3.5 stars. Thank you to St Martin’s Press and NetGalley for the ARC. This was a spooky read about four girls living in a secluded town surrounded by creepy sunflowers where women are always dying and the wind keeps them from leaving. Their mothers all disappeared at the same time two years ago and they don’t know if they’re dead or alive, but they decide they’re going to find out once and for all.

I thought the concept of the book was really interesting and I liked the dark atmosphere. Each of the girls has their own POV but it was a little difficult to differentiate them for a while. Some were more likable than others - Bo was my fave, Jude was my least fave. I think overall the author could have made them a bit more distinguishable from one another. Nothing was really shocking about the ending but it was enjoyable enough to read and I liked how things turned out. I also thought the way women were treated by men and the reference to The Handmaid’s Tale were super relevant. I would recommend this book if you like creepy vibes, strong women, small town settings, and mysteries.

I enjoy books with creepy plant life. It's a more recent trend, having flowers, vines, and leaves be somewhat sentient and I think it's cool and weird and a fun plot point. This book jumped right into things and kept up a pretty quick pace that pulled me in. I like the different viewpoints of the girls and their experiences with loss and the strange things happening in town.

Bo was probably my favorite character, because she's bold and a fighter. She's been through some trauma not really dealing with it, but she keeps protecting her friends and searching for what really happened to her mom two years ago. Jude is the one who frustrated me the most and let her misplaced love for an undeserving boy get between her and her friends. I'm not a fan of girls putting a toxic partner before lifelong friendships and needed someone to shake some sense into her.

The author did a good job of leading the reader through the story. We got some information at the beginning and then learned everything else as we went along. There weren't many shocking moments, but I enjoyed uncovering truths as the girls found clues and pieced things together. This was a well written horror story and an entertaining read.

I voluntarily read and reviewed this book. Thank you to Wednesday Books and NetGalley for the copy

Where Darkness Blooms is a dark, twisted YA story about a town where the sunflowers seem to be alive and where women mysteriously disappear. The beginning was a bit slow and the characters were hard to track at first, but the story was very easy to follow and I felt drawn to figuring out what would happen to the girls in the story. Some good things about this book were the plot: it was interesting, dark, and very unique. It was a plot I have never really seen before. Some ideas would be giving a better differentiation between the characters--I found myself losing track of who was who and their backstory. I definitely think this book is very plot-driven and I don't see much character development so I think the characters could've benefited from some more concreteness. I loved the description in the book, I think it really added to the ambiance of it, some of the dialogue could be a little clunky but overall it moved quickly and it all fit very well. Overall a good story with a very strong storyline. If I could change anything it would be the dialogue and how the characters are presented and written, but I really think they have a strong base. I love the atmosphere of the book and think this would be a really good fall/Halloween book.

3.5 rounded up.
i’m a sucker for books set in a small town that is a character in and of itself.
this book was no exception. it had me hooked from the beginning and kept me interested as the plot progressed. it was predictable at times but that’s never really been a negative for me.
i enjoyed the point of view of three out of the four main characters which is an achievement as when reading multiple pov books i usually only have one or two favourites. i’m very excited for this book to release so that i can own a physical copy.

WHERE DARKNESS BLOOMS is the kind of book that starts slow, but creeps up on you faster and faster like a strangling vine you cannot escape. It is dark and feminist and ominous in all the best ways.
One highlight of the book for me is how distinct and separate each of the four narrating girls is. They each have their own journey going on, but it all ties together with each other. And most of them not being related (two of the girls are twins, but the girls are otherwise unrelated) they really come across a family (even if a bit dysfunctional at times).
Another part of the book the author absolutely nails is the atmospheric tone. Once you pick up this book, you feel the doom of being trapped in the windy sunflower filled tone of Bishop just as much as the characters are, and become just as desperate for them to escape as they are.
I highly recommend it for anyone in the mood for something spooky and eerie, and for anyone who wants to see a feminist take on horror.

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

Where Darkness Blooms unlocked a new fear of mine that I never knew existed. Now I've heard of sunflower fields before, but I've never actually seen one with my own eyes. After reading this book, I have a feeling I probably never will or go to a town that has one.

In this, you will meet the lovely girls who live within the creepiest town ever: Bishop. Delilah, Jude, Whitney, and Bo have one thing in common: Their mothers are missing. No one seems completely shocked by this news but then again, the people within this town were already weird. The weirdest bunch were the Harding boys.

Yes, these guys and other people were acting just way too suspicious for me. Something felt off right from the very beginning. Which made me sort of frustrated with certain characters because of how they acted around them. It's like they see all the red flags but end up ignoring them until it's too late.

With each twist and turn, I constantly wondered what actually happened to their moms. Also, why are the flowers so creepy? Why does the wind only talk to certain people? Once I got some of my answers, it was way too hard to put the book down until I reached the very last page. Mostly because I wanted to figure out the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and then get some revenge.

In the end, I wanted the whole town to burn to the ground with certain people in it. I'll admit it's a little bittersweet to know not everyone on my list died but I'm happy to know that the curse has been defeated. Sort of. Still suspicious of a certain someone and probably always will be.

I'd also like to state that I'm really happy that I got the chance to jump into this wonderful book. I was on the edge of my seat the entire time and can't wait for the next book Andrea writes!

Where Darkness Blooms is a YA horror novel about a small town with a lot of missing women, aggressive wind storms, a never-ending sunflower field, and land hungry for blood. It follows 4 girls as they try to understand the disappearance of all 3 of their moms and get caught up in the evil at the heart of their town. A quick spooky read, perfect for fans of House of Hollow by Krystal Sutherland or Horrid by Katrina Leno.

DNF at 32%.

Let me just start by saying the cover is BEAUTIFUL!! I’m a sucker for flowers blooming out of people faces.

At first I really enjoyed this, the atmosphere and feel of the whole book was creepy and I love that! The sunflowers spooked me and I was intrigued to see where this went. Unfortunately after a while I just lost interest, the characters all run together, it was kind of hard for me to tell them apart. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with this book I just personally didn’t want to continue reading this as of right now. I’m sure I’ll get around to finishing this once it releases because the story really is interesting! I urge anyone who is interested in this to give it a try!

Thank you so much NetGalley and the publishers for giving me this arc in exchange for my honest review!

Thank you NetGalley and publisher for the ARC of Where Darkness Blooms.

Wow. This book has a lot to unravel and deal with. Be warned, there's triggers here. The book mentions them in the beginning, so you're prepared.

This isn't my usual genre honestly. But it was interesting. We follow four girls, who live in a town where other women mysteriously disappear and no one questions it. Because their own mothers have disappeared, these girls want answers. But can they handle the truth that they find?

This is a multi POV book and each chapter switches between the four main girls. That wasn't a problem, but the writing sometimes didn't help flush each girl out personally. Sure, I knew which girl was talking, but they sometimes ran together and it seemed off for that character. I also, personally, didn't like Jude and hated her chapters. I really felt more connected with Delilah and prefered her POV over the others.

I don't think there's anything sequel worthy here, so I'd say for a standalone this isn't a bad read as long as you get past thirty percent of the beginning. But its also predictable and easy to figure out how it will end. Three and a half stars, for sure.

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