A unique read that has it all: missing women, a remote town, sunflowers that whisper, wind that isolates the community and the people from each other. Follow four girls left alone as they seek to find their mothers and fight the curse on their town. They girls seek to unravel the lies and deceit - that they have kept from each other and their community while not succumbing to the wind or becoming another lost girl. Andrea Hannah draws you in and keeps you reading to the last!

Where Darkness Blooms
⭐️⭐️⭐️.75
Genre: Fantasy / Thriller
Format: Kindle eBook
Date Published: 2/21/23
Author: Andrea Hannah
Publisher: Wednesday Books
Pages: 304
GR: 3.82

I requested a digital advanced readers copy from NetGalley and Wednesday Books and providing my opinion voluntarily and unbiased.

Synopsis: The town of Bishop is known for recurring windstorms, sunflowers, and missing women. So when three more women disappear one stormy night, no one in Bishop is surprised. With secrets come the lies each of the girls is forced to confront. Delilah, Jude, Whitney, and Bo have one thing in common, their mothers are missing. And more than anything, they want answers and wants them now. Something happened to their mothers and the townsfolk know what it was.

My Thoughts: The story is told by the four girls, in their perspectives. It takes a minute to be able to tell the difference from the personalities, but once you get it, it flows very nice. There are some content warnings at the beginning of the book with references to abuse, violence, and rape. The tone set in this story was simply amazing. It made you feel like you were there in Bishop, going along on this journey. And don’t get me started on sunflowers, I used to love them, now they are just creepy to me. The characters were well developed with depth, mystery, unique, flaws, and creatively built up. The author’s writing style was immersive, complex, amazing magical realism, suspenseful, and just flowed brilliantly with tension. The story had a great balance of twists and magic realism with building of this weird and creepy town that just really sets the stage. This book does not publish until Feb, but you will want to preorder it!

Where Darkness Bloom by Andrea Hannah is a chiller about a small town called Bishop where the land demands blood from the residents, and those residents, in particular women and girls, are disappearing at an alarming rate. Sunflowers stretch as far as the eye can see and wave in the constant winds, and as we move through the story of twin sisters Jude and Delilah as they search for their missing mother, and other women who went missing with her, the sunflowers seem to whisper to them, until the town's secrets are revealed.

A riveting novel, Where the Darkness Blooms kept me turning pages until the very end. Thank you to the author,St. Martin's Press, Wednesday Books and NetGalley for an ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

Thanks to netgalley and Wednesday for giving me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I love weird, body-horror adjacent books and this was right up my alley. Hannah's writing style is lush and gorgeous, making it easy to fall right into the story. I'm also a sucker for multiple POVs, so the four girls had me hooked. Because of how descriptive the writing was, I felt like the plot slowed a bit in places when I wanted it to keep pushing toward the action. Still, this was a beautiful read and definitely something I would recommend.

Thank you NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for a chance to read Where Darkness Blooms.

I love creepiness, sunflowers, and my family is originally from Kansas. Great start to a “let me check this out” mindset! I was hooked from the beginning!

Where Darkness Blooms is a dark, twisty YA about a small town where the sunflowers seem to be alive, women are mysteriously disappearing, and corruption runs as deep as the blood the land craves.

You get multiple POVs and the writing is exceptional! It was descriptive without being overly done. The atmosphere is creepy and the characters are fleshed out well.

If you’re into YA thrillers drowning in eeriness, DO NOT pass this one up.

3.5 rounded to 4.

Thank you Netgalley for the opportunity to read Where Darkness Blooms.

I'll start by saying that I read YA often and anticipated that this book would fall under that category. There are many YA books that I can read as an adult and it feels like the book can be for YA or mature adults, this book definitely felt like the YA is its target audience. ( Maybe this is just my perception but the writing in regards to the teen characters is geared for a teen audience, as an older adult, I may have eye rolled at the romantic aspect of the teen relationships, lol.
After reading the plot summary I initially assumed the book would deal with a paranormal aspect. I don't think my assumption is off base as the first line of the book description on GoodReads states " The flowers see everything". While this is somewhat true, it felt like the author attempted to explain the rationale for the paranormal aspect in a way that is rushed at the end. The first half felt somewhat stretched with just enough hints to keep the reader attempting to figure out what the deal is with this mysterious town and its people, while the ending felt like it really picked up its pace in a way that was too fast. The second half of the book was definitely better than the first half and one of the aspects that lead to my rounding up to a 4 is that the author really doesn't seem to hesitate to alter the fate of some of its characters. It's difficult to read a book and have the feeling that the author doesn't want to seem to let certain characters go. It's similar to a show that's been on for many seasons that won't kill off its Main characters. A large portion centers on the missing mothers of the young characters in the book, the ending of the book in regards to this ( I'm attempting to not give spoilers) doesn't really give closure to the aspect of their absence.

I really really loved the concept of this but, I had a hard time with the actual book. I still love the story, but the writing style was not for me. It felt like it was very heavy writing and then action and then very heavy writing and then action. I did like the four character points of view. It really was a great way to see this story unfold. The creepy sunflowers and sheisty townsfolk were *chefs kiss* and the perfect touch. Overall definitely worth the read.

I wanted so much to love Where Darkness Blooms. The prologue was so stunning that I was screenshotting it and sharing it on social media. It MUST be a 5 star book if the author can bust out writing chops like this!

Sadly, this fell short of my expectations.

Where Darkness Blooms focuses on four girls who have lost their mothers to mysterious circumstances in their small Kansas town of Bishop.

As the girls start exploring these deaths, and the deaths of other local women, they uncover the secret of Bishop's long buried in the town's roots.

Immediately I was jarred by 4 POVs for this one standalone. Two girls are very hard to tell apart, and the other two have a little more personality. Getting caught in the POV of the two less interesting girls slowed the story down considerably, and the moody "more interesting" girls could feel repetitive. I didn't find any of the main characters likable, which made their struggles hard to follow.

I love Rory Power's Burn Our Bodies Down, and I was hoping to get that vibe from this book. I feel that, once again, the author wanted to spread the story out between too many characters, and with those characters already coming off as fairly unlikable, the pace is so much slower. A lot of this story starts off focusing on dating and personal relationships. Each girl's story needs to be built and defined, which means again- for a stand-alone, you are starting four stories instead of 1. You are spending so much time on setup.

The mystery is cool, but you do know part of it from the beginning, thanks to the prologue, so execution is everything. Sadly, I felt that this mystery/spooky shit was overshadowed by lukewarm characters.

Thank you to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. I went into this book with no expectations and it definitely delivered! Where Darkness Blooms delivers on the eeriness as promised and the writing is lush and engaging. It's a flowery kind of creepy fantasy that drew me in and I would definitely classify this as more of a fall read but it can be enjoyed any season (especially the spring, because you know, that's when it'll be published)!

This novel is set in the fictional Kansas town of Bishop, with a long history of women dying under suspicious circumstances or going missing. Written from the perspective of four young women - Delilah, Bo, and twins Whitney and Jude, the girls' mothers were close friends and went missing the same day, two years prior. None of them believe their mothers would leave them willingly but they have mostly given up hope of finding them or discovering what happened.

Bo's suspicions are heightened when the mayor suggests paving over the clearing where the women were last seen, and suggests a memorial instead - to give her time to further investigate the mothers' disappearance. A severe windstorm during the memorial leads to the discovery of several clues that help bring the girls closer to discovering what happened to their mothers and the secrets of their small town.

I really enjoyed the plot and that we got to read from the perspective of each of the main characters, but I wish the characters had more depth. Obviously experiencing such a huge loss at a young age would impact their personality but it was almost all we learned about them. I look forward to reading other works by this author.

This book was absolutely fantastic. I've already added it to our list for order this year and will recommend it to students.

4.5/5
Not only is the cover for Where Darkness Blooms gorgeous, but the story is rich in dark, eerie nature aesthetic. This story is told from four alternating points of view -- Delilah, Whitney, Jude, and Bo. The girls' moms disappeared two years prior (and are likely dead), and recently the town decides to erect a statue of them in their memory. This stirs up questions in the girls as they begin to search for answers, which uncovers some long kept personal secrets and a deadly curse.

I loved that this story was told in 4 different points of view. Each perspective easily flowed from one into the other, providing different pieces of the mysterious puzzle. And each girl had their own wants and goals and were complicated. The imagery (a LOT involving wind and sunflowers and storms) perfectly set the tone. The pacing moves quickly and I found myself flipping pages, hungry to find out what happens next.

This book is a perfect fall/winter read, and I wish I could experience falling back into it for the first time again.

Thank you St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for an advanced readers copy in return for an honest review.

I received an advanced copy of this book through NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review. I was invited to read this title by the publisher. The initial description interested me enough to accept this book. The missing women trope has been done to death, quite literally at times. I think the writing was beautiful and nuanced. There were just too many characters and Points of view to keep track of and the character development was uneven. Also this book meandered a bit and dragged as well as some difficult subject matter related to sexual assault and tensions in the small town of Biahop, Kansas. There were also some inaccuracies or logical fallacies I couldn't ignore. Be that as it may, you might enjoy this book when it comes out Feb 21, 2023.

Where Darkness Blooms focuses on four girls--Delilah, Bo, Whitney, and Jude, trying to figure out what happened to their mothers, who disappeared 2 years earlier. In doing so, they discover that women mysteriously go missing in Bishop and the girls take it upon themselves to find out the truth.
I wanted to love this book. I truly did. I love a creepy small town vibe with paranormal elements. But this book had so many flaws and inconsistencies that it wasn't enjoyable.

There's a fair amount of diversity--a Latina main character, lesbian MC, two sapphic LIs, and diverse side characters/townspeople. I also enjoyed the girls' friendships, although we don't see how exactly these bonds were forged beyond living together, and the strife within their friend group doesn't make sense at the beginning.

All four girls' POVs read the same way, and the only way to differentiate them was to remember the chapter number (the book cycled through the four in the same order, no complaint there) or the general plotline of each girl. Personality-wise, they all seemed the same because their personalities felt underdeveloped.

In terms of plot, the underlying plot of a curse in a small town was really interesting, but all of the moving parts solely created confusion and did not enhance the plot. A list of examples:

-Timeline: When everything happened is confusing--That Night seems to refer to several nights which defeats the purpose of there being "That Night." Unless I'm missing something, which is fully possible because of the lack of clarity.

-Lack of exposition. Normally this isn't a huge problem, in media res is a thing, but since the plot goes from 0 to 60 at the 60% mark, at that point, the reader still doesn't have a baseline or enough information to piece together the underlying story before being thrown into the action despite ample time to do so.

-Inconsistencies--When Whitney and Eleanor started dating is very confusing--it sounds like they met the night of the bonfire, but Whitney's mom was aware of Eleanor and wanted to meet her? And then immediately after the bonfire Eleanor dies? It was very unclear how their relationship developed and there was no reason to be emotionally invested in them beyond a surface level.

-Psychic powers?? Suddenly the girls seem to have psychic powers? Delilah is a Bloom, whatever that means, but it isn't ever explained beyond one sentence by the villain. Bo can talk to sunflowers or communicate through them? But it's really the telephone of the afterlife? And she also apparently can't die?? I couldn't tell what was metaphor and what was reality. Whitney doesn't seem to have much in terms of power except maybe communicating with the wind like her twin. And Jude can talk to the wind? Which is just an extension of the villain? If these powers were more fleshed out and utilized more, especially Delilah's identity as a Bloom, it would be more compelling and less confusing. Perhaps a plot point could be figuring out which one was a Bloom.

-Mother Abandonment--At the end, it's revealed that Indigo, Ava, and Cori (the girls' moms) escaped the town because they realized that one of them would be next and that the villains realized that they figured out what was happening. However, this doesn't make any sense, as these mothers (with the slight exception of Indigo) are incredibly dedicated to their daughters--why wouldn't they take their daughters with them? Instead they abandon them in a town that will inevitably target them with no information to help the girls. Even if they knew the girls were supposed to be the ones to break the curse (which makes no sense-this idea doesn't come up until the girls are forced to confront the villains), it's hard to believe these moms, who gave their all to their daughters, would simply abandon them and hope for the best. For 2 years. They knew another girl/woman was taken and sacrificed every six months--that's enough time for all of their daughters to be sacrificed. And only Cori half heartedly tried to get back to her daughter? Terrible mother awards all around.

-Medical inconsistencies--Whitney passes out, but then in the next chapter Jude says she can tell Whitney is conscious. Even if this was a twin telepathy sort of thing, Jude emphasizes that they don't have that multiple times throughout the story. At the end of the story, Jude is shot in the leg--why didn't the sunflowers save her like they did Delilah? Even if it was because she was too far away, how come she never goes to a hospital once she escapes? At the end, Jude's bullet wound never makes a reappearance after its removal and (likely unsterile) suturing up by Alma

-Deeper subjects relegated to surface-level--SA and police brutality as plot points.

-The SA of Bo seemed like a way to differentiate her from the others. It did not add anything to the story other than bringing up that Caleb would never face consequences because of who his dad is. It's also unclear why Bo was targeted? Again, this just felt like the author wanted to make an important point but just skimmed the surface of the complexities of SA. I did appreciate the trigger warnings for this at the beginning of the book.

-Police brutality: Alma is taken by the police for Whitney resisting arrest? And Whitney is concerned about Alma being beaten and harmed because she's Black, but then when Whitney goes to bust her out, Alma is just sitting in a chair perfectly fine? This felt completely unnecessary--while it's important to acknowledge police brutality, Whitney does nothing to try to help her crush and just says that she's worried because of police brutality. It seemed very performative and was brought up for no real reason other than to bring it up?

-The curse was broken so easily by the semi-not bad guy bad guy, which begs the question, if he knew how to break the curse and was so against getting involved with it, why didn't he break it in the first place? He also got off scot-free as far as I could tell, but his ending is ambiguous. It was an anti-climactic ending that let a man break the curse that was harming women instead of the girls who actually did the heavy lifting and killed the men responsible (except aforementioned semi bad guy bad guy). If this book was meant to be feminist, it failed on that front.

I don't think this is the worst book ever, I will reiterate that I enjoyed the underlying plot, but there were a lot of moving parts that took away from the potential of this book.

First off, the concept was killer and I love oddities and this premise was an amazing start for me. I was hooked from the first bit, although the pacing really through this book off kilter. It was very repetitive in some parts and made the story drag in the pacing. This is a perfect cozy book for September/October spooky season if you have the time. It just could've been a bit shorter and conveyed the same story. My overall rating for this book is 3/5.

Extended Breakdown:
Characters: 3/5
Story: 4/5
Pacing: 2/5

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“Missing women were as much a part of Bishop as the sunflowers and storms.”

Where Darkness Blooms is a YA mystery that takes place in the troubled town of Bishop and it follows four young girls with just one thing in common: their mothers are missing.

The strong introduction to the story combined with the intriguing title and stunning cover had me HOOKED.

Unfortunately though, it quickly fell flat. The characters were one dimensional for me and I could not attach myself to them, nor bring myself to care about them at all. Sometimes I couldn’t even tell the characters apart, they got so muddled. The pacing has issues and there are a few plot holes that do not make sense to me. Also, the “twist” doesn’t make sense either and it’s very unrealistic — and yes I know, it is fiction and that is fine but it still needs to at least have a rhyme or reason or it’s just a train wreck.

I think my biggest complaint is, this wasn’t really weird enough or creepy enough. I would not call it horror and it is just barely a thriller to me; I found it lacking in suspense. It’s more of a mystery to me.

However, all that aside it was not a bad book. It was actually pretty decent and the writing for the most part was beautiful. I really liked the prose (but like I said, pacing was an issue) so it dragged some times. It had a really interesting plot and setting, good atmosphere.

It just has too many conflicting issues so it didn’t quite hit the mark for me.

Thank you NetGalley, St. Martin’s Press & Wednesday Books for the ARC!

Like other reviewers, I see squandered potential in this book, and give it two stars. It drops next year, so maybe some improvements will be made, though I won't hold my breath.

For me this vibed on a level with Wake the Bones, on the surface and atmospherically. The heartland/rust belt Americana meets folk horror, down to spooky things happening in the farmland and taxidermy popping up. The thing is, I loved that other book, while this just didn't deliver.

My main thought reading this was "messy", again and again. There seemed no structure to the narrative, no reason for the multiple POVs that were not distinct enough to distinguish whose we were in during a given chapter, and slapdash romantic drama all over. It read muddled. I couldn't gauge the age or characters, how they legally all lived together, or any of the pragmatic measuring points that would normally tie even a fantasy narrative together for me.

We push the cornfield as a setting ripe for horror, but may I present the sunflower crop as the next candidate, because wow, I see it. I'm mad it didn't pan out in this book. The setting had immense potential to be super creepy, but the writing went the opposite direction of atmospheric for me. It read flat, and I was soon incredibly bored by that and other narrative choices like the multiple POVs.

This didn't float my boat but I hope it'll work for others with different tastes!

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the e-ARC!

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars.

This had so much potential for me, but it was lackluster compared to my expectations. While I thought the all around representation was great (POC, sapphic, trans, etc.), the story itself had a lot of issues. I found it to be pretty predictable, especially because of the prologue, and while it was haunting as hell, it didn't quite hit as well as I suppose it was intended to. It was slower paced, but the pacing did not pick up, leaving much to be desired.

More extensive review to come on Maeflower Reads.

I'm so pleased that the content of this book perfectly matches the gothic, haunting cover. Not every person-with-flowers-coming-out-of-their-faces book has delivered on that particular subset of horror, but this? This was a chef's kiss incarnate.

The characters were vividly drawn, and their relationships nicely messy and complicated. The real star of this book, though, is the land itself. It's thirsty and treacherous, doing whatever it can to keep the women of the town isolated.

I'm absolutely recommending this to fans of Wilder Girls, the Wicked Deep, and Sawkill Girls.

This cover was the first thing that attracted me to this book. The story is just as creepy as the cover.

A land that craves blood, numerous missing women, unnatural weather events, and fields of endless sunflowers. This is the town of Bishop where the four MC live with their mothers, that is until their mothers vanish. Two years later the four young women are trying to survive. But the secrets the town holds won’t let them live in peace.

This book is a wonderful blend of horror and suspense. Even when you know who the bad guy is, you don’t know how it’s going to end.

Thank you to NetGalley and Wednesday books for providing me with an ebook ARC in exchange for my honest review. 4 stars!