A great feminist thriller. The characters were well fleshed out and the pacing of the story was spot-on. I liked the unique premise used a vessel to carry the message home.

I quite enjoy the concept of a piece of town having consciousness, for good or for evil. Each of the girls had their own perspective on the happenings of the town and they were all done very well.

Atmospheric, tense, and mysterious, this book reeled me in and didn't let go. While I think the large cast of characters did make it difficult for any major character growth/distinctions to be possible, I really enjoyed the characters as they were. Relationships between characters change quite frequently throughout the book, and I think that aspect was handled in a much better way. I completely enjoyed the eerie, cut off town setting, and loved the way the sunflowers changed as a symbol, and almost character themselves, over the course of the book.

This book was way out of my comfort zone. But I really liked this book. I feel like there were some parts that were a little out there for me. But I enjoyed the over all story and i wanted to keep reading. This cover is gorgeous! I would suggest this one.

This was so beautiful I thought I would explode. This is my first read of 2023 and I honestly don't think it can be topped. The girls were so tough and so vulnerable, the town was delightfully creepy, and the story was enthralling.
I love sunflowers so picturing a dusty town surrounded by them was just amazing.
The ending was perfection.

I’m sitting down to write this review about two weeks after having finished reading it…
It is still with me.
The vivid imagery and eerie atmosphere has followed me like the sunflowers that Hannah has imbued with sentience. The winds and storms leave you feeling as equally creeped out, reminding you that something is rotten at the core of Bishop. Women are going missing at an increasing rate, but how and why? The mystery is quite intriguing and kept me turning the pages.
At first, I was not a huge fan of the characters, but as the story progresses, they grew on me. Delilah was overbearing, but well intentioned. Bennett seems too good to be true - maybe he is, but we do get to see another side to him at the end 😉. Jude is selfish and she really got on my nerves, but she probably shows the most character growth at the end of the story - and maybe I don’t dislike her as much as I started off. Whitney is stuck in a state of grief, but gets another chance at love. Bo is probably my favorite. She’s tough on the outside, but internalizes her pain. While I would have liked even more for her, it is due to her sacrifices that the other girls are free.
Thank you to Wednesday Books for inviting me to preview an early copy of this book. The thoughts that I have expressed above are my own honest opinions.

I was immediately drawn to this book because of the cover, but after reading the first chapter I was intrigued. If you like thrillers/mysteries, then this book is for you!

I loved the vibes of this book and the great descriptions of everything! If you like strangeness and great writing you should give it a try!

this cover had me very intrigued, and the plot and entire energy of the book matched the atmosphere i was imagining based on the cover just perfectly.

the pacing of this book was very gripping, and that along with the plot really drawing you in made for SUCH a page turner.

the downside for me was that the characters felt extremely flat. we follow four different point of views which makes it even more important to be able to distinguish between each of these. but because the characters felt flat and static, and didn’t have any character defining traits, i had a hard time differentiating between each of them.

though if you do enjoy a spooky mystery book this is a great quick read.

the publisher kindly provided this arc through netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

This is an interesting book about a small Kansas town with a creepy history and a lot of missing women. The prose has lyrical, beautiful passages and an interesting ensemble of teenage MCs.

This is for you if you like very slow burns and a novel that trends more toward atmosphere than being super plot heavy. I like that all the teenagers had complicated back stories, we’re strong, and the feminist themes. There are some really beautiful lines in this book and representation for lesbian and transgender folks.

The prologue is so intriguing, but I feel like it gives too much away when later there could be a more surprising discovery.

The third person close is well done in a lot of ways, but there were other times I felt like I was re-reading the same passage from different POVs.

I also found myself confused about how the men had so much power over the women beyond one power. That power doesn’t seem like it could make people fall for you, but maybe I missed something.

Overall, this depended more on vibes that is my preference.
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Thank you, Netgalley and Publisher, for this Arc!!

This book is very strange, dark, and mysterious. Luckily, that is my favorite kind of book!

Bishop is a really small town that feels even smaller and narrow minded the more I learned about it. The prologue begins with a short preview of what is behind the darkness of this town. Specifically it needs blood, and as it so happens, the sacrifices are always women.

There are four main characters and four pov which is a bit daunting for a standalone. They live together, two twin sisters and two other girls, in the house they lived in with their mothers before their mysterious disappearance. This story is about fighting for the truth, their rights, particularly as women in a town ruled by men who seem to take as much as the blood hungry soil.

I thought this was an interesting read and I really enjoyed it. However, I have a few thoughts about the ending but I don't want to include spoilers.

Content warning for sexual assault and violence.

Out February 21, 2023!

Ugh, I hate writing these because it makes me feel like the bad guy, it’s a yucky feeling. I promise, I’m not here to hate or be negative and contrary. But I still have to be honest with myself and everyone about my personal experience with the story. And I’m sorry to say that this one just failed to engage me. There’s not really any particular thing that is inherently wrong or bad about it. I just didn’t connect with it on a deeper level and so it lost my interest. I was really excited about this release and really looking forward to reading it. I would still consider future books by this author. I did like the writing in general, just not the story so much I think.

Maybe it’s one of those cases where it just isn’t for me. I don’t think it’s a bad book. In fact, I can objectively see how a lot of other readers may even love it. But for me, the plot was slow, and the characters were lacking that spark of connection. It could use a little more work on the pacing and development in my opinion. I wanted more from the relationships, from the creepy setting, from the fantastical elements of the story. I liked the vibes, the context, but the content and execution less so. I also think some of the disconnect for me is because the genre is a little bit of everything, and yet somehow not really anything at the same time. Nothing was very memorable to me. I wish it would have leaned more heavily on the fantasy elements and eerie atmosphere, rather than the drama.

I hate giving up on books (momma and daddy didn’t raise no quitter) but I made a promise to myself that, with so many on my to be read list, if I got over a hundred pages in and still wasn’t feeling it, I’d move on and that it’s ok to do that. People always talk about being a “mood reader” and, while I still don’t fully comprehend exactly what that means, maybe I’m beginning to feel like I’m one too? Or maybe I’m starting to fall out of love with the young adult genre in general.

Honestly, y’all, I’ve been in quite a slog with books here lately. I’ve had numerous two and three star reads back to back and it’s starting to put me in a slump of not even wanting to read at all. To save my state of mind and motivation, I just had to put this one down. And I’m really hoping to find something next that will lift my spirits because it’s all becoming a bit of a drag right now.

I will probably be in the minority with this one so take my review with a grain of salt. I’m leaving this review starless because I don’t want my DNF to negatively affect the success or opinions on this book. And that makes me feel like less of the bad guy for this one.

Thank you NetGalley for an advanced copy of WHERE DARKNESS BLOOMS by Andrea Hannah. I never really got into this book. It had a cool vibe and a pacy plot and a lot of drama and strong characters. I think the there was just too much that didn't make sense, especially with the setting. They kept saying that no one could leave the town but I never really understood why, like what physically kept them from leaving. I also got really tripped up by four teenagers living alone together for two years. No one cared? There are no social services in this town? None of them seemed to have a job either, so how did they live? No one ever even mentioned this or seem to think it was a problem. Also, people are constantly getting murdered in this town and no one cares. I get that the local government is corrupt and stuff, but is there no internet? Do they have no way of spreading the word of what's going on with the outside world? How cut off they seemed to be from the rest of the world didn't seem believable to me. Finally—their mothers. I could not believe that their mothers would just leave these girls all on their own for two years and not lose their minds. Or that they even would have left without them in the first place. That whole thing just felt plot convenient. Basically, too many holes in this set-up and too many unanswered questions for me to get past and it kept me from really enjoying the story for what it was.

** spoiler alert ** Where Darkness Blooms is one of the most beautifully written, atmospheric books I've ever read.

It made me cry
It made me fume
It made my heart race so fast I got dizzy

Y'all are in for a treat.

FEED ME SEYMOUR!

Suggested for fans of paranormal mysteries, the found-family trope, and Anne Bishop's The Others series.

This is a beautiful, heart-wrenching story about a group of girls who have formed their own family after their mothers have mysteriously left. Did they die? Did they abandon their daughters? This is a question that will haunt the reader until they find out.

Some very minor cons:
This is not a fast burn--the tension winds slowly, which might not be fast enough for some readers. It also deals with sexual assault in a way that some readers might be sensitive to.
I wasn't surprised by anything that happened--this is not a book with jaw-dropping reveals. Instead, it presents the reader with a tangled web of mysteries and slowly unravels them. I found it greatly appealing but others might not.

Finished this book in under 24 hours!

It was a very quick, easy, suspenseful read. I just couldn't put it down!

I really enjoyed the general themes in this book: feminism, friendship, and found families to name a few. I found the relationships between the main characters were quite charming. It was almost like a Sisterhood of The Travelling Pants vibe but sprinkled with a little bit of trauma and grief haha Their relationships between each other were a bit strained but at the end of the day they always looked out for each other.

Another point I really enjoyed was the twists. Throughout the entire book, I kept thinking the twists were going to be so predictable, but they actually got me!

All-in-all a thrilling, tense, creepy tale with some bad*ss women. 5/5 stars

I usually thrive on this type of dark teen fantasy thriller, but each of the parts that I usually love just felt dialed down to "less". For starters, the four different perspectives made it difficult for me to form a relationship with any of the protagonists. I found each of their personalities to be too similar for me to really appreciate their unique contributions to the narrative. This was paralleled by the discursive nature of the plot, either being too slow paced or too fast paced at various points. I did, however, enjoy the strong representation of diverse LGBTQ+ identities present in the story. The sunflowers fields were also a delightfully sinister backdrop for the story: I will never go sunflowers picking feeling the same way again.

I really wanted to like this book. The cover is very spooky, the title is up my alley, and the plot sounded great. I don't know if it just wasn't the right time for me but I could not get into this book. I felt like I was dropped into the middle of the story and couldn't catch up. I ended up DNF'ing it.

I was given an opportunity to read this book by NetGalley and I would like to give my honest review.

I went into this book referring to it as the “killer sunflower” book. While the sunflowers weren’t actually sentient murders, I don’t think I’ll ever change what I’m calling it in my mind. “Killer land” just doesn’t have the same excitement, but yes, this is a book with evil land and it’s pretty damn amazing!

You meet the land first and then the origin of the founder, but as soon as that’s over you meet the four heroines you’ll be spending the novel with and who’s eyes you’ll be experiencing it.
Delilah: Smart, independent, determined, 18, motherly, and a leader. I loved Delilah. Yes, she had her faults like all teenagers, but I related to her and I found myself yelling at her every time she made the wrong decision or looked the other way when the obvious answer was in front of her face.
Whitney: Beautiful, party girl, popular, 17, twin to Jude, lesbian, and a romantic. I was never this girl. I was the outsider at her age with few friends and not turning many heads, but I still enjoyed her. Something about Whitney made her seem the most sensible of the characters even if she was the one holding seances at a weathervane.
Jude: Soft, delicate, pathetic, naive, desperate, twin to Whitney. I wanted to slap this love sick puppy more times than I can count, but she came through in the end. I’m not sure I would have forgiven her as quickly as her friends, but we only get a few days in her mind so maybe she had redeemable qualities I just missed.
Bo: Strong, filled with justified rage, anger issues, PTSD from sexual assault, total badass, softy on the inside, and my favorite of all the characters. Bo kicked ass on so many levels and she was her own person. As someone who has been sexually abused as a teenager, I related to her on almost every level. I wanted her to find happiness more than anyone in this book and while I wouldn’t say it was happiness she found, it was hope and maybe that’s better.

The writing in this book was fast paced, well done, and didn’t hit the reader over the head with flowery prose. This author gave you everything you needed to unwrap this mystery along with the characters and enough foreshadowing to give you an idea on where everything was heading, while still surprising you. I will be reading anything else this author writes in the future!

Now, I’m going to explain why I couldn’t give this book 5 stars. Maybe I was the only one who went into this expecting a bit more horror than thriller (it was an entire book about blood loving dirt for crying out loud), but what you get is more thriller/mystery. It’s a whodunnit but in the supernatural form and with no real resolution to the future of this murderous plot of land.
It’s a beautiful story about generational trauma and how we all have the power to break the cycle for ourselves and our future generations. The very last paragraph of the afterword actually had me in tears because as a woman, I felt this story on every level. I know what it’s like to carry the damage of past generations and their trauma and it’s a burden I’ve struggled to put down. (Also, I was upset with the mothers on a level I find it hard to describe without major spoilers, but it would have taken a lot longer than it did in the book for me to move past it all.)

Honestly, I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys light horror, a supernatural mystery, or just a book about strong women loving each other, building a family of chosen friends, and then going to hell and back to save it.

Star Rating: —> 5 Stars

A huge Thank You to netgalley & the publisher for the arc! All opinions are my own.

The town of Bishop is CREEPY AF. It’s known for missing women, being surrounded by a dense field of sunflowers, and mysterious storms! Why are 4 teen girls left alone without their mothers? Why do all the women seem to disappear, why does it always storm? Why do the wind & the sunflowers seem to whisper secrets ? And what exactly are they trying to say?

This YA mystery/ thriller/ horror novel was everything I could have asked for and MORE! It was Intriguing, addictive, THRILLING, & so good! It’s really best for you to go into this blind! My goodness, a freaking masterpiece! I will be looking for more books by Andrea Hannah non stop! This is THAT AMAZING!

*sunflowers whisper*

100% recommend!

I love the concept of this book so much–it captured my interest from the cover and blurb and first chapter of the book! Unfortunately, there were a few aspects of the writing itself that kept me from feeling fully immersed. Firstly, I personally struggle with books that have more than two POVs–it's a bit too much jumping around in perspective and it becomes distracting and prevents me from feeling as deeply connected to each character since our time is divided amongst so many characters. I also wish that there had been more of a horror/thriller shock to act as a hook in the first few chapters of the book... the pacing felt slow in the beginning. As always, I am grateful for the opportunity to review, and I think that there is an audience out there for this book, it's unfortunately just not for me!