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!

Andrea Hannah tells a crafty tale of a strange town filled with sunflowers and windstorms, a string of missing women, and a land that hungers for blood.

Whitney and Jude are twins, unlike in more ways than they have in common. Whitney is lost after the sudden death of her girlfriend, and Jude has a secret that could shatter the relationships she has.

Bo, stubborn and headstrong, knows something they don’t. When everything she knows flips upside down again, her world threatens to come down around her.

Delilah feels responsible for them all. Navigating her attempts at looking after the three girls and herself, and wanting to be closer with the boyfriend who’s touch she can’t stand, she discovers more about herself and others than she ever thought was possible.

Just two years after their mothers disappear, the windstorms in Bishop, Kansas become wilder. When Delilah finds a receipt left behind from the days after her mother disappeared, the girls must uncover the secrets the town was built on, and what that might mean for them.

Andrea Hannah tells a story about the weights we carry. The sunflowers will part, and as Hannah tells us best, there is freedom on the other side.

The cover is stunning, but this book started out super slow. This book had spooky vibes, but had difficulty holding my attention.

Thanks NetGalley for the opportunity!

Look at this stunning cover!
I feel really lucky to be able to read this book early cause i feel like once it’s published it will be really popular.
Normally I’m not the one to read scary books but I just couldn’t not read it because of this pretty cover. It definitely wouldn’t given me nightmares if I didn’t read in a week by extending the reading period. I always found sunflower fields scary and this gave me another reason for why i should! Haha
It’s full of suspense and fear inducing but oh so very realistic. It had a stunning prose and i fell in love with the writing. I will check author’s future books for sure. It is a slow burn though keep it in mind. Check the trigger warnings for sure please before reading it. It could be triggering.
If you are looking for a suspenseful horror that’s gonna suck you in and probably give you nightmares and will be perfect for dark winter nights and halloween then check this out once it’s out! Especially if you are a horror fan!
Now I’ll sleep with one eye open haha

Where Darkness Blooms is an incredible book! I mean, right away, look at the stunning and eerie cover that is enough alone to send a chill down your spine. The story really was way more than I expected - the world was lush and beautiful and I cannot wait to make sure we get this in our library! Everyone will love this!

“The boy began the long walk toward the unknown.”

This unlocked a deep fear inside of me that I honestly didn't know I had. I grew up living in and going to visit pretty rural places and have seen my fair share of sunflower fields.

After reading this however, I don't know that I could ever walk through one again without thinking of the events in this book. Its written perfectly to build suspense and a deep-rooted fear, before you even realize its taken hold. Andrea Hannah presents a tale through her writing that is immersive, realistic and suspenseful, taking you personally through the events in the town of Bishop.

There are some content warnings for this book including: (CW) references to abuse, rape and overall violence.

Where Darkness Blooms is set to be published on February 21, 2023. Thank you to St. Martin's Press, Wednesday Books, NetGalley and the author for the advanced reader's copy. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

"The flowers see everything."

I am instantly drawn to book covers with creepy plants on people’s faces. When I saw this cover and read the synopsis I was instantly intrigued. The land of Bishop hungers for blood. The town is surrounded by sunflowers and an eerie wind that whispers secrets. Women disappear frequently and when 3 more vanish their daughters are left to uncover the dark secrets of the town and what truly happened to their mothers.

I enjoyed this book and it was definitely creepy. As a reader we just knew there was something wrong with the land and the people and I couldn’t put the book down. I did find sometimes the characters started to blend together and their voices weren’t always very distinct. I wish this had been told by alternating POV’s. I enjoyed Bo and Delilah’s characters the most. I also appreciated how the author wrote and dealt with grief and trauma. The main characters were flawed and real. I love when an author can write an angry MC that we readers can relate to.

The plot progressed at a decent pace and the weird things kept happening and never really stopped until the last 20% of the book. The conclusion was intense and I was on the edge of my seat waiting for the outcome. I do think there were some plot holes and I wish there had been a bit more world building. I wanted to know more about the town. We as readers are never really filled in on the specifics of the origins of the curse/magic and what it was for. The ending wrapped up almost a little too nicely and I still had quite a few questions.

Overall I enjoyed this and think it was still a solid eerie YA mystery thriller. I think fans of Small Favors and The Depths would enjoy this.

Huge thank you to Wednesday Books / St. Martins Press for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Where Darkness Blooms (ARC)
Andrea Hannah
4⭐️
Pub date: 2/21/2023

⚠️ involves death and r*pe (albeit minimal and written tastefully)

The land craves for blood and it was given... for decades. Bishop's women mysteriously goes missing, but nobody has been found since the land's discovery. Delilah, Whitney, Jude and Bo were left behind grieving, trying to live on after their moms have disappeared. But they found things that just doesn't seem to fall in place. The wind talks, the sunflowers loom, watch and plot... enticing them, breaking them, warning them. There's something wrong about this land... it's alive, thirsty and it traps them all.

The prologue of this caught my attention right away. It's very mysterious and interesting. Sunflowers have always been attributed with happiness and sunshine. But thus book gave it a completely different vibe, a creepy and murderous one. There are a lot of weird references about how the characters could feel what the land wants. Initially, it was a little confusing to me but as I go on, it's actually very poetic. The descriptions and metaphors are intricate. There are a lot of betrayal and hurt, but also what friendship, family and solidarity could do. It's definitely a Thriller but I think there's a fantasy aspect to this as well.

It's beautiful but unsettling in a lot of ways.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review!

"Where Darkness Blooms" is a new YA feminist thriller with a sharp twist, but occasionally too many pathways to follow. The book opens with simultaneously too much and too little exposition - reading the first couple of chapters, in general, felt like a blur. Each chapter is told from the perspective of one of the many leads in the novel, and although we are introduced to each of the girls in the beginning, the narration quickly becomes difficult to follow as the voices can blur together if they aren't well-established at the beginning of the chapter. Sometimes I could see where the different POVs were useful or even interesting when used for the reveal of new plot details, unreliable narrators, and of course (my favorite!) dramatic irony. However, I was often too caught up in trying to figure out who was narrating, and in doing so it took away from the interest of the mystery plot.

The plot, itself, was interesting - the town of Bishop disappears women, and for seemingly nefarious reasons. The daughters of women who've disappeared live together and soon get caught up in the mystery behind the disappearances of other women over the course of the town's history. Neat idea! Not to mention the author propels it forward with lovely imagery and (as you could probably tell from the stunning cover) sunflower symbolism. However, as I alluded to previously, the plot gets messy at times, and it doesn't always feel purposeful. "Where Darkness Blooms" felt like it was scared of being a thriller. There were multiple love triangle moments, so many that I felt like I was trapped in some strange YA romance wannabe. Add in the confusing POV shifts, the love triangles only got more confusing.

I would've loved to see more of a group dynamic between the girls as a whole - the story is supposed to center on the relationships between women, but this idea diminished for me when the group of female protagonists never actually got to interact as a group. Instead, they are frequently split up by the boys they have crushes on or by the men who inflict violence on them. In doing so, this felt more like a novel about relationships between men and women - which isn't a bad thing, of course. It's just not the female ensemble novel I felt like I was promised, due to the lack of Bechdel-test-passing conversations between the female ensemble.

Ultimately, the first two thirds of the novel dragged on in this confused area, where the book tries to tackle too many side plots to seem cohesive. However, I lifted this to 3/5 stars because I felt like the book did really come together in the last third, and I enjoyed the conclusion and the action in the ending. I couldn't help but wish the rest of the book had shared the ending's pacing and certainty. That being said, I feel like I can't give this book higher than 3/5 stars, either - not just because of the long lead-up to the interest of the third act, but also because of one final point: the last thing that I didn't really get about this book was the author's approach to concluding thematic statements.

Frequently, whenever the author makes interesting commentary on the relationships between men and women, or about the way the patriarchy intrudes power structures, or other similar topics of the novel, she will immediately state the point word for word in a concluding sentence, instead of letting the reader interpret the (frequently pretty clear-cut and easily understood) themes themself. This felt almost like I was being talked down to, as a read. I understand that this is intended for YA audiences, but I also know that teenagers (especially the young women who are the target demographic for this book) aren't stupid, and teenagers don't appreciate being condescended to. I felt like the novel would have been stronger if the author edited these points slightly so that instead of directly stating a theme out loud, the already present thematic elements were left up to the readers to interpret. This would still uplift the author's clever use of figurative language to reinforce thematic elements of the text without feeling like the author was trying to "dumb down" points for the readers.

Overall, I still enjoyed this novel. It would probably be a good text for a high school library to have in its fiction section. I could see a younger high school girl really enjoying this text, especially if she's already interested in horror, thriller, and mystery novels.

3.5/5 Stars

Trigger Warning: Mentions of R/SA. Not described in detail.

Where Darkness Blooms gave us sapphics, small-town secrets, betrayal, and creeeeepy acts of nature for days, told from the multi-POVs of a group of childhood friends, we follow their journey as they try to uncover what exactly happened the day all of their mothers disappeared.

The women of Bishop drop like flies and have for as long as the town has been established. A tiny community surrounded by fields and fields of strange and ever-watching sunflowers, Delilah, Whitney, Jude, and Bo need to figure out what is really going on before they're next.

Prose-wise, I thought this book was incredibly compelling, even if it started rather slow. When I did pick it up I would find myself totally consumed in the ease of which the words flowed, but it would sometimes be hard to want to pick it up again as the beginning kind of drags. I did enjoy how each girl had a distinct personality, goals, hopes, dreams, and secrets. There was never a time when I mixed them up.

We all know I enjoy women getting to be angry and powerful and flawed and there was no lack of that here. I did have issues individually with each girl, especially Whitney, as I felt her queerness was 'used' in some respects. Mourning your dead girlfriend(the love of her life) the entire book only to salivate over any other girl that looked her way was super bizarre to me and felt misplaced. Other than that, I really enjoyed how the girls interacted with each other. They fought and were bitter and angry but still held such a deep love for each other that saved them in the end.

There was a lot of rushing together toward the end that fell flat for me. A little TOO neatly tied up in a bow for a situation that had set itself up to be really complex and had the potential to be entirely more horrific than it was described to be. Where this book was a horror, in essence, I was expecting more of a chill, but I think it was hard to maintain with all of that jumping around. There were definitely instances that were creepy, but not enough for me to consider more than that.

I think people who are looking for more of a slow-burn atmosphere and messy female leads are going to love this and I totally recommend it if that's your gig!

*Thanks to Netgalley and the Publisher for gifting me with this ARC in exchange for my honest review.