Title:  Where Darkness Blooms      
Author:  Andrea Hannah   
Genre: YA, fantasy    
Rating:  3.5 out of 5

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.

This was a very strange novel. Very atmospheric and evocative, but strange. The sunflowers creeped me out tremendously—like the corn field in The Stand—and even when I got an explanation for them, that didn’t make them any less creepy. The relationship between the four girls was realistic, with their fighting and arguing and defending each other, but I didn’t really care for them. This was a very dark and bloody story, and I didn’t find much hope in it.

Andrea Hannah is an award-winning author. Where Darkness Blooms is her newest novel.

(Galley courtesy of St. Martin’s Press in exchange for an honest review.)

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