SIX DARK BOOKS WITH PLANTS ON THE COVER

Mabuhay, friends!

Houseplants are one of the areas in my life that I always try to be good with but eventually, fail at. I’ve tried tending to herbs, cacti, succulents and vegetables but they always end up dying. Yet that never stops me trying to figure out how to tend a garden. For now, my growing collection of books with plants on the cover will have to do. So, here are some recommendations for dark books with plants on the cover!

To check out the July to September topics post, please click here. Top Five Tuesday was created by Shanah at Bionic Book Worm, and is now being hosted by Meeghan at Meeghan Reads.

THE LAST HOUSE ON NEEDLESS STREET BY CATRIONA WARD

This is the story of a serial killer. A stolen child. Revenge. Death. And an ordinary house at the end of an ordinary street.

All these things are true. And yet they are all lies…

You think you know what’s inside the last house on Needless Street. You think you’ve read this story before. That’s where you’re wrong.

In the dark forest at the end of Needless Street, lies something buried. But it’s not what you think…

While I am not a big fan of this particular cover, I couldn’t help sharing this book on today’s list of books with plants on the cover. The blurb is so fascinating. It was also comped to Gone Girl and The Haunting of Hill House, both of which I enjoyed a lot!

Add The Last House on Needless Street to Goodreads

🌸 Related Review: Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn // Guest Post by Mae from Mae the Dreamer

FOR THE WOLF BY HANNAH WHITTEN

The first daughter is for the Throne.

The second daughter is for the Wolf.

For fans of Uprooted and The Bear and the Nightingale comes a dark fantasy novel about a young woman who must be sacrificed to the legendary Wolf of the Wood to save her kingdom. But not all legends are true, and the Wolf isn’t the only danger lurking in the Wilderwood.

As the only Second Daughter born in centuries, Red has one purpose-to be sacrificed to the Wolf in the Wood in the hope he’ll return the world’s captured gods.

Red is almost relieved to go. Plagued by a dangerous power she can’t control, at least she knows that in the Wilderwood, she can’t hurt those she loves. Again.

But the legends lie. The Wolf is a man, not a monster. Her magic is a calling, not a curse. And if she doesn’t learn how to use it, the monsters the gods have become will swallow the Wilderwood-and her world-whole.

For The Wolf by Hannah Witten has been positively received by the community and as someone who loves The Bear and the Nightingale, this was an instant add to my TBR.

Add For The Wolf on Goodreads

🌸 Related Review: THE GIRL IN THE TOWER by Katherine Arden and THE WINTER OF THE WITCH BY KATHERINE ARDEN

THE DEVOURERS BY INDRA DAS

On a cool evening in Kolkata, India, beneath a full moon, as the whirling rhythms of traveling musicians fill the night, college professor Alok encounters a mysterious stranger with a bizarre confession and an extraordinary story. Tantalized by the man’s unfinished tale, Alok will do anything to hear its completion. So Alok agrees, at the stranger’s behest, to transcribe a collection of battered notebooks, weathered parchments, and once-living skins.

From these documents spills the chronicle of a race of people at once more than human yet kin to beasts, ruled by instincts and desires blood-deep and ages-old. The tale features a rough wanderer in seventeenth-century Mughal India who finds himself irrevocably drawn to a defiant woman—and destined to be torn asunder by two clashing worlds. With every passing chapter of beauty and brutality, Alok’s interest in the stranger grows and evolves into something darker and more urgent.

I love that The Devourers is set during 17th century Mughal India. If you enjoy books that have commentary on gender, sexuality and love, you should check out The Devourers by Indra Das.

Add The Devourers on Goodreads

🌸 Related Post: BOOKISH INDIAN SWEET TAG

WATCH OVER ME BY NINA LACOUR

Mila is used to being alone. Maybe that’s why she said yes to the opportunity: living in this remote place, among the flowers and the fog and the crash of waves far below.

But she hadn’t known about the ghosts.

Newly graduated from high school, Mila has aged out of the foster care system. So when she’s offered a job and a place to stay at a farm on an isolated part of the Northern California Coast, she immediately accepts. Maybe she will finally find a new home, a real home. The farm is a refuge, but also haunted by the past traumas its young residents have come to escape. And Mila’s own terrible memories are starting to rise to the surface.

Watch Over Me is another stunner from Printz Award-Winning author Nina LaCour, whose empathetic, lyrical prose is at the heart of this modern ghost story of resilience and rebirth.

Nina LaCour’s books have been on my radar for so long now especially, We Are Okay. The only reason I haven’t picked them up just yet is because I haven’t quite been in the headspace for books that are emotionally heavy. I’m interested in this book because it seems like a quiet fantasy books about one’s ghosts and loneliness. I feel like Nina LaCour’s books would hit the same as Rachel Lynn Solomon’s books such as You’ll Miss Me When I’m Gone and Our Year of Maybe.

Add Watch Over Me on Goodreads

THE FOREST OF STOLEN GIRLS BY JUNE HUR

Hwani’s family has never been the same since she and her younger sister went missing and were later found unconscious in the forest, near a gruesome crime scene. The only thing they remember: Their captor wore a painted-white mask.

To escape the haunting memories of this incident, the family flees their hometown. Years later, Detective Min—Hwani’s father—learns that thirteen girls have recently disappeared under similar circumstances, and so he returns to their hometown to investigate… only to vanish as well.

Determined to find her father and solve the case that tore their family apart, Hwani returns home to pick up the trail. As she digs into the secrets of the small village—and reconnects with her now estranged sister—Hwani comes to realize that the answer lies within her own buried memories of what happened in the forest all those years ago.

After her father vanishes while investigating the disappearance of 13 young women, a teen returns to her secretive hometown to pick up the trail in this second YA historical mystery from the author of The Silence of Bones.

June Hur’s writing is so haunting. After reading The Silence of Bones, I have been of the mind to binge all of the author’s other works. But between the closed libraries and my book buying ban, I’ll be waiting quite a while.

Add The Forest of Stolen Girls on Goodreads

🌸 Related Review: The Silence of Bones by June Hur

DEATH IN HER HANDS BY OTTESSA MOSHFEGH

A novel of haunting metaphysical suspense about an elderly widow whose life is upturned when she finds a cryptic note on a walk in the woods that ultimately makes her question everything about her new home.

While on her normal daily walk with her dog in the forest woods, our protagonist comes across a note, handwritten and carefully pinned to the ground with a frame of stones. “Her name was Magda. Nobody will ever know who killed her. It wasn’t me. Here is her dead body”. Our narrator is deeply shaken; she has no idea what to make of this. She is new to area, having moved her from her longtime home after the death of her husband, and she knows very few people. And she’s a little shaky even on best days. Her brooding about this note quickly grows into a full-blown obsession, and she begins to devote herself to exploring the possibilities of her conjectures about who this woman was and how she met her fate. Her suppositions begin to find echoes in the real world, and with mounting excitement and dread, the fog of mystery starts to form into a concrete and menacing shape. But as we follow her in her investigation, strange dissonances start to accrue, and our faith in her grip on reality weakens, until finally, just as she seems be facing some of the darkness in her own past with her late husband, we are forced to face the prospect that there is either a more innocent explanation for all this or a much more sinister one – one that strikes closer to home.

I legit don’t know what to do think of this book but the mystery is so intriguing! I don’t know if this just a crime thriller or if it has elements of horror or maybe, just psychological horror. Regardless, it sounds right up my alley!

Add Death In Her Hands on Goodreads

Check out my other posts:

📚 Villainous Tropes I Love Reading featuring my list of books with complex villains

📚 Bait A Bookworm! Top Ten Things That Make Me Pick Up A Book

📚  TOP BOOKS WITH CREATURES ON THE COVER

📚 SIX DARK BOOKS WITH PLANTS ON THE COVER

📚 SIX DELICIOUS BOOKS WITH FOOD ON THE COVER

📚 BEAUTIFUL BOOK COVERS FEAT. BUILDINGS & VEHICLES

🌸 Are any of these books on your reading list? Are you drawn to book covers with plants on the cover?

🌸 Do you have a green thumb? What kind of plants would you like to grow?

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