Where Darkness Blooms

Oh boy. There's a lot to unpack here.

Right off the bat, I just want to say that this cover is so beautiful. It's the main reason I wanted to read the book. I know, don't judge a book by its cover yadda yadda, but I'm a sucker for good packaging. If I could buy an art print of it, I would.

Now onto the actual contents of the book. For the first third of the story, I was on board. The prose is pretty while also being quite unnerving at some points. I enjoyed the eerie atmosphere the writing built up around the town. Some of the main characters definitely faded into the background for me as I didn't particularly care about their stories but I really got attached to two of the girls...

...and then it all kind of fell flat. I was expecting the story to develop more or go beyond the obvious but it never did anything that wowed me. If the story had just been “meh” the whole time I don't think I would have minded so much but towards the ends things definitely got very messy. I know this is a YA book but I think even YA readers would get annoyed at some of the unrealistic choices both the teenage characters and adult characters make.

As for the ending, I won't put spoilers until later but you could say I was flabbergasted by the ending but not in a good way.

Despite all of that. I think that the author has a lot of potential and I hope to see more from them in the future. There was nothing egregious about their writing, just some messy plot, so I'd be willing to try another book of theirs someday. Unfortunately for this one, I don think I'd recommend it.





****Spoilers****





Here are some of the problems I really had with the plot, especially toward the end. (Sorry in advance over how much I ramble here!)

- The moms basically abandoned their children when they knew their daughters might get killed and then in the end we find out that they were just... hanging around outside the city limits? They were so easily forgiven too for all of this, with only one character actually bothering to question why their mothers were so quick to just abandon them. (The answer they are given, btw, is total bs. If I were one of those daughters I'd be furious.)
- Whitney getting a girlfriend was cute and all but where were her parents? her family? She left the city with Whitney but never seemed to have any agency of her own, making her feel like an accessory to Whitney more than anything.
- There were many moments where adults just let the teenagers do things, such as letting some random boys take an injured girl to the “hospital” which is just insane to me. No one would let that happen.
- The implication that the men could just will a woman to fall in love with them honestly weakened a lot of the bad choices some of the characters made. I didn't like how it basically excused all the terrible things one of the girls did because she was “under his spell” or whatever you want to call it.