"How was she supposed to stop stressing? She was under house arrest in a murderous cult town with guards monitoring her residence around the clock. Leaving would have been challenging enough before the whipping, but now it seemed impossible. On top of that, the townsfolk had dragged Andy off to torture him, and who knew how badly he was injured?"
Are you a true chiller affecianado? Can you deal with the hard core stuff like a murderous cult town? If you are and haven't yet read Amber Hathaway's Little White Flowers, this is a perfect time to do so. You see, the second book in the Little White Flowers trilogy, Hallowed Deadly Seeds, is about to drop in June.
Yes, Amber is inviting you back through the dark, tangled Maine forest whose nocturnal predatory beasts should be the least of your worries. Back to the town that sanity has forgotten where generations have lived (and died) by a cruel false theology that makes Cotton Mathers' Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God look tame in comparison, where every summer innocent children are slaughtered in a ceremony to appease their deity, where when misfortunes occur people attribute them to witchcraft, and where lovely flowers carry horrific messages.
In Little White Flowers siblings Alice and Andy, University of Maine undergraduates, have been sent by their parents to Evanston after their grandmother's death to prep an ancestral home for sale. Their concerns were physical labor, boredom, and spotty wifi--nothing major.
They quickly learned that they weren't in Penobscot County anymore. Forget wifi--the denizens didn't have land lines!
With the exception of Riley, a young man who became quite smitten with Alice, the townsfolk didn't really take to the siblings. They saw too many red flags. Alice and Andy were strangers, didn't dress like Victorians, and were not fans of patriarchy. When they learned too many of the town's secrets Alice barely escaped death by claiming (falsely) to be pregnant with Riley's baby.
As Hallowed Deadly Seeds begins Alice and Andy are alive but far from out of the woods. To legitimize the pregnancy it has been decreed that Riley and Alice marry. The townsfolk are taking no chances. Armed guards stationed around their house to thwart any escape attempts. Talk about a shotgun wedding!
There's a problem. Andy is running out of Suboxone, a medicine that the town doctor certainly won't have.
And when the wife of a prominent citizen becomes unexplainably deathly ill the wedding is put off another week with the guard duty extended.
In addition to illnesses the town is undergoing mysterious tribulations. Fires destroy two of the town's most important buildings. There are two theories. Either God is punishing the townsfolk for their sins or witches are working their evil. Some men have decided to take matters into their own alcohol fueled hands. To escape Alice, Andy, and Riley will have to avoid not only the official law enforcers, but the self appointed witch hunters...
...if it's at all possible.
Hallowed Deadly Seeds builds seamlessly on the foundation laid in Little White Flowers. The characters and settings become so familiar that you'll feel like you are with Alice, Andy, and Riley in their house with armed sentries stationed outside, in the church at the bizarre wedding rehearsal, and by their side in their frantic dash for freedom.
An insight I was struck with while writing this review was how believably Amber describes a cult mentality. I was never in a cult. But my sister was in and out of them. After surviving spinal meningitis Harriet was visibly different. Neurotypical people (adults as well as kids, were very cruel. The Fundamentalist/cultist congregations were the only ones that not only accepted but cherished and valued her, where she felt that she belonged and mattered.
In some getting slain in the spirit was so common nurses were at all services and speaking in tongues considered essential for salvation. Some were Rapture centered, focused on preparing to be worthy of being swooped up to heaven rather being left on a doomed Earth.
When Mom, her great aunt Bland, and Harriet moved to rural North Carolina I spent the summer there with them helping them settle in. In her new church women wore long sleeved floor length dresses in the summer heat, gender roles were ultra conservative, and parents were ultra vigilant in shielding their children from "herecies" like evolution. I'm pretty sure that they home schooled.
Just one more disturbing cult story. A woman was pregnant with a long awaited child when her fetus was diagnosed with a tragic genetic defect. It would die by eighteen months and in its time on earth never know a moment of consciousness. If she terminated the pregnancy the church (her family) would kick her out.
And those were cults embedded in the larger world. Can you imagine those isolated from society for generations? Actually you don't have to. Let Amber take you there.
On a purrrsonal note, the view from my windows is dismal. After melting away the snow ❄️ has returned. Everything is coated in white. Eugene is out there plowing.
A great big shout out goes out to my favorite chiller author (Amber of course), the libraries and book stores that carry her work, and her quickly growing reader community.
Jules Hathaway
Sent from my Galaxy
