Where the Darkness Blooms reminds me of a crossover of children of the corn, that one episode of Goosebumbs Don't go into the basement but at the end where the flowers where all telling the MC they where her father. Dispute my comical comparisons, this book was a hunting read. The main 4 girl squad all live in a town where women shockingly disappear at a high rate. All of their mothers have disappeared along with some loved ones. The sunflowers know and watch, they whisper do you wanna know what happened to the women?

Good spooky book. I liked it. At times I did have to take it in chunks just because women disappearing is a all too common thing.

The small town of Bishop is known for high winds, endless fields of sunflowers, and missing women. After three women disappear one evening, everyone in town assumes they fled the small-town life, but the teenage daughters they “left behind” suspect something sinister has happened. After the winds pick up at their mothers’ memorial, a secret is revealed & seeds of discontent begin to sprout between the four friends. In the strange town of Bishop, malevolent mysteries manifest like weeds amongst the looming sunflowers & for the women in the town—darkness blooms.

It was the cover that immediately grabbed my attention, and with a promising premise that includes “eerie town”, “sunflowers whisper secrets”, and “land that hungers for blood”—it was basically shouting read me. This YA supernatural thriller is a good-time read. The wind didn’t knock me off my feet, but it has the sort of storyline that pairs well with a cozy blanket & a cup of coffee.

There were certainly parts of the story that grabbed my attention, especially that prologue. But I just wished for more supernatural & less teen angst. Amidst all of the usual teenage shenanigans, especially with four girls living in the same house, there is also a considerable amount of deep-rooted trauma from different events that are revealed within the story & it came across as very on the surface with little depth. Be sure to check for trigger warnings before you visit the town of Bishop.

Overall, I thought Where Darkness Blooms to be a unique & entertaining read. If you’re looking for a mysterious, dark YA book that features mother/daughter relationships & teenage friendships with a big eerie small-town vibe, then be sure to check this one out!

Thank you to the publisher for the opportunity to read & review this book.

This is a unique horror story, set in the town of Bishop, Kansas. The land yearned for settlers, and when a group of pioneers settled there, a pact was made between the land and the first male settler. The land wanted a blood offering each year, from a woman. (This is not a spoiler as it is in the first chapter.) It reminded me a little of Children of the Corn by Stephen King, another unsettling story.

Years have passed, and in the present day, Bishop is still an odd town, where women frequently go missing and men hold all of the positions of power. The old pact is only known to a few of the high ranking men in the town, and their sons.

Bishop is also known for windstorms, and for the fields of sunflowers that surround it, swaying even when the air is still, and murmuring. The land is still thirsty but women are much more independent now, and some of the young men are uneasy about the pact they will inherit.

The status quo is about to change, because the mothers of three town girls went missing, and these girls knew that their mothers would not leave them voluntarily. Their suspicion only grew when their attempts to get answers failed.

This is one of the most original horror stories I've read in a long time, and I highly recommend it. I received an advance reader copy of this book from St. Martin's Books/Wednesday's Press via NetGalley, and voluntarily read and reviewed it.

This just didn't deliver for me. The pacing was off and the many plot holes and unanswered questions left me feeling unsatisfied at the end. It felt like nothing happened for the first 60% of the book as we meandered around the plot and repeatedly circled the same issues again and again. I will admit that when the action finally picks up, it really picks up. I found myself actually invested in the story for the first time since the prologue. I don't want to spoil anything, but the conclusion let me right back down again and left me feeling confused and irritated. The abundance of plot holes and little details that just make no sense for no reason largely contribute to that.

Regardless of the fascinating premise and strong prologue, it felt like the author herself didn't really know what she wanted to do with this book. In addition to the issues with the main story arc, there are some strange choices in terms of subplots, none of which seem to lead anywhere. Just a huge miss overall for me.

Two stars for the bits that were actually entertaining and for crafting a story that focuses so heavily on gender but still manages to be genderqueer inclusive. I was actually mad happy to see that in these pages, so that was a delight.

Thanks to Wednesday Books and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for review.

If you’re looking for a anti-patriarchal book, this is for you. I, myself love to be included in the smashing of it so a book where the men were the root of the problems was the center point of the theme, I was in!

No but really…this was an entertaining book filled with dark and heavy themes and a twisty premise: abandonment, blood sacrifice, discussion sexual assault. The largest theme in this book was sisterhood, in all the forms it comes in. That you don’t need to be blood related to be sisters, to support each other, to stick together.

Also, love a content warning at the beginning of the book ❤️

This was a well written, haunting YA on the cycle of trauma in a small city. I loved the girls, the narrator voice, the spooky sunflowers, the blood soaked atmosphere, I struggled with the slow pace and the motivations of the characters wasn’t always as consistent as I’d liked. Overall, a worthy read.

This book felt familiar to me, and a bit too predictable. I feel like the author was trying to create suspense, but it wasn’t delivered. There was a definite creep factor to this story, I’m just not sure I loved it enough.

This was fantastic! I really enjoyed the spooky vibes. I found I had a bit of a hard time connecting with the plot, but the lush atmosphere of the world more than made up for it.

As I was reading this, I felt like I had read it before. I had. Only The Dead and the Dark was much better. We've got small town "horror" with the tiniest sprinkling of LGBTQIA+. And I mean the tiniest. The cover is gorgeous, which is the first sign I should've not requested this.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher.

Scheduled to post 3/11/23.

There are going to be spoilers in this review. I don't think I can talk about the issues I had with it without spoiling. So if you don't want to be spoiled, stop reading now.

WHERE DARKNESS BLOOMS is Children of the Corn but with grown ass men instead of kids and sunflowers instead of corn. It certainly has the threads of being creepy but the motives, the underlying theme, and the character development all make this story fizzle out to little more than a disappointing deflated balloon.

The underlying theme of Handmaid's Tale-esque subjugation of women (in this case without the forced birth and with ritualistic slaughter) is just a tired trope at this point, made all the more tired because we're still dealing with this nonsense today. So if the author isn't doing something particularly inventive with it, it's just old and boring and I absolutely found myself thinking "oh, this again?" when I was reading. From the intro I hoped it wasn't going to just be women and that the dude's wife was just convenient, but nope. It's women in perpetuity. So that's cool.

When we discover that the girls' mothers are still alive, I was hoping for them to be incapacitated somewhere, but nope. They're all living together in a house, just sitting around and gardening, waiting for the day their daughters come through the corn, I mean, sunflower stalks to safety on their own. And the reason they didn't do anything? The sunflowers wouldn't let them. I'm sorry, what? The thing was, there was no reason for them leaving their daughters behind. They just up and left and saved themselves and hoped nothing bad would come of their kids. I'M SORRY, WHAT? And the girls were like oh yeah, totally. That's fine. We're cool. No worries. It was so absurd and so beyond the realm of suspension of disbelief that I couldn't. Those women didn't tear the earth apart trying to find a way to get to their daughters? THOSE WOMEN JUST UP AND LEFT THEM, SAVED THEMSELVES, AND CROSSED THEIR FINGERS THAT THEIR DAUGHTERS WOULD BE OKAY IN A TOWN THAT SYSTEMATICALLY SLAUGHTERS WOMEN? And they didn't contribute to that same patriarchal system . . . how? Either they didn't want their kids and were really good at pretending, or they're just awful parents and probably shouldn't have had them to begin with.

And then the climax of the story was just one giant deus ex machina. The only character who did anything to save anyone was Bo, and it wasn't even on page. Not that I need blood and gore and vicious revenge or anything. But to have that pivotal moment that actually did save the girls just be fade to black was mind boggling to me. The rest of it, the ghosts just randomly appeared after not being present aside from a faint whisper the entire story and led them out of town. WHY NOW? There was no answer for that other than because reasons. Because the book needed to end and there was no real way for them to get out except for those ghosts, I guess.

The town itself is, as I'm lead to believe, inaccessible to people from the outside and people inside can't leave. So . . . everyone's inbred? How many people can possibly be in that town, let alone people who are capable of procreating something other than a Hapsburg? I wasn't under any impression that Bishop was anything other than a modern, albeit rural, town. If they're cut off, how are they stocking their shelves? How do they have cars? Cell phones? Computers? Televisions? How does any of this exist in this town? It didn't even have a paved road. And apparently no real medical anything. This doesn't make any sense.

The characters themselves were largely interchangeable. Bo was the only one who really stood out because she had some anger issues. But only just. The four of them, plus the three mothers, didn't appear all that necessary as stand-alone characters. I had a hard time keeping track of who was who pretty much up until the end, again, aside from Bo. Same thing with the guys. Even now I don't remember which is Evan and which is Caleb. They were interchangeable in the story.

I'm not sure what the selling point of this book is. I'm guessing the language it's written in, but it's not something that stands out. I didn't find it particularly flowery in a way that I would enjoy. I could see it was trying. But among the very poorly built world, the tired tropes, the lackluster motivations, and the bland characters, the most beautiful writing in the world wouldn't have saved it for me. WHERE DARKNESS BLOOMS was just a total disappointment. So much potential and the execution was just undercooked and unseasoned, at best.

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I need more books that give of Children of the Corn vibes. I feel this struggled with having too many perspectives, but was overall creepy enough to make up for it.

I really enjoyed this book and it had a few twists and turns I didn’t expect. I loved getting to see all four girls’ perspectives and seeing how each of them affected the story.

Women of Bishop constantly go missing, and it’s no big deal. Even when three mothers go missing two years before, leaving behind their daughters. Delilah, Bo, Whitney, and Jude have adjusted to life without their mothers. Soon they’ll uncover the secrets of Bishop.

There is huge potential for this YA horror book. The storyline is interesting (though the synopsis and the prologue is a little spoilery).

Whitney is a great YA LGBTQ+ character. She’s represented rather well, and it was one of the things I appreciated about the book.

The multiple POVs all ran together. It was difficult to tell most of the girls apart, as there was no differentiation between them. Each scene is also retold every time through the different perspectives. This made the story rather slow, but also too fast.

Overall, there was so much room for this to be an intriguing horror novel, if the prologue was left out and there was distinction between the characters.

Thank you Netgalley, and Wednesday books for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

"Bishop just wasn't the kind of place that could satisfy restless, hungry women with sharp edges."
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Starting with the characters.. I feel like each girl had a distinct trait/personality that defined them in a sense but also had a common roughness to them that made them all relatable and realistic. They just weren't interesting enough for any of them to feel like a true MC. It was kind of confusing actually. None of them felt strong enough to be an MC but they weren't so weak that they felt like side characters or were truly boring either.
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The atmosphere was dark and eerie and so descriptive it was like being transported into the eye of the storm. Literally. I swear I could feel the crackling electricity in the air, smell the impending rain, hear the whispering wind through the sunflowers. Beautiful.
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I see what the author was going for and the concept is definitely there but I never got the hard hitting "wow" moment that I hoped for which made the story itself seem average. It was a bit too predictable and slow overall for me. The ending was interesting and I feel like it was left a bit open ended but I'm still questioning some things and just asking "Why?" For a debut, though, I'm not upset at all and could see others thoroughly enjoying it.
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Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher and the author for providing me with an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This book was so different than I originally was expecting, but still just as good.

This one reminded me a lot of House of Dust by Noah Broyles. Taking place in a creepy old town where something dark is hiding, and has been for a very long time. It also had a Wilder Girls type feel where the girls are in a claustrophobic type setting and stuck away from the outer world, with these terrible things happening just to them.

I really liked how the sunflowers played a big role in the storyline. The way they first start popping up, the Whispers and their watching ways. I also loved how not only the sunflowers, but the wind had human-like qualities. It made for such a creepy vibe.

From start to finish, this book sucked me in, and it was so interesting how it all came together.

The idea was interesting, the cover gorgeous of course, but the idea falls apart in the writing. I was absolutely worried about the writing not being strong enough to carry it apart from other YA writings. I will probably check out the author's other works in the future.

A town where woman seem to disappear every 6 months.
4 girls who mother's disappeared live together and try to unravel the mystery.
Sunflowers that want blood
Evil men
Too be honest nothing is really explained

This book was one with great atmosphere. The setting is well done to the point it almost feels like a fantasy setting. The mystery is well-built and interesting. The characters and differing POVs give the story depth. The use of the flowers was enjoyable and it made the story feel symbolic without being something that takes itself overly-seriously.

'Where Darkness Blooms' is an atmospheric YA horror with four female protagonists: Delilah, Jude, Whitney, and Bo. The girls are left in the wake of their mothers' disappearances, trying to scrape together a life in the town of Bishop. Bishop is an eerie place, prone to mysterious accidents, deaths and disappearances which only seem to impact women.

This was a good, thrilling book with a fast-pace and engaging unraveling of the plot. It was difficult to keep the girls straight at first, but their personalities did shine through as the story progressed. I think my struggles came down to the quick introduction of so many characters so quickly. I appreciated the implicit and explicit diversity throughout the book. There were a few scenes in which I found it hard to keep up with all of the four girls, rushing in and out back-to-back. This made the overall timeframe of the book hard to track for me too. One of the girls would mention that an event that I thought had happened that same day had actually happened "a few days ago". This wasn't a book-breaking issue for me, since generally these kinds of twisty-turny horror books can benefit from an element of confusion and disorientation. The biggest issue I did have with the book regards the ending and some of the "justification" for why characters didn't reach out to the girls. A little bit more magical explaining away could have helped, even if it was just that- magic.

I enjoyed the overall messages the book had to offer through the lens of each girl's journey. There were points at which I was nervous the antagonists wouldn't be punished or that they'd be redeemed in some way. I'm glad that Hannah didn't try to force redemption or sympathy arcs for characters who, in my opinion, didn't deserve it.

Delilah, Bo, Whitney, and Jude have been living together in a little Kansas town called Bishop ever since their mothers disappeared two years ago. Now there's talk of a memorial, even though there's never been a conclusion about if their mothers took off or died. But Bishop has a history of women dying suddenly or disappearing, and each of the girls is finding that out in her own way... and sometimes it's whispered by the big yellow sunflowers that seem to grow everywhere...

I really enjoy this genre of horror where plants are creeping in - this would sit nicely on shelves alongside Burn Our Bodies Down, What We Harvest, and Blood and Salt. The multiple narrators made it a little hard to really connect to any of the main characters, although it did allow for some great tension especially between Jude and Delilah, who are into the same guy. There was just enough of all the horror tropes that I love - library research, weird notes, wind storms, stalking plants - to keep the pace fast. I would have liked to go a little deeper into the history and how exactly this pact with the land was forged, but overall it was a fast-paced read for those who like rural horror.