Reviews with content warning for Police brutality - Where Darkness Blooms

Where Darkness Blooms was definitely me scrolling through NetGalley and seeing a beautiful cover and requesting without reading the synopsis. Sometimes you DO judge a book by its cover, and in this case, I was not disappointed.

Bishop, Kansas is a small town that was founded on blood, and ever since, they’ve been plagued by horrible storms. While they are indeed in tornado alley, these storms feel different… sentient, even.

This book has SO many things I love in a story:
-a small town
-a cult
-a mystery
-a group of girls solving a mystery
-secrets on secrets
-normalizing queer relationships 🖤

It is a young adult story, so the story is based on younger main characters, but they do have to grow up pretty fast since all of their mothers have gone missing. It’s a horror book with thrilling parts and a sad underlying story. What most people love.

The only problem I had with this story is that it was slow at first, then moved way too quickly. Just a bit of a pacing issue, but it didn’t take much joy out of the story. I also was confused between the timelines.

Thank you to NetGalley and Wednesday Books for this advanced review copy. When Darkness Blooms releases on February 21st.

CW for blood, death, murder, grief, injury, sexual assault, rape (not on page), gaslighting, and police brutality

Content Warnings

dogearedqueer's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Content Warnings

bahyreads's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark emotional mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Where Darkness Blooms centers the story of four girls trying to uncover the mystery of what happened to their mothers in a town that craves their end. Bo, Delilah, Jude, and Whitney have each processed and struggled with the loss of their mothers in different ways.

The story is one of generational trauma and the acknowledgment that "good" men are often complacent in the violence that other men perpetuate. The bones of the story are fascinating but the execution could have been improved. Overall, I enjoyed the book and think it is worth the read.

I enjoyed the prose of the book but felt it dragged in places. This was evident in action scenes, particularly where the action was interrupted by introspection and exposition. The use of four points of view in the book did mean none of the girls were as well developed as I would have liked.

Content Warnings

noellelovesbooks's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character

4.25

***I received an ARC, ahead of the February 23rd [2023] release, through Netgalley. All thoughts are my own.***

Content Warnings: Blood, death, violence, gun violence, toxic relationships, abandonment, misogyny, grief, fire/fire injury, bullying, police brutality, confinement, and rape [off-page but it is mentioned a few times with some detail].

Being a teen is hard enough but being a teen in Bishop? Well, that's a whole other level. Bo, Delilah, Jude, and Whitney grew up together as their mothers were all best friends. Two years ago on one fateful night, all their mothers disappeared and so they've taken it upon themselves to watch out for and care for each other. But being a teen is hard and you never want to share all your thoughts, feelings, or relationships.

The night their mothers disappeared deeply affected each of the girls and forced them to each hide some of their thoughts and feelings from the others. As some of their secrets are brought to light all of the girls will have to decide how to move forward...or if they even can.

Although the beginning felt like a bit of a slow start...once I hit that 40% mark I couldn't put the book down until I found out how it all ended. This was a story of friendship, shared trauma, and taking back the life others have tried to take from you.

Overall I really enjoyed the story and the journey it took us on...although I do wish we'd gotten a little more history on the town, the residents we meet, and the girls themselves. There were just some aspects that I felt could have been fleshed out a bit more to enrich the story and allow us to feel more connected to everything that happens.

I wish this was getting released sooner as it was a perfect eerie read for this spooky season but you'll just have to wait until its February release.

Content Warnings

hollyk's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

Where Darkness Blooms focuses on four girls--Delilah, Bo, Whitney, and Jude, trying to figure out what happened to their mothers, who disappeared 2 years earlier. In doing so, they discover that women mysteriously go missing in Bishop and the girls take it upon themselves to find out the truth.
I wanted to love this book. I truly did. I love a creepy small town vibe with paranormal elements. But this book had so many flaws and inconsistencies that it wasn't enjoyable.

There's a fair amount of diversity--a Latina main character, lesbian MC, two sapphic LIs, and diverse side characters/townspeople. I also enjoyed the girls' friendships, although we don't see how exactly these bonds were forged beyond living together, and the strife within their friend group doesn't make sense at the beginning.

All four girls' POVs read the same way, and the only way to differentiate them was to remember the chapter number (the book cycled through the four in the same order, no complaint there) or the general plotline of each girl. Personality-wise, they all seemed the same because their personalities felt underdeveloped.

In terms of plot, the underlying plot of a curse in a small town was really interesting, but all of the moving parts solely created confusion and did not enhance the plot. A list of examples:

-Timeline: When everything happened is confusing--That Night seems to refer to several nights which defeats the purpose of there being "That Night." Unless I'm missing something, which is fully possible because of the lack of clarity.

-Lack of exposition. Normally this isn't a huge problem, in media res is a thing, but since the plot goes from 0 to 60 at the 60% mark, at that point, the reader still doesn't have a baseline or enough information to piece together the underlying story before being thrown into the action despite ample time to do so.

-Inconsistencies: When Whitney and Eleanor started dating is very confusing--it sounds like they met the night of the bonfire, but Whitney's mom was aware of Eleanor and wanted to meet her?

And then immediately after the bonfire Eleanor dies?

It was very unclear how their relationship developed and there was no reason to be emotionally invested in them beyond a surface level.

-Psychic powers?? Suddenly the girls seem to have psychic powers?

Delilah is a Bloom, whatever that means, but it isn't ever explained beyond one sentence by the villain. Bo can talk to sunflowers or communicate through them? But it's really the telephone of the afterlife? And she also apparently can't die?? I couldn't tell what was metaphor and what was reality. Whitney doesn't seem to have much in terms of power except maybe communicating with the wind like her twin. And Jude can talk to the wind? Which is just an extension of the villain? If these powers were more fleshed out and utilized more, especially Delilah's identity as a Bloom, it would be more compelling and less confusing. Perhaps a plot point could be figuring out which one was a Bloom.

-Mother Abandonment:

At the end, it's revealed that Indigo, Ava, and Cori (the girls' moms) escaped the town because they realized that one of them would be next and that the villains realized that they figured out what was happening. However, this doesn't make any sense, as these mothers (with the slight exception of Indigo) are incredibly dedicated to their daughters--why wouldn't they take their daughters with them? Instead they abandon them in a town that will inevitably target them with no information to help the girls. Even if they knew the girls were supposed to be the ones to break the curse (which makes no sense-this idea doesn't come up until the girls are forced to confront the villains), it's hard to believe these moms, who gave their all to their daughters, would simply abandon them and hope for the best. For 2 years. They knew another girl/woman was taken and sacrificed every six months--that's enough time for all of their daughters to be sacrificed. And only Cori half heartedly tried to get back to her daughter? Terrible mother awards all around.

-Medical inconsistencies:

Whitney passes out, but then in the next chapter Jude says she can tell Whitney is conscious. Even if this was a twin telepathy sort of thing, Jude emphasizes that they don't have that multiple times throughout the story. At the end of the story, Jude is shot in the leg--why didn't the sunflowers save her like they did Delilah? Even if it was because she was too far away, how come she never goes to a hospital once she escapes? At the end, Jude's bullet wound never makes a reappearance after its removal and (likely unsterile) suturing up by Alma.

-Deeper subjects relegated to surface-level: SA and police brutality as plot points.

-The SA of Bo seemed like a way to differentiate her from the others. It did not add anything to the story other than bringing up that Caleb would never face consequences because of who his dad is. It's also unclear why Bo was targeted? Again, this just felt like the author wanted to make an important point but just skimmed the surface of the complexities of SA. I did appreciate the trigger warnings for this at the beginning of the book.

-Police brutality: Alma is taken by the police for Whitney resisting arrest? And Whitney is concerned about Alma being beaten and harmed because she's Black, but then when Whitney goes to bust her out, Alma is just sitting in a chair perfectly fine? This felt completely unnecessary--while it's important to acknowledge police brutality, Whitney does nothing to try to help her crush and just says that she's worried because of police brutality. It seemed very performative and was brought up for no real reason other than to bring it up?

-The curse

was broken so easily by the semi-not bad guy bad guy, which begs the question, if he knew how to break the curse and was so against getting involved with it, why didn't he break it in the first place? He also got off scot-free as far as I could tell, but his ending is ambiguous. It was an anti-climactic ending that let a man break the curse that was harming women instead of the girls who actually did the heavy lifting and killed the men responsible (except aforementioned semi bad guy bad guy). If this book was meant to be feminist, it failed on that front.

I don't think this is the worst book ever, I will reiterate that I enjoyed the underlying plot, but there were a lot of moving parts that took away from the potential of this book.

Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review:)

Content Warnings

More...