**I was provided a digital ARC from the publisher through NetGalley.**

For this work, please review content warnings prior to reading. The author is courteous enough to provide a list of content warnings prior to beginning the body of work.

Andrea Hannah presents Where Darkness Blooms, a young adult supernatural thriller centered on the small town of Bishop. Bishop is a town with a history of dead and missing women. Bishop is also a town with vicious windstorms that sprout up whenever certain topics are spoken about. The windstorms last until everyone goes home. There are fields of sunflowers. The sunflowers keep watch. When the mothers of Bo, Delilah, and twins Whitney and Jude join the ranks of missing women, the girls realize they need to find out what is happening in Bishop.

I liked the incorporation of the supernatural into the story of Bishop. The small town vibes and the sense of tension as the girls go about learning the history of the town was exactly the sort of thing I like. I even liked the explanations provided regarding how Bishop came to be as it is.

I absolutely did not like the explanations provided regarding how and why the girls' mothers went missing. I very much disliked the neat and tidy ending with the vaguest hint of open-ended quality.

As such, I am left feeling conflicted about how to feel about this work overall, which is made no easier by the fact that I was not overly attached to any of our four main characters. I think that this work did accomplish what it set out to do, but I am, at best, unsatisfied with the way things ended.

I would still recommend this book to other readers, as I believe that a majority of my issues with this book are personal taste problems and not necessarily issues with the work.

I am grateful to have had the opportunity to read this work early and hope that this book finds its audience.

Where Darkness Blooms is a powerful and chilling story. The women in the town of Bishop have never been safe. They have always gone missing and there is always an excuse ready. When four girls all lose their mothers at the same time, they are the only ones in the town who seem concerned. Sisters Jude and Whitney have a complex relationship with each other and their mother. Delilah examines the clues her mother left behind, while struggling to be with her boyfriend. Bo wants answers, no matter the danger. All four girls must work together to uncover the secrets of the bloodthirsty town and find out what really happened to their mothers.

What a gripping and compelling read; I couldn’t put this down! All of the girls are complicated and flawed characters, making for intense scenes as they uncover what happened to the women who were never supposed to leave them. I loved the little details that the author included as clues for what was really going on. Where Darkness Blooms tackles sisterhood, motherhood, and neglect. It is powerful and at times difficult to read. Andrea Hannah depicts the sinister way people may react when a woman goes missing, from fear to denial to excuses. The book is woven through with contemporary magic that was horrific and fascinating to read about. I would recommend this for readers of Elizabeth Kilcoyne (Wake the Bones), Shea Ernshaw (A History of Wild Places) and Erin Craig (Small Favors).

Where Darkness Blooms releases February 21, 2023. Thank you to Andrea Hannah, Wednesday Books, and Netgalley for a free ARC in exchange for an honest review.

For publisher: My review will be posted on Instagram, Goodreads, Amazon, Storygraph, and Barnes & Noble etc

I liked this one. I find myself to be more forgiving with Young Adult novels for some reason. The characters were interesting, and I'm always a sucker for setting as a character. There were some plot holes when it comes to why the characters get where they're going. I also wasn't a fan of the disconnect of the prologue and the actual meat of the book - which seemed to be indicative of larger pacing issues.

Thank you Netgalley for the advance audiobook and reader copy of Where Darkness Blooms by Andrea Hannah in exchange for an honest review. I really liked this story of sacrifice, love, oppression and hope. I thought it was wonderfully written and it was nice getting the different viewpoints of different characters. I felt like the reader was able to better understand, sympathize and forgive the girls more by switching narratives.

This was probably one of the most bizarre and unique books I’ve read in a while. The story itself was very interesting and slowly unfolded in a truly ominous and uneasy way. I felt a little confused at the beginning. It was almost as if I had been dropped in the middle of the story, but as I kept reading, the pieces fell into place and it made more sense. I did feel like it dragged in a few places, but I wasn’t ever bored during this story. I was more intrigued to see where it was going. I liked having all four of the girls’ POVs and also the town’s prologue and epilogue. I thought that was a really cool touch. The action scenes did feel a little confusing at times, especially when one chapter ended and another began. I had to go back a few times as the POVs changed to remember what was happening to each girl. The overall ending was well done, with the exception of a character getting redemption that I didn’t feel like deserved it. I did enjoy this book for the most part, but I didn’t feel like the story completely grabbed me or that I fully connected with it. However, I’d still recommend it for people who want a creepy, ominous story of female power and friendship.
TW: mentions of sexual assault, violence, murder, injury

Thank you to NetGalley, St. Martin’s Press and Wednesday Books for an advanced digital reader’s copy in exchange for an honest review.

this was so eerie and haunting, i loved it! the writing was great and the entire story felt very immersive. sometimes fantasy is really hit or miss for me but i really enjoyed this.

The town of Bishop, Kansas is not a good place.
In fact, if you are a woman, it is basically a death sentence.
Why?
The land feeds off the blood of others.
Yikes!!

This story centers on four teen girls who are basically orphaned. There really isn't much talk about their fathers, but on one day two years ago, their three mothers up and disappeared. Did they just abandon the girls? Or were they killed?
Whitney, Jude, Bo and Delilah seek answers to these questions. Or die trying.

Other than the prologue, it isn't clear what is going on in Bishop, but weather, specifically wind, is used to control the town's citizens. It seems every time one of the girls’ challenges what is going on in town, a massive wind storm pops up to stop them. But these girls are fighters. Individually, they question their situation, some more aggressively than others. However, with time, they come together as a group to stand up for what is very clear - the town believes they are expendable.

I loved the creep factor in this book, so original. And I admired how hard the girls fought back when the odds seemed to be against them.

Overall, this was a fascinating and creative story that kept me engaged throughout. If you like darker YA themes, this is worth checking out.

Wow, this beautifully haunting story just pulled me right it, like I was in the town of Bishop with the girls. The brutality they faced from a cursed land, and their fight to find out more about their mothers’ disappearances just took my breath away. A must read.

I have received this ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I liked this book, it's based in a small town with terrifying secrets. If you love horror books, this is a must read. The female cast was strong and sassy in their own ways. This book will make you wonder if you can ever truly trust someone.

Toto, I've a feeling we're still in Kansas.

Women have been disappearing from the town of Bishop for years. But almost no one ever leaves. Something about the mysterious whispering land with its thousands and thousands of swaying sunflowers seem to trap everyone like a tightly bound bouquet. And then a group of girls band together after their moms disappear to try and find answers and leave the town and it's terrible secrets behind for good.

I'm not sure what to think about Where Darkness Blooms. It's not my usual type of read. It starts out with a creepy spooky vibes prologue that draws you in immediately. But after the prologue, things seem to fizzle. The povs aren't always distinct. Nothing really ever happens except a lot of situationship square dancing. I still have no idea who the actual couples were supposed to be. Everybody was in love with someone who was in love with someone else who *shocker* was in love with someone else. In the end, the conclusion didn't make me feel satisfied. What happens if someone starts the (fingerquote)thing(fingerquote) all over again? Not much is made clear.

I read Where Darkness Blooms on audio and really enjoyed the narrators. They were probably the biggest reason I finished the book. And it was something to listen to on my work commutes.


***Thank you to Netgalley, Wednesday Books, and OrangeSky Audio for providing me with a review copy.

I started reading this book late at night and read 54% the first night, that is how good this book is. While my boyfriend played games I read this book until 1 am and read the other half the next day, all while having Covid.
The setting was so eerie and the atmosphere was amazing. The descriptions, of how the small town works was vivid. I loved how diverse the characters were.
Without giving too much away, the found family trope is what I really loved. The way the four girls became sisters and protectors of one another was beautiful. If I have to pick my favorite character it would be Bo, she was fierce.

More of my review coming to my IG

dnf @ 40%

I was definitely intrigued by Where Darkness Blooms, and I do want to know what was causing the deaths/disappearances and what the sunflowers had to do with everything going on in the town, but unfortunately, I was so bored and it felt like such a slog to get through so I decided not to finish it

The town of Bishop is a place that outsiders don’t visit. In fact, the people who live here never leave, almost as if a spell has been cast preventing anyone from departing. That can’t be true though right? I mean after all, in a town that seems to consume women, no one would stay unless they wanted to or something wouldn’t let them go. So perhaps there is more to Bishop than meets the eye.
What if your mother just vanished? In Bishop, it doesn’t even raise an eyebrow. Would that make you look more closely at all the women who have died or disappeared mysteriously? Delilah, Bo, Whitney, and Jude are now part of that club, the one where they have no idea what happened to their mother’s They soon start looking at things that they always took for granted and they learn more,especially the way the wind can whip up a ferocious storm, taking the town apart almost as if Bishop has a mind of its own.
Such an unputdownable story. I just had to know what was wrong in Bishop and if Delilah, Bo, Jude, and Whitney had any chance of figuring out what is going on in this town. He is a We follow each of their POVs and learn that they each have secrets, weaknesses, and strengths. Creepy, creepy, creepy.As someone who grows sunflowers every year, I will never look at them following the sun in the same way again. I really enjoyed this story.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for this ARC! This book was pretty heavy, pretty stressful, but it's just. wow. I mean. wowwwww. I have to say, the first thing that stood out to me was the cover. I've loved pretty much every book I've read with this sort of style of cover, and this did not disappoint.
The author's writing and mind is just amazing. All the different plot lines are amazing, with the sunflowers, the happy (ish) ending, the mothers, the Hardings, the winds, all of it. They all came together to create a sinister, creepy atmosphere.
I loved the main characters. They all felt really raw and real, and the whole found family trope fit really well. The descriptions of the characters and the scenery were so real they made me feel like I was in the book. I loved the feminist angle too. I think my favorite character was Whitney, and I'm glad she found peace with Eleanor (however much she could get) and happiness with Alma.
I do think that the intense nature of the book made me take longer to read this than I would have with another book, however, because I needed a break after reading it for too long. It also didn't hook me until about 40-50 percent of the way through the book, possibly for this reason. That's really my only complaint though.

I'm just not going to connect with this one sadly. No fault of its own, I'm just not in the headspace to enjoy this right now.
The book is creepy, the main characters are interesting and feel real and fleshed out. I love the freaky back story of the town. I'll revisit later in the year.

Thank you to Netgalley and Wednesday Books for this ARC!

I picked up this ARC solely for the cover. Stunning. But the book itself was also stunning, in a twisted, creepy kind of way.

It's totally normal for sunflowers to talk to you, right? For the wind to whisper to you? Nothing to see here.

I picked up this ARC solely for the cover. I didn’t know what it was about, just that I needed to find out.

This was a unique concept for a familiar story. There’s evil in a small town consuming the men, targeting the women. I liked the dynamic between the girls and the fact that they had intermingling conflicts with each other and weren’t just living happily.

But the boys - gosh those Harding boys rubbed me the wrong way right from the start. I felt very much like Jude and Delilah; wistfully obsessed with them without being able to really figure out why.

That was a huge drive forward for me. The desire - no, the need - to know what was going on with these boys.

An interesting read, a satisfying ending, and a hell of a beautiful cover.

"Andrea Hannah's Where Darkness Blooms is a supernatural thriller about an eerie town where the sunflowers whisper secrets and the land hungers for blood.

The town of Bishop is known for exactly two things: recurring windstorms and an endless field of sunflowers that stretches farther than the eye can see. And women - missing women. So when three more women disappear one stormy night, no one in Bishop is surprised. The case is closed and their daughters are left in their dusty shared house with the shattered pieces of their lives. Until the wind kicks up a terrible secret at their mothers' much-delayed memorial.

With secrets come the lies each of the girls is forced to confront. After caring for the other girls, Delilah would like to move on with her boyfriend, Bennett, but she can't bear his touch. Whitney has already lost both her mother and her girlfriend, Eleanor, and now her only solace is an old weathervane that seems to whisper to her. Jude, Whitney's twin sister, would rather ignore it all, but the wind kicks up her secret too: the summer fling she had with Delilah's boyfriend. And more than anything, Bo wants answers and she wants them now. Something happened to their mothers and the townsfolk know what it was. She's sure of it.

Bishop has always been a strange town. But what the girls don't know is that Bishop was founded on blood - and now it craves theirs."

Sunflowers fed on blood and women.

The narration was fantastic in this book, kept me invested when the story started out a little slow. It did pick up and with four girls to follow you, as they try to live their lives after their moms disappear. They have no idea what happened to them but the town kind of just accepts that women go missing here. The paced picked up about midway all the way to the end, I loved that the signs were small at first and then then starting seeing them everywhere. I did have some problem with the believability of some of things that happen, not the magic part of it but choices that are made or things believed.


Thank you to Wendsey books and NetGalley for my review copy.

"Where blood had been spilled, sunflowers grew over the unmarked graves."

Welcome to the town of Bishop, Kansas, known for its fierce windstorms and endless fields of sunflowers. With countless women dead, missing or lost without consequence and the shattered lives left behind, Bishop was a town filled with so many dangerous hidden secrets and unexplained occurrences, threatening women especially as it took away the possibility of ever escaping its hold. In a town founded on blood with land that always craved more, with echoes of words on the wind and sunflowers that always seemed to be sentient and watching, never dying, what was really going on in this eerie town?

"They’re never going to let us leave Bishop. We’re going to be trapped in this town until they kill us all, one by one."

Where Darkness Blooms is an atmospheric supernatural thriller that pulled me in with its stunning cover and kept me enthralled throughout its entirety. This was the story of four teenage girls who had lost their mothers to the town and were trying to pick up the pieces and move forward with their lives while trying to explain the mystery surrounding their mothers' disappearance.

Each of the girls also harbored secrets of her own. Delilah diligently looked out for the others to keep them safe and protected but she couldn't bear the touch of her boyfriend, Bennett. Whitney was trying to deal with the loss of her mother as well as her girlfriend, Eleanor, finding solace in the whispers of an old weathervane. Her twin sister, Jude, was quiet and trying to ignore it all but she felt the pain of others deeply and she was hiding a summer fling with Delilah's boyfriend. And Bo wanted to finally get answers to what really happened to their mothers but why was she always so angry?

I loved everything about this story! It was truly unique in both the storyline and the details. With well-developed characters and a captivating setting, I felt like I was right there with the girls, feeling their emotions and experiencing everything they went through, especially in how they could see only what others wanted them to see. Multiple twists and turns embedded in a sense of urgency kept me turning the pages and rooting for the girls.

The story itself contained so many layers, shedding light on friendship and forbidden love, jealousy and betrayal, grief and loss. It was about sacrifice and destiny and paying for the sins of our ancestors. Ultimately, it was a lesson in standing up for what you believe in and in women reclaiming their power, opening up the possibilities of everything the future may hold. Not many books can go in so many different directions and pull it all together into a cohesive story, but this one did it flawlessly. This was absolutely a solid five stars for me and I don't hesitate to wholeheartedly recommend reading it.

"This time, when the wind threaded itself through her hair, she welcomed it. It felt like freedom."

** Special thanks to St. Martin's Press / Wednesday Books and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this ARC. All thoughts and opinions expressed are my own. Quotes subject to change at time of publication. Available February 21, 2023. **

Where Darkness Blooms is a wonderfully eerie horror story about a piece of land that craves blood and the women who are sacrificed to it. Bishop, Kansas has a strange pattern of women accidentally dying and disappearing. Almost no woman is safe from the curse, certainly not Delilah, Bo, Whitney and Jude whose mothers all disappeared two years ago without a trace. Wishing in the backs of their minds that their mother’s may still be alive, while at the same time not wanting to believe they would abandon their daughters in the dead end town of Bishop, the girls struggle with their grief and tenuous relationships with one another.

Delilah, the oldest, is the caretaker. Bo, the youngest, is so angry it hurts, but she is also brave. Whitney and Jude, the twins, are about as different as twins can be, they’ve never experienced the twin connection that supposedly links so many pairs. Whitney is the adventurous one, never afraid to speak her mind. And Jude is the soft one; she feels so deeply it can be unbearable. These four girls, connected by their mother’s friendship, live together at the house on the edge of Bishop, attempting to take care of one another since the fateful night two years ago when their mother’s disappeared and so many things changed. Bo not only lost her mother that night, but she lost everything when Caleb Harding raped her. Jude lost the boy she loved, Bennet Harding, to Delilah and she has had to watch their relationship, trying to disguise her feelings, ever since. Whitney lost the chance to introduce her mother to her girlfriend, Eleanor Craft, who Whitney confessed her love for 6 months ago on the night before Eleanor dies of supposed natural causes. Worst of all the wind seems to have become angrier since that night, storming so often that boarding up inside their homes has become the normal routine in Bishop, and the sunflowers that surround the town seem to have taken on a life of their own, moving in impossible directions and whispering to the girls.

Told in an alternating point of view from all four of the girls, we are really able to connect with each of the characters. Though only getting to spend one out of four chapters in each characters’ head did make it a bit difficult to get settled in to their perspective, but I think that was okay because the story itself is unsettling and the stark differences between each girl helped contribute to that overall vibe that I loved so much. And that really was the highlight of the novel for me; the atmosphere of this novel was just delightful. I loved the setting of the creepy, maze-like sunflower fields, and the oppressive wind that essentially holds the entire town captive. It really conveys the feeling that something is not quite right in the town of Bishop, and that feeling builds at the perfect pace, so that readers are realizing it right along with the characters.

This novel was also about the power of women, rising up, even from beyond the grave, to fight back against misogynistic traditions. Only women are chosen by the land and killed by its devoted servants, the descendants of the town founder, who are given power over the wind to keep the women trapped and awaiting their untimely end. I think it’s biggest downfall in this area was the fact that every single man in this story was awful, even the ones with minor redeemable qualities give off such negative vibes. Because it’s a horror novel, and one about women coming into their power at that, this worked for me, but I do think it could come off a bit preachy for some.

At it’s core Where Darkness Blooms is just the right amount of creepy, in a thrilling exploration of small town life, with feminist undertones. Fans of atmospheric horror will gobble this one up, and it’s always nice to have a girl power horror novel to share.