Where Darkness Blooms by Andrea Hannah

Published: February 21, 2023Publisher: Wednesday BooksAuthor: WebsiteInfo: Goodreads

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. (goodreads.com)

There are going to be spoilers in this review. I don't think I can talk about the issues I had with it without spoiling. So if you don't want to be spoiled, stop reading now.WHERE DARKNESS BLOOMS is Children of the Corn but with grown ass men instead of kids and sunflowers instead of corn. It certainly has the threads of being creepy but the motives, the underlying theme, and the character development all make this story fizzle out to little more than a disappointing deflated balloon.The underlying theme of Handmaid's Tale-esque subjugation of women (in this case without the forced birth and with ritualistic slaughter) is just a tired trope at this point, made all the more tired because we're still dealing with this nonsense today. So if the author isn't doing something particularly inventive with it, it's just old and boring and I absolutely found myself thinking "oh, this again?" when I was reading. From the intro I hoped it wasn't going to just be women and that the dude's wife was just convenient, but nope. It's women in perpetuity. So that's cool.When we discover that the girls' mothers are still alive, I was hoping for them to be incapacitated somewhere, but nope. They're all living together in a house, just sitting around and gardening, waiting for the day their daughters come through the corn, I mean, sunflower stalks to safety on their own. And the reason they didn't do anything? The sunflowers wouldn't let them. I'm sorry, what? The thing was, there was no reason for them leaving their daughters behind. They just up and left and saved themselves and hoped nothing bad would come of their kids. I'M SORRY, WHAT? And the girls were like oh yeah, totally. That's fine. We're cool. No worries. It was so absurd and so beyond the realm of suspension of disbelief that I couldn't. Those women didn't tear the earth apart trying to find a way to get to their daughters? THOSE WOMEN JUST UP AND LEFT THEM, SAVED THEMSELVES, AND CROSSED THEIR FINGERS THAT THEIR DAUGHTERS WOULD BE OKAY IN A TOWN THAT SYSTEMATICALLY SLAUGHTERS WOMEN? And they didn't contribute to that same patriarchal system . . . how? Either they didn't want their kids and were really good at pretending, or they're just awful parents and probably shouldn't have had them to begin with.And then the climax of the story was just one giant deus ex machina. The only character who did anything to save anyone was Bo, and it wasn't even on page. Not that I need blood and gore and vicious revenge or anything. But to have that pivotal moment that actually did save the girls just be fade to black was mind boggling to me. The rest of it, the ghosts just randomly appeared after not being present aside from a faint whisper the entire story and led them out of town. WHY NOW? There was no answer for that other than because reasons. Because the book needed to end and there was no real way for them to get out except for those ghosts, I guess.The town itself is, as I'm lead to believe, inaccessible to people from the outside and people inside can't leave. So . . . everyone's inbred? How many people can possibly be in that town, let alone people who are capable of procreating something other than a Hapsburg? I wasn't under any impression that Bishop was anything other than a modern, albeit rural, town. If they're cut off, how are they stocking their shelves? How do they have cars? Cell phones? Computers? Televisions? How does any of this exist in this town? It didn't even have a paved road. And apparently no real medical anything. This doesn't make any sense.The characters themselves were largely interchangeable. Bo was the only one who really stood out because she had some anger issues. But only just. The four of them, plus the three mothers, didn't appear all that necessary as stand-alone characters. I had a hard time keeping track of who was who pretty much up until the end, again, aside from Bo. Same thing with the guys. Even now I don't remember which is Evan and which is Caleb. They were interchangeable in the story.I'm not sure what the selling point of this book is. I'm guessing the language it's written in, but it's not something that stands out. I didn't find it particularly flowery in a way that I would enjoy. I could see it was trying. But among the very poorly built world, the tired tropes, the lackluster motivations, and the bland characters, the most beautiful writing in the world wouldn't have saved it for me. WHERE DARKNESS BLOOMS was just a total disappointment. So much potential and the execution was just undercooked and unseasoned, at best.It has nothing but five star reviews on NetGalley. That is very much not the case on Goodreads.  So either I'm about to ruin its curve on NetGalley, or the publisher is deleting anything less than glowing reviews of this book. 🧐1I received a copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

February Book Haul

Books were boughten. I have no shame.Everything's from PaperBackSwap except KRAMPUS. That was actually a preorder I bought in December from Dark Regions Press. It has wonderfully creepy pictures. 😁Ebooks!Just a few . . . Story Bundle had a bundle at the beginning of February for Black History Month and the books looks fantastic. So I indulged.

Seven Faceless Saints by MK Lobb

Published: February 7, 2023Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young ReadersAuthor: WebsiteInfo: Goodreads

In the city of Ombrazia, saints and their disciples rule with terrifying and unjust power, playing favorites while the unfavored struggle to survive.After her father’s murder at the hands of the Ombrazian military, Rossana Lacertosa is willing to do whatever it takes to dismantle the corrupt system—tapping into her powers as a disciple of Patience, joining the rebellion, and facing the boy who broke her heart. As the youngest captain in the history of Palazzo security, Damian Venturi is expected to be ruthless and strong, and to serve the saints with unquestioning devotion. But three years spent fighting in a never-ending war have left him with deeper scars than he wants to admit… and a fear of confronting the girl he left behind.Now a murderer stalks Ombrazia’s citizens. As the body count climbs, the Palazzo is all too happy to look the other way—that is, until a disciple becomes the newest victim. With every lead turning into a dead end, Damian and Roz must team up to find the killer, even if it means digging up buried emotions. As they dive into the underbelly of Ombrazia, the pair will discover something more sinister—and far less holy. With darkness closing in and time running out, will they be able to save the city from an evil so powerful that it threatens to destroy everything in its path? (goodreads.com)

If SEVEN FACELESS SAINTS started off as an adult novel and the author was advised to age the characters down to YA because the book would do better there, I would not be surprised. From the erratic application of ages (the characters seem to range in age from 16 to 19, I had an ARC so I hope that was smoothed out by the time it was published, and I mean a single character, not the cast of charaters ranged), to the cadence of their language, to how the characters viewed life, this just was not a YA novel and these were not teenage characters. I know people will argue, "oh they've been through a lot and they're just really mature because they were forced to be adults at much younger ages." No. A teenage mind put through trauma is still a teenage mind. Between the jobs these characters held (although not uncommon for YA authors to put teenagers in positions they would never, ever hold), how they processed the world around them, how they spoke about their youth, how they referenced each other, and how logical they seemed to act, it all points to these characters not actually being teenagers, but older characters given younger ages. Whether it's because these were originally older characters that were aged down, or the author doesn't really have a grasp of the YA voice, I don't know.There's next to no character development for either Damien or Roz. Damian's a weiner for most of the book, finally snapping at the end. Roz was just static. She didn't change at all. I guess she might have moved a millimeter by the end of the book, but that's a stretch. She was just a standoffish, unlikable character for most of the book. On top of that, she didn't have any skin in the story. Damian, at least, was propelled by his desire to not go back to war, so that incentivized him to solve the murders. If he didn't, he was getting deployed again. Roz was just along for the ride. She was shoehorned into Damian's story because what YA novel doesn't need a complicated love interest? But she served no actual function. She was never at any real risk of anything untoward happening to her. The murders were immaterial to her except for the fact that she kept shoving herself into the investigation. She just had no reason to be there.The rebel subplot was so far away from anything going on in the primary plot that I think the author forgot about it for a chunk of the story. Because the way it just like OH YEAH THIS IS GOING ON TOO at the end made it feel very superficial. It felt like this rebel thing had to happen in order to beef up the story, but it just wasn't very well-developed and despite half the book being in Roz's POV and she's supposed to be really involved in the whole thing, there's just not a whole lot about it in the story. The entire thing is a plot device to bring the story to its necessary conclusion.The world itself was eh. Solidly mediocre. I appreciated the Italian-ness of it, but that's about it. I didn't find it particularly good or unique or engaging.Overall, there just wasn't a whole lot to really like about SEVEN FACELESS SAINTS. It doesn't really do anything unique, the world is nothing to write home about, the characters are lackluster at best, the plot struggles to keep track of itself. The author, at least, could string a sentence together, but they weren't very engaging sentences. I have been struggling with YA fantasy for YEARS at this point, considering myself in a reading rut for that genre. I've just recently come to realize it's me. For some stupid reason I keep picking up these bland, basic, European-centric YA fantasy novels thinking they're going to be something different when they're just carbon copies of each other, playing off the same tropes, the same types of characters, the same worlds. Time for me to get off the continent.1.5I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Neverest by TL Bodine

Pub date: April 25, 2023Publisher: Ghost Orchid PressAuthor: WebsiteInfo: Goodreads

One year ago, Sean Miller—journalist and mountain climbing enthusiast—reached the summit of Mount Everest and was never seen again. Unable to move on without knowing the truth of what happened, his widow Carrie insists on an expedition to search for Sean’s body so it can be properly laid to rest. Tom, Sean's best friend and former climbing partner, agrees to serve as expedition guide and promises to keep Carrie safe on the mountain, despite their complicated relationship history.Guided by a travel journal left behind by her husband, Carrie ventures into the frozen, open-air graveyard of the world's tallest peak. But as Sean’s diary and Carrie’s experiences reveal, climbing the mountain is more than a test of endurance; it’s a battle of wills with an ancient and hostile force protecting the mountain—and the dead do not rest easy at the summit. (goodreads.com)

I'd read Bodine's work before she asked me to blurb NEVEREST, so I was interested in seeing what she'd come up with next in this interesting horror story set on Everest. It's something different and intriguing and it captured my attention immediately. And it certainly didn't disappoint.One thing I've noticed about Bodine's writing is her ability to dig up the humanest of human emotions in her characters. To the point where they're almost unlikeable for how raw they react to situations. Yet at the same time they're so incredibly human that you can't help but empathize with them while you're reading. Carrie is no different as we sit on her shoulder and climb the mountain with her. She works through a rollercoaster of emotions as she grapples with her husband's death, and the guilt of some of her feelings toward him in the final handful of time before he died. At times cringey, but realistic to the point of hurting, I couldn't look away.Plus, there's this underlying low thrum of horror that simmers under the surface of the story. Right from page one there's a sense of foreboding as Carrie's plane comes in for a rocky landing. NEVEREST is definitely not a sun-shiny story, that's for sure! It's a horror that lurks in the corner of the eye, in reiterated tales of urban legends that live on only on people's tongues. Or in Carrie's case, in the works of her husband through his journal.The ending doesn't really give you that well-rounded solution to the story, but it's a fitting ending and I wouldn't have wanted it any other way. The horror is insidious that way, lurking just on the edges of the pages. It might peek it's finger in, but that's all you'll see of it. I love this kind of psychological horror that never gives you the satisfaction of a solid ending. That's the whole point, and it makes it all the creepier.NEVEREST was a ride of a story that had me flinching with every page turn because I kept expecting something to reveal, but she keeps the terror on simmer the whole time, allowing it to needle under your skin and fester. If you want a low-key yet mind-screwy king of horror, NEVEREST is the book for you!4.5

The Smutesaurus: The Ultimate Guide to Superior & Preposterous Language for Romance Writers by Samantha Swart

Published: February 15, 2023Publisher: SelfAuthor: WebsiteInfo: GoodreadsThe title pretty much says it all. Borne into this world by a romance editor on TikTok as a lark, Swark created a guffaw-inducing compendium of terminology NOT to use when writing a romance novel. I mean, I guess you COULD use it, but it's ill advised. I found myself cackling profusely, especially during the chapters highlighting the names of male and female bits. MY how creative society can get!There are also, dare I say, inspirational terms in here too, especially as they pertain to certain kinks. Those were a little harder to read as I fumbled my way through pronouncing a lot of them. But I did! Success!THE SMUTESAURUS is a must have for any romance writer, because if you find yourself using one of these more gregarious terms in your writing, it must be stricken forthwith! Unless you're writing a satire. In which case, carry on!5