The town of Bishop has a problem, women go missing on a regular basis. When three go missing in one night no one is shocked. The women left daughters behind along with a dark secret. Each girl has to take on the lies that were told to them head on. They know something happened to their moms and the town seems to be hiding its own secrets. Each wants to figure out just what is happening and why they are a part of it. Follow along as each girl tries to confront the lies they were told and solve the mystery of just what happened to their moms. Are they safe or is something sinister waiting for them?

First off thank you Wednesday Books and Netgalley for this gifted arc! This story was so strange, but in a House of Hollow type of way. The imagery was beautifully written! I loved the mystery concept of the story. I just wish it was faster paced. The storyline was great but I felt as if 70% of the book was mainly just the backstories for each character. And then the action was during the last 20% of the book. The last 10% felt like a ton of unneeded fluff. ⁣⁣
⁣⁣
I absolutely loved getting the different perspectives of the four girls, but I wonder if things would have moved faster if the author didn’t focus so much on their backstories. I think if we just had the perspectives of Delilah and Whitney the story would have been perfect. Bo and Jude’s perspectives didn’t add much to the story. It actually felt very repetitive. The parts that were important I think could have been see from Delilah or Whitney’s POV. When things finally picked up I was so enthralled in the story. ⁣⁣
⁣⁣
Then we have the ending… it was… too stretched for me. There was too much summarizing. I kind of wish things ended at the porch (I don’t wanna say too much about the ending because spoilers, but once you read it you’ll know what I mean).

I wanted to like this story more than I did- female centered small town horror with a sacrifice demanding entity sounds right up my alley. But, unfortunately, that wound up being the problem, because I've read enough of these types of books to know this one was trying hard to be like the mre successful ones- Wilder Girls, Sawkill Girls- without really understanding what they did well. So instead this book feels mostly just flat.

What I did like boils down to this- the sunflower chorus was interesting, and the found family semi-dysfunction of sister-adjacent girls living together and also going through grief and panic together. I liked that these characters were practically sisters before any of this, and remained at way even through the hardest of things.

But this book just felt watered down. The reason for the sacrifices and the "plot twist" of them felt uninspired and made no real impact. And, worse, due to the decision to let us in on the secret before the story even starts made that reveal and the dragging out towards said reveal absolutely pointless. It steals any wind in the sales, and takes away any real reaction you could've had. And so this book has very, very little discovery, beyond watching these girls totter around and past clues and danger.

The romantic drama was also very, very odd. It didn't balance well with the attempts at horror, and somehow felt even more like it was clashing with the sexual assault storyline. And even that aside, the blatant need to couple everyone up in the middle of investigations and murder felt lazy and did nothing for the characters.

Honestly, this book was simply too slow and the actual plot/obstacles too easy. There is very little to figure out for the readers or for the characters- we are handed everything, the characters stumble into everything.

This may be a good first horror-lite typ book for a teen, but with the too surface level plot and characters and the pacing, it wasn't one I really enjoyed reading.

2/5 stars

I love the cover of this book and I loved the premise. Bishop is a windy town with cursed soil that requires the blood of women to satiate its hunger. Four teen girls are left behind when their mothers suddenly disappear from Bishop, but with the continuing occurrence of untimely deaths among the girls and women of the town, the teens become suspicious. The four begin to dig deeper to get at the root of what is really happening in Bishop.

My main takeaway from this novel and the real reason for my 2/5 rating is that it is simply too unrealistic. In a town of "four square miles," there are teens in the same school as Delilah, Bo, Whitney, and Jude who don't know each other? With the assumption that nobody else has noticed women dropping dead left and right, the girls' mothers discover the horrific truth only to flee town and leave their four daughters behind? And why have no authorities from outside of Bishop come to investigate the alarmingly similar profiles of the town's victims? These are only a few questions out of many to which I found myself raising my eyebrows in disbelief.

I understand that this is a YA horror novel set around the premise of cursed land, a largely unrealistic setting, but certain logistics of the book are still too unrealistic for me to really settle into the story. In addition, I didn't really like any of the four main characters and they just tended to annoy me, quite frankly.

I did appreciate the (albeit not so subtle) parallels to A Handmaid's Tale and the discussion of what women experience so that men can prosper. I think that the author did a good job of contextualizing these issues in a way that will be both clear and meaningful to teens. However, despite the last chapter, I am left wondering what happened to several women side characters during the fire and felt as though the ending happened very quickly with not enough explanation. Will the remaining women in the town of Bishop have justice?

Overall, I think the book could have been so much more than what it turned out to be. The unique story was there and the setup was alluring, but the book ultimately fell flat.

A huge thanks to NetGalley and Wednesday Books for the digital copy of this book. All opinions are my own.

I never expect for YA horror to get me as much as adult horror and books like this keep proving me wrong. I loved the various character POVs and the plot was really really suspenseful and riveting. I feel like there were some aspects that were rushed or not fleshed out but overall I really enjoyed this one!

A BREATHTAKING 5 STARS!


WHERE DARKNESS BLOOMS is a haunting, atmospheric, captivating story of generational curses in a town that comes alive!

Thank you to Netgalley and Wednesday Books for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

“Where blood had been spilled, sunflowers grew over the unmarked graves.”

The town of Bishop, Kansas yearns for blood and the women of Bishop, Kansas have been going missing for generations. WHERE DARKNESS BLOOMS follow four girls – Bo, Delilah, Whitney, and Jude as they work to uncover secrets about the town before it comes for them. They soon discover that some secrets are closer to home than they thought, and they’ll have to listen to their hearts to make it out alive.

What I Loved:
✅ rich, captivating prose
✅ vivid landscape and setting, a town that TRULY comes to life and immerses the reader
✅ coming of age – these girls are trying to save themselves but are also dealing with life’s daily moments of crushes, sibling drama, secrets, and parties
✅ trans inclusive language and experiences
✅ righteous feminine anger and rage
✅ honestly, everything about this book


The four main characters create a reading experience that helps include all readers.
“Gorgeous” Whitney, who has been to her share of parties and comes alive in every storm.
“Brave” Bo, who is filled with so much anger it falls off the page and into the reader.
“Smart” Delilah, who leads the group even when they push back, and keeps it together for everyone else
“Soft” Jude, who leads with her heart and trusts so freely.

Watching them come together, overcoming their differences and challenges that hit them at every turn, is almost like a love letter to the friendships in life that are everlasting and so, so healing.

The men of Bishop fill their role, the ever-lingering mistrust and skepticism of their role in the town’s violence keeps readers on the edge of their seats anytime one appears.

The town itself is alive, in so many ways, and the intertwined history of the people and the place makes every detail feel like a key to unlocking the mystery.

Andrea Hannah has masterfully woven a story about the dangers of men, the strength of women, the haunting of generational violence and secrets, and the allure of a magical town and its inhabitants into one fast-paced, angst-filled novel that will break your heart apart and help you mend each piece back together again.

I found this too slow and unbelievable for my taste. What mothers would leave their girls??? And the men? And NO ONE knew about the hospital?

Thank you NetGalley and Wednesday Books for the dARC of this work in exchange for my honest review.

Blurb: The town of Bishop is known for exactly two things: recurring windstorms and an endless field of sunflowers that stretches farther than the eye can see. And women—missing women. So when three more women disappear one stormy night, no one in Bishop is surprised. The case is closed and their daughters are left in their dusty shared house with the shattered pieces of their lives. Until the wind kicks up a terrible secret at their mothers’ much-delayed memorial...Bishop has always been a strange town. But what the girls don’t know is that Bishop was founded on blood—and now it craves theirs.

This is one of the best books I have read this year. The characters are well developed, the narration flows, the plot is clear and believable. I was creeped out and intrigued to keep reading in the best way.
I couldn't put this one down from the opening intro about Bishop through to the final pages. The flowers, the weathervane, the secrets the girls all harbor...everything was just very well done.

I was very late to read this. But, I thought this was a good read! I would recommend this to friends.

DNF at 20%

I really wanted to enjoy this book, everything about it sounded like something I'd love; unfortunately, this book was not for me. The best part of the book was the prologue. The characters sounded too similar, and I had trouble distinguishing whose POV the chapter was in. I was also not very intrigued by the drama between the girls. I am sure this book will find its audience, it just is not me.

This was an extremely creepy and intriguing read. The kind that grabs hold of you, messes with your head, and keeps you up late reading. I greatly enjoyed it.

I really enjoyed this story, particularly how human and flawed each of the characters were. No one acted virtuous all of the time, everyone made mistakes. But at the bottom of it all was a deep love for one another that was really touching. I didn’t feel that the content was too triggering or gory, it found a way to be intense without being needlessly descriptive about violence - which I feel is really important for a YA novel. I found a little bit of my teenage self in each of the characters: Bo’s anger, Whitney’s grief, Delilah’s protectiveness, and Jude’s desire to be seen. Overall a really great story!

I also really enjoyed the idea of the town suffocating all of these women as a metaphor for… the world at large right now. I wish there had been a little more backstory into the villains, how things all started, etc. though.

Thanks to NetGalley, Andrea Hannah, and the publisher for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

For some reason I thought this was more of a thriller and less of a fantasy/dystopian book when I requested it from Netgalley, so that’s on me since this isn’t my normal cup of tea. I could have gotten by that because I liked the idea and I think the book had promise but there were a few issues for me that kept me from really enjoying it and I ended up skipping a lot of pages just to get to the end. The multiple POV was confusing as there were too many girls to keep track of. I couldn’t remember who was sisters and whose mom was whose. It often felt like the story was all over the place and that honestly might have been because there were a lot of locations, but there was just a lot going on here between the girls’ relationships and their relationships with each other. It was too much to sort out and keep track of. I received and ARC, so hopefully the published version is cleaned up and addresses some of these issues.

⁉️Did you ever watch Pretty Little Liars?
I 💯 was sucked into the first three seasons, and then it all sort of went downhill, like this book.

BOOK REVIEW
Where Darkness Blooms by Andrea Hannah
Published: Feb 21, 2023 (out now 🍃)
320 pages
@wednesdaybooks

This started out really eerie, atmospheric, promising for YA horror, for sure. I could feel the feminist vibes coming, and I was here for it.

Then about a third of the way in it started giving Pretty Little Liars, but if the land was hungry for their blood. You know what I mean if you got into PLL. It sucked you in like a tilt-a-whirl. You think you’re enjoying it until you realize you’re just going around and around and around until you want to hurl. I got swept up by this beautiful cover. And this, friends, is why you don’t judge books by their covers.

All of the villains in this story were predictable and easy to identify really early on. That didn’t even bother me. What bothered me most was how the girls should’ve died a million times and managed not only to survive some pretty gnarly bats to the head, etc., but the proceeding to trek through town. Also, how were all of the men in this town just cool with keeping the secrets of the ones feeding the land the women’s’ bodies? And don’t get me started on the moms . . .

That said, IF you enjoyed PLL in its entirety, you’ll like this. Also, I think it’s fair to mention that some other booksta friends of mine had much more positive reviews for this, both giving 4 stars.

I’d consider rounding to three just because the author didn’t take one of the romantic interests in the direction I thought they might for a minute.

⭐️⭐️✨

Thanks @netgalley @wednesdaybooks for the gifted e-book

#wheredarknessblooms #bookstagram #bookatagrammer #bookish #bookfeaturepage #bookfeature #bookhighlights #bookreviewer #marchreads #netgalley #netgalleyreads #newbooks #newbookstagram #instabookstagram #booksandbreakfast #beautifulbookcovers #bookcovers #booksiread #whatithink

Here we have another creepy-ass book, but this time, it's the whole town that's messed up! The town of Bloom is a bit of a mystery. Women and girls go missing on the regular, but the most that the town's Powers That Be do is throw up a statue and move on. And even that is rare, frankly. But when three women go missing at once, their daughters have to band together to survive in this weird place.

I suppose you have to suspend some disbelief that this town can exist like it does in modern day society, but once you get past that, it is certainly an entertaining story, full of secrets and mysteries. Each young woman who lives in the house, Delilah, Jude, Bo, and Whitney, all have their own stories and their own buried secrets to content with, along with the pain of their missing mothers. While the girls used to be inseparable, things have been tense, and rifts are very clearly happening.

We get the points of view of each of these characters, which generally works well since it enables us to get to know each of them, though doesn't make any one particularly stick out. But it does certainly make you feel for each of the girls, and make you realize that this town treats women as disposable, whether they're missing or not. The book is also extremely atmospheric- I certainly felt the isolation and, for lack of a better word, "wrongness" of the town and its inhabitants.

The book was entertaining throughout, as I was definitely invested in finding out answers to the secrets and mysteries. I was certainly invested enough in the characters and their relationships to be desperate to see how it all played out for them. I was also really pleased with the ending, it worked really well with the story and I was satisfied.

Bottom Line: Overall, a solid mystery with a lot of likable characters and a definitely messed up town with an equally messed up past.

Talk about a book that grabs you by the throat right from the get, drags you right into its pages, and never lets you go. My issue? It should’ve let us readers go a little earlier.

I know, I know! I’m always complaining books are too long. So sue me. Or that books have too many epilogues when just one would suffice, thank you very much. This books suffers from that rare combination I call “The Return of the King Syndrome” (for those who have seen Peter Jackson’s “LOTR: The Return of the King”): Too many chapters at the end that read like epilogues so you think this chapter must be the ending, but then there’s another chapter that makes you think the same way, but then there’s another chapter that would’ve sufficed as a perfectly good ending as well. This goes on for several chapters. I would’ve nixed all but maybe two or three of them.

But the ending? *chef’s kiss*

This book feels a little like The Village, a little like Midsommar, a little like Hannah Whitten’s Wilderwood, and there’s a touch of The Handmaid’s Tale in there too. Even as I write this list of cultish/occult/horror/ and speculative fiction influences that I felt traces of in the framework of this novel (and, for some reason, there’s an episode of Criminal Minds that involves someone running through a sunflower field to hide from an unsub, I think), I know I can’t write this list down without acknowledging the other half of this book, which involves women working the soil, spilling their blood, sweat, and tears into it to bring forth crops mostly for the menfolk to eat before they do and flowers to bring beauty to the world.

If you pay attention to the narration clearly in the very beginning of the chapter you can tell it’s the time of the Dust Bowl Migration, and the town of Bishop is established when the land there calls to one particular migrant from the eastern seaboard, who had restlessly been searching for a place to establish his own town. We don’t find out until later that the place where the town founder has picked to become Bishop, the town where the events of our book take place, is in Kansas, which suffered the most drought and agricultural damage of any state during the Dust Bowl period. It was a truly damaged land, deprived of life. It called to this restless soul searching for a place all his own, and it spoke to him. And he paid the price many times over to establish Bishop, a town that was his, and his alone.

By the time the story of our four friends starts in earnest, it’s much further into the future. Twins Whitney and Jude, angry Bo, and lost Delilah. All four live together in Deliliah’s house, since their mothers collectively disappeared one day two years ago and haven’t been seen since. Was it murder? Did they just decide to leave their daughters and run away? No one knows. But the answers to what happened that day have haunted all four girls every moment since, and they still long for closure. For answers. Each of them have their own theories and opinions they don’t tend to share with the others. All four of them have secrets, some of them painful. And all four of them know something is wrong with the town of Bishop, but none of them are able to put their finger on it.

Andrea Hannah writes in her acknowledgements, “This is the first book I’ve written in a long time that feels like me.” Well, I applaud you, Ms. Hannah, for getting your literary groove back, because the juxtaposition between these large flowers blooming in the sunshine and yet knowing somehow that becoming sunflowers would both give the men reason to not cut them down but also would give the women of Bishop some protection if they needed it with their sheer height was a stroke of genius. You gave the men the wind and the earth, but you gave the women the flowers and the water. Necessity is the mother of invention, and the dead women of Bishop used what was once theirs to invent a way to fight against the patriarchy that ruled their town until the day would come when the town could be freed.

There’s not a lot of world building to do in this book, and there’s not a magic system, per se. This book is almost entirely driven by the characters and their emotions. I’d actually wager this book would be nothing without emotion. They flow, fly, simmer, and rage through every character, sometimes to the point where it almost feels palpable. I love a book where I can almost taste a character’s feelings in my mouth, like the saltiness of tears or the sourness of disappointment. Keeping this book small in geographic scope fit Ms. Hannah’s writing style so well I kind-of hope she doesn’t stray to anything in the epic/high fantasy genre, where characters are far-flung around another world, where time will be taken away from intense and passionate characters.

This book could’ve been rated 5 stars, if it weren’t for the awkward and stuttered denouement.

I was provided a copy of this book by NetGalley and the author. All thoughts, views, and opinions contained therein are mine and mine alone and are given of my free will. Thank you.

File Under: Coming of Age/YA Fiction/YA Horror/Cult Horror/Ghost Story/Horror/Mystery/Occult Horror/Speculative Fiction/Psychological Thriller/Thriller/That is Effed Up/YA Mystery/YA Thriller

Where Darkness Blooms is the story of four girls: Delilah, Whitney and her sister Jude, and Bo. Their mothers disappeared but the girls don't think they're dead. In fact they're convinced that their sunflower-laden, blood-hungry, obscenely windy town, Bishop, has something to do with their disappearance.

I think I've found that YA horror just isn't my thing. I've given you several tries YA horror, but I just don't seem to enjoy it. Despite the fact that there are four main characters, I just couldn't connect with any of them. Jude is the literal worst pining for her friend's boyfriend after hooking up with him (once?). Whitney spends the majority of the book grieving for her dead girlfriend despite finding another girl way hot. Not sure what Delilah and Bo did in this story. Maybe mourn her missing artist mother while being unable to touch her boyfriend (Delilah) and be angry at everyone always (Bo)? At least I think. I had a hard time caring about any of the characters.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for this ARC. Unfortunately, I just couldn't get into the story or the characters.

"There are a lot of strange things in this town. It's best to keep the strangest one close to be safe."

I was excited to read this one because I enjoy a good YA Horror, I love the cover, and the idea of "the flowers are always watching" intrigued me to my core.

In short, I liked this story.

The prologue really pulled me in, and I found myself hungry to know more of the story. There is definitely some time that passes between the prologue and the actual story, but there is a sense of foreboding the whole way through. This town almost feels like a cult, not only with the endless sunflower fields that never die, but also with the fact that nobody ever enters or leaves the town. The sunflowers and wind prevent that from happening. Plus, there is a lot of stormy weather in this book, so the atmosphere is all around top notch.

Then you have the characters, four girls bonded together through childhood and stuck together through the same sense of loss. They each lost their mothers, and stuck together ever since. The girls all grieve in different ways throughout the course of the book, especially when they pass the two year mark of their disappearances, but there is also a lot of fear for the other girls and hope that they don't have to experience that sense of loss a second time.

There is also the charismatic town mayor who definitely does not have any bad qualities or creepy feelings around him, and a couple other characters that get mentions but don't really serve as a main part of the story. The cast of characters is big, but they are all easy to keep track of and are all different in their own ways.

I kind of guessed the "bad guy" of the story early on, but there are hints here and there so it was not hard to figure out. No spoilers here! The prologue kind of laid out the main problem that the story would have too though, so I never truly found myself surprised by the events of this book. Still, the atmosphere was well written and I liked the characters.

Overall, the story feels unique and it is one I will think about for some time to come, even if it was a bit predictable and not super surprising. I still absolutely love the cover, and the stormy summer atmosphere was top notch! I appreciate that the author included some content warnings at the start of the book (at least in my digital ARC), and I would definitely be open to reading some other books by this author.

[Thank you Netgalley and Wednesday Books for an e-arc of this book, all opinions are my own.]

Content warnings: blood, death, abandonment, violence, gun violence, infidelity, rape, body horror, racism, sexism

This YA book was just ok for me. There are multiple POV’s so you get to know each of the four girls. Although it was creepy at times I found myself bored most of the time.

Three women go missing in the town of Bishop. Their daughters come together to figure out what to do. They eventually discover the dark secrets the town’s male residents are keeping.

Where Darkness Blooms is available now.

Thank you stmartinspress and netgalley for this arc in exchange for my honest review.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this creepy story!

I wasn’t really sure what I was getting into with this because it jumped right in to a complicated world where 4 teenage girls are living together because their moms all disappeared a few years earlier. The girls seem to spend zero time together and honestly to dislike each other—though the distance and animosity gets explained later. The strange events surrounding their town (and the not-at-all-hidden misogyny) were frustrating because it seemed so obvious that things were seriously wrong, but no one was bothered by it. Even the girls pretended that things were fine while they internally crumbled and dealt with traumatic events that the others weren’t necessarily aware of.

The first half of this story was pretty slow for me with a lot of “I can’t believe you still don’t think this is bad!” from me directed at the characters. It wasn’t until people start sharing info that it really picked up and the ending was quite satisfying. The explanation for the mothers’ disappearance was frustrating and did not endear them to me, but it could have been worse.

I was also surprised by some of the content and had to take a few breaks from the text so here’s some content warnings: sexual assault—not graphic and a flashback/recounting but still disturbing, murder, blood, violence, violence against women, misogyny, sexism, kidnapping, non-consensual/manipulated-into-it sexual activity (still sexual assault, but a specific type), abandonment, loss of a loved one, police brutality, and probably more? This was a lot.