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

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.

I really had high hopes for this book, because the premise sounded amazing and the cover is gorgeous, but it fell very flat for me. The pacing was slow and repetitive (seriously, for the first 20% or so of the book, nothing at all happened) and I did not care about any of the characters at all. All of the girls and their mothers blended together, perhaps with the exception of Bo, and I felt like there were a lot of plot holes in this story. Overall, I didn’t enjoy it.

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.