i really really liked this.

this story follows four girls, delilah, whitney, jude and bo, who all lost their mothers two years ago. the town they live in, bishop, is known for recurring windstorms, sunflowers and missing women. when the town has a delayed memorial for the four girls’ moms, secrets are revealed and there might be something more to the women going missing than they expected.

the setting was what really won me over. it was so eerie and unique. i felt like i was transported into it. the unknowns with the missing women, the significance and abundance of the flowers just made the town so interesting.

i really enjoyed that each of the girls had their own distinct personality and voice. sometimes it’s hard to have multiple pov’s and not have them blend together but i thought it was done extremely well. while i liked some of them (bo) more than others (jude), i was never bored or disappointed when the pov switched.

the only thing i didn’t like, which also lowered my rating from a 5 to a 4, was the ending. i was left feeling really unsatisfied and disappointed. in my opinion i didn’t think that a certain person should’ve gotten any redemption at all. i loved the story and it would’ve been the perfect book and a new favourite if the ending was different.

thank you netgalley for giving me this e-arc in exchange for an honest review!

WDB begins in the town of bishop, where the mysterious land is unforgiving towards interchangeable waves of people. by the loss of all their missing mothers, four girls (delilah, whitney, jude, and bo) form an alliance in order to figure out the cause of each mother's disappearance and furthermore investigate the land's correlation with the strange occurrences. when dangerous patterns start to form in the girls' investigation, the stakes get higher as they uncover more information about the menacing land and its patriarchy.
overall, WDB did the plot summary justice, and it gives more or less of a thrill. the story begins to fall flat after its initial attention-grabbing introduction, so i had a detached interest for the characters. i think the story would have been more suspenseful if the reveal of the land's intent was much later instead of the very beginning. even though the big reveal was immediate, the need for more answers may carry on for some readers.

thanks to st. martin's press and netgalley for this arc in exchange for my honest thoughts!

Despite giving this book three stars, I did really really enjoy it! This has a really fascinating setting, characters that I could really feel for, and the type of curse that I'm a sucker for. I absolutely enjoyed Bo being able to kill her abuser in the end, the only thing there is, I wish there was less discussion on her end about being a monster. I really wanted Bo to feel happy about what she had done, and she seemed like the kind of character who would've.

This was a fun, gothic story, and I was a sucker for the use of wind, especially with the story taking place in Kansas.

Where Darkness Blooms is a creepy and wonderfully haunting story. I mean, just look at that cover! It says it all. The author’s use of the land, wind, and sunflowers was brilliant, unique, and made the setting very atmospheric. I just wanted to keep reading to find out what happened next. I loved this story!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me the opportunity to read and review this novel. I am rating this book based the stars due to lack of time to leave a full review. #NetGalley #WhereDarknessBlooms

Book: Where Darkness Blooms
Author: Andrea Hannah
Rating: 4 Out of 5 Stars

I would like to thank the publisher, Wednesday Books for providing me with an ARC.

I will that this one started as being a three-star read for me. I thought that it was going to be the case of another book that sounded so interesting, but was not executed the best. We start with such a great opening sequence about the founding of the town of Bishop. We meet the founders and get this sense of dread and doom. You see, the land the town is founded on has to be fed with blood. Not just any blood either. It has to be fed from the blood of women. If the town is not fed, then storms and who knows what will happen. The town is separated by sunflower fields and endless windstorms. What most of the locals don’t know is that the windstorms mean that the town has to be fed. While locals do know that women tend to turn up dead, they think it’s a natural cause or pure bad luck. Most of them don’t fully grasp the true horror lurking within their own town.

We follow Delilah, Whitney, Jude, and Bo. All of their mothers have disappeared and are believed to be dead. The girls are now living together and trying to make sense of what has happened. They decide to put up this memorial to remember their mothers. It is here that they start to realize that something is going on and start to look more into the town. They quickly discover that women disappear and die in Bishop in a pattern. It’s almost like clockwork. This gives them a lot of red flags. The problem is that in a town like Bishop, secrets are supposed to stay hidden. When you start uncovering these secrets, bad things tend to happen. To me, this is the perfect set-up for the novel. We have a town with secrets and it will do anything to make sure secrets stay at that. Throughout the novel, we get a sense that things are bad. Like in many small towns, we have this cliché-think the “good old boys” club. It’s a group of men, who have a lot of input on the comings and goings of the town. They are the ones who are killing the women. As the girls look deeper, they quickly discover that even those who are supposed to be protecting the citizens are involved.

This set up the question as to who is more important. The town of Bishop seems to have the mindset that we are going to protect the men at the expense of women. This brings in a lot of society’s issues. Time and time again, we see that women are supposed to give everything up to save a man. When things happen to women, people do turn the blind eye to save their sons from having to face justice. This is exactly what is happening in Bishop. Those who can fix the problem happen to be men. However, that would involve them turning in what they view as more valuable people. Just stop and think for a minute. How many times do we see this happen in our lives?

The tension and the magic are woven so beautifully throughout the story. When I was reading this, I was in Bishop with the characters and experiencing the unknown. The sunflowers and the wind all add to the tone. While there is a lot of gloom and doom, we are given these little moments of hope. We are given enough for us to see that there may be a way out. This little bit of hope added a lot to the story. The atmosphere of the book sort of reminded me of Small Favors by Erin A. Craig. Although, I thought that this book was much better.

The reason I am giving it four stars is that I thought there was a little bit of a lack of character development. This is a pretty short book and we have a lot of characters. Now, I think it is the large cast that made this book work so well. There were times that I had a very difficult time remembering who was who and what their role was in the story. A lot of them had the same voice and were just too similar for my liking. I know that some of them were supposed to have a lot in common, but still. I would have just liked to see a little bit more character development-even if it meant lengthening the book.

Overall, I did enjoy this one. If you are looking for a short YA horror that gives you Small Favors vibes, then I highly encourage you to give this a go.

This book comes out on February 21, 2023.

Youtube: https://youtu.be/e6fT8yB066M

Andrea Hannah delivers an intriguing, well-written, and character-driven novel in Where Darkness Blooms.
As soon as I seen this intriguing, beautiful cover and read the synopsis I knew this story was going to take me on one hell of an amazing ride.

To say this book is chilling is an understatement!
The twists and turns were so well executed.
The writing was fantastic, and the characters were deeply defined.
Hannah's writing is smooth, suspenseful and it definitely kept me on the edge of my seat the whole time!
There is so much to love about this one.
I couldn’t put this book down!!

“I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.”

Wednesday Books,
Thank You for your generosity and gifting me a copy of this amazing eARC!
I will post my review to my platforms, blog, B&N and Waterstone closer to pub date.

I absolutely loved this book! I found it hard to put down. I highly recommend reading it! You won’t be disappointed.

3.5/5 ✨ s

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me the chance to read this ARC in exchange for a honest review.

I requested this title on NetGalley because the cover drew me in. It reminded me of the Horrid cover and I loved the YA plant horror stories.

I will say that everyone thing this story is very predictable at a max of 30% in. There are no twists in this story and the plot is explained at face value pretty early on. Which to be honest made this a pretty boring read until a little over the half way point where the action picked up.

I found the last half of the book to be the best. I liked the ending but I do wish there was more plant horror and more horror from the land curse. I also would have liked more background on why the land was cursed. I mean we can all gather our own conclusions I suppose.

It was a decent read and I would recommend to a younger audience- as it is very YA horror. If you are into new adult and/or adult horror this would not meet your expectations. This is a stand-alone read and is very short as well, which is nice if you’re looking for a quick read!

Where Darkness Blooms drew me in with the creepy synopsis and beautiful cover! I was so excited to read this and for the most part I did enjoy it. I was intrigued by the sinister town of Bishop and I was eager to find out how things were going to end. However, I feel like too much information was given at the beginning of the book. I wish we could have found out about the curse right alongside the characters. That would have added a little suspense. We follow four POVs and while I liked them, it was difficult to tell the girls apart at times. Bo was the only character that I felt connected to. The last 30% of the book was fast paced and intense! I’m happy with how things wrapped up. I’m definitely looking forward to reading more from this author in the future!

I received an eARC from NetGalley and Wednesday Books in exchange for an honest review.

The premise for this, was as beautiful and creepy as the cover! And ever since this book was announced I was excited for it! Sadly, while I did feel the need to finish this story and see it out to the end, I can only say that I liked this story as a concept and that I appreciate the message that the author tried to put across.

I feel that it was done a bit too heavy handed for my taste, but I hope that the target audience would be able to appreciate it occasionally being so direct in it’s use of characters as more as a trope to be moved across predictable, stereotypical lines, rather than their fleshed out selves.

Amongst a host of things that made me scratch my head, was the inclusion of a black love interest and their interaction with a white police officer, it was very much like that First Kill scene with Calliope running from the cops? I felt such a lack of agency, and development even though this was a secondary character.

That being said I did like the themes: generational trauma (curses), how patriarchy makes monsters of us all, the complacency of the handmaiden, state sanctioned crime and the enforcement of oppression by the police; and the pervasive and ubiquitous sunflowers, I won’t ever look at them the same.

TW: sexual assault, violence, murder, guns, police, racism

OMG this book has been one of my favorite books that I have read recently. I loved how each chapter followed a different perspective of each of the girls. The realism but also the fantasy in this book was amazing and nothing like I have read in the past. While reading this book my emotions were all over place. I connected to each of the characters and by the end of book I felt each of their pain, sadness, and happiness of finding out their moms are still alive after 2 years.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me to review this book.

The town of Bishop is known for its sunflowers and its missing women. Delilah, Whitney, Jude, and Bo are traumatized in this town. Their mothers disappear. The town doesn't care, but the girls are desperate to find out why.

I enjoyed this book quite a bit. It was dark and creepy. The feeling of the sunflowers always watching was disconcerting and the author didn't let the reader forget that. I found the pacing to be very good as well and I liked the individual threads of the story we got from each character and how they slowly twined together.

First of all, the cover to Where Darkness Blooms is absolutely beautiful and is what got my attention in the first place. I really enjoyed this book. Beautiful and haunting. It is an atmospheric book and the way everything is described made me feel like I was inside the book.

Reviewed for NetGalley:

There are missing women in the town if Bishop. Four teenager girls take up residence together after their mothers go missing. Coming up on the memorial of the missing women, they begin to investigate the missing women.

Not going to lie, after that main plot was introduced, I lost interest and lost focus of the action. Had no connection to the story or characters.

I received an arc of this book in exchange for an honest review ***

I wasn't sure about this book initially, as it gave me teenage girls in a creepy town find out everything that is wrong there vibes, but the author made it very suspenseful and menacing that it was very interesting and kept me on the edge of my seat.

I also thought that the world building and the building of relationships was very well done.

Where Darkness Blooms is essentially The Dead and the Dark in a field of sunflowers. There are four POVs--four girls who all live in the same house because their mothers were roommates after their fathers ran out on them--who are also grieving the supposed deaths of said mothers because over two years ago they vanished without a trace. This isn't that weird for their small town of Bishop--women disappear or fall down dead at a remarkably crazy rate and no one seems to think much of it. Of course, the girls are determined (all of a sudden, two years after the fact) to get to the bottom of this mystery.

There were things I enjoyed about this book--it moves at a quick clip and there are some good visuals. I was interested in seeing where it was going, so it at least grabbed me in terms of wanting to know how this would resolve. But then there are aspects of the story that don't go down easy. I could never really get over how clueless these girls were going into the story about a town that is just objectively nuts. There are no roads out? They're surrounded by sunflowers? Only men can leave but not the women...who die at regular intervals or disappear? No one seems to be registering that this isn't normal? How does any of this function? What is in it for the people keeping this structure in place? I couldn't really grasp the motives of the men (shrugging and saying "patriarchy" just seems a little lazy) and I wasn't sure how the resolution really resolved anything. There are other people in this town besides the four girls and the handful men...but then sometimes it really doesn't feel like it!

The girls themselves felt more like archetypes and metaphors rather than characters, especially Jude who comes off like your every day girl who wakes up to their own patriarchal brainwashing (I cannot explain some of the crazy things Jude does, and neither can Jude so...was it supernatural or was it brainwashing? who knows!) and Bo who has to rise above the violence done upon her by fully embracing her own capacity for violence. Sometimes the story got a little ham-fisted.

So, while Where Darkness Blooms was a compelling enough read, I still feel like it's mostly The Dead and the Dark with sunflowers and less coherence.

I really liked the premise of Where Darkness Blooms, but I wasn't drawn into the plot the way I expected to be. Bishop was definitely creepy, but with these types of horror novels, the horror element typically comes from the setting being outwardly normal. It's never explained why four underage girls are allowed to stay in a house together without any adults. It's also never explained why Jude thought she and Whitney were driven to a hospital where Whitney was treated, when the building was visibly not a hospital. I also felt like I didn't get to know the girls very well. I liked Bo a lot because she was the one who stood out the most by virtue of being the angriest and the loudest. But other than that, the other three kind of blurred together.

Andrea Hannah has crafted a beautifully haunting, aching story about four teen girls and the curse that traps them. Bishop is a living, breathing character in it's own right, and the mystery Hannah weaves about this town and the choices that echo through generations will leave you breathless. It's a stunning, angry, brutal but ultimately hopeful novel, and it will stick with me for ages.

I want to thank #Wednesdaybooks and #netgalley for letting me read the eArc of #WhereDarknessBlooms by #AndreaHannah


What do I say about a book like this one? The town of Bishop sinks it hooks into you from the very first page. The founder of Bishop acquired the land by blood shed. Not the kind you would think, Robert Dingal steps onto the parched land and the wind speaks to him begging him to stay to make it his home to build and create. So with that he puts an old weathervane in the ground to mark that land and that weathervane stays for decades. The wind tells him it must forge a bond one of blood with him. So he takes his unsuspecting wife and kills her letting her blood satisfy the parched land. With that the bond is made, the wind and the land will let the Dingal Family and descendants know whos blood it thirsts for and in order for what they have built to last the land must get what it wants or the wind will destroy everything.

Many, many years later in Bishop everyone feels as though something isn't quite right, but its not something that is spoken off. Women go missing often in Bishop more they assume than anywhere else. Its always said natural causes but why is it only the women who die of these natural causes? Sunflowers encase the town of Bishop, they are on every side beautiful and tall, its seems more and more pop up and some in the town of Bishop like Delilah, June, Bo and Whitney feels as though those sunflowers and the wind is more sentient than they should be. The girls lost their mothers 2 years prior, no trace of were they went the girls went to a party and when they all came home their mothers had vanished. The mayor declared them dead just that no bodies where found but none of the girls can make themselves believe that. They all feel as though there is something else going on and the sunflowers whisper to Delilah and Bo telling them to look.
Whitney had been in love and that love by the name of Eleanor had been taken from her by so called natural causes but Whitney is having trouble accepting this. She goes to a clearing in town where an old rusty weathervane sits, there she wraps her girlfriends bracelet around589 the weathervane and asks her what happened. She swears the wind whispers to her.
In the same clearing after a disastrous memorial ceremony Bo find a trash bag buried in the ground and inside is a knife crusted with old dried blood, Delilah searches through her mothers art desk searching for balm and finds in the back brand new acrylic paints something her mom wouldn't have bought and just left. The receipt is dated the same day as her disappearance and has a number scrawled hastily at the bottom that says call me. Whitney goes the the nursing home and visits with Eleanor's mother who gives her a notebook Eleanor was always writing in towards the end. She tells Whitney about the wind and the sunflowers, about how most women in this town don't grow old enough to end up in a nursing home. June swears the wind speaks to her, its tells her how awful she is, that she will never amount to anything, and then there is Bennett, Delilah's boyfriend but before Bennett had Delilah he belonged to June and she still feels the pull towards him.
The girls begin to wonder what is really happening in Bishop what really happened to their mothers and to all the other women of Bishop? Anytime it is spoken of, in hushed whispers or a conversation the wind kicks up until they stop speaking or until it has forced everyone into their homes. The sunflowers are seemingly sentient, bending into the windows, watching what the girls do. Warning them to watch, listen, look, run.
Will the girls be able to find out what happened to their mothers and all the other women of Bishop? Are the descendants of Robert Dingal still thriving in this town following the commands of the wind and the land?
Will anyone ever escape Bishop?
This book is amazing in so many ways. I couldn't put it down once I started it. It is beautifully written and you can easily picture every moment in the book even ones you might not want too. The suspense is amazing, please read this book it is worth every moment that you give it.