. The characters can be hard to tell apart voice-wise which can work if you're just there for the vibes, as teens usually are. I think they'll find lots to resonate with the navigation of feelings and actions of the girls in the story.

I received this arc for free from St Martin’s Press. This book is available to buy Feb 21 2023.

This is my review:

I absolutely loved this creepy atmospheric ya horror book. The prologue set the tone and then it was off running. It really reminded me of Children of the corn. It was insidiously creepy. The town is cursed. The sunflowers pop up where blood is spilled. The main characters mothers disappeared 2 years ago and these teens lived without their moms. I really recommend this book.