Rating - ⭐⭐1/2
"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.
With secrets come the lies each of the girls is forced to confront. After caring for the other girls, Delilah would like to move on with her boyfriend, Bennett, but she can’t bear his touch. Whitney has already lost both her mother and her girlfriend, Eleanor, and now her only solace is an old weathervane that seems to whisper to her. Jude, Whitney's twin sister, would rather ignore it all, but the wind kicks up her secret too: the summer fling she had with Delilah's boyfriend. And more than anything, Bo wants answers and she wants them now. Something happened to their mothers and the townsfolk know what it was. She’s sure of it.
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."
Where the Darkness Blooms is a standalone horror novel by Andrea Hannah.
First and foremost, I would like to thank St. Martin's Press and Wednesday Books for giving me the opportunity to review this in advance. Please note that this in no way affects my opinions. Also note that what I read was an ARC, and things may be subject to change for the official release.
I had this book added to my TBR list for 2023 new releases, and I did request an ARC for it, but I can't say I remember what it was supposed to be about. So, I went in completely blind which did allow for me to really get a good sense of what worked and what didn't. When it comes to this book, the negatives ended up outweighing the positives.
I found the book to mostly be bland. You are thrown into the story with very little context in terms of the plot and characters, and what follows was a slow-burn small- town story that didn't catch my interest. On top of that, when the story was picking up I personally didn't like reading about the content. There were content warnings at the beginning, which is always appreciated, but it still wasn't great to read about.
In terms of the world and how it connects to the story, since I do consider that an important aspect of the book, I found that there were some gaps. Some things just weren't explained which you could let slide, but I would have liked for those smaller, but still important, details to be developed and fleshed out. The story itself was also a bit hard to follow due to the four different perspectives you have to follow, which sometimes don't line up perfectly.
Overall, I ended up flying through this but not exactly in a good way. Despite that though, I still think this would appeal to the right audience, I just wasn't part of it.
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