Where Darkness Blooms is captivating. I was reading and all of a sudden I was halfway through and sitting in darkness. This book will make you feel rage and happiness. It is an emotional story about friendship, justice, and choice. Keep reading this book review for my full thoughts.
Summary
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.
Review
(Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher. This has not impacted my review which is unbiased and honest.)
TW: rape
Where Darkness Blooms embodies suspense from the very beginning. From chapter one, the reader knows that there’s something sinister in this town. We aren’t exactly sure what, but we know that ghosts haunt their steps and blood seeps out from the cracks. Hannah takes the reality that this community and the authorities which don’t take the missing and dead women and girls seriously and adds a supernatural twist. In many ways, you can read it as a story which examines lives which go missing to ‘serve’ the powers at be, the narratives in place.
But Hannah creates a dangerous supernatural story as well. Of wind that whispers and gut instincts that twist our stomachs. You’re never really sure if it’s the wind or echoes of your own thoughts reflected back at you. There’s a distinct sense of suspense and tension oozing from every page. And at the core of Where Darkness Blooms is friendship. Not only between Jude, Whitney, Delilah and Bo’s mothers, but also between them. The cracks that form, the secrets we keep, and the hopes we harbor.
(Disclaimer: Some of the links below are affiliate links. For more information you can look at the Policy page. If you’re uncomfortable with that, know you can look up the book on any of the sites below to avoid the link)
Half of my notes while reading are just shock at the events and the depths to which these secrets go. But Where Darkness Blooms would not be nearly as compelling without the stories of these main characters. The ways in which friends support and betray us, find and lose us, and all the pieces in between. It’s a story that balances character and action neatly delivering a suspense story that is gripping. Find Where Darkness Blooms on Goodreads, Storygraph, Amazon, Indiebound, Bookshop.org, & The Book Depository.