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Ghost Flower
Come and see.
Elodie Morne lives two lives.
In one, she’s an eighteen-year-old high school student about to graduate, secretly in love with her best friend, Ezri, and unusual only by the standards of a banal world. In the other, she is the scion of the Outer Darkness, born of Cennend, the sentient nothingness from which all reality sprung. Determined to live as nothing more than an ordinary human, Elodie has done everything in her power to keep the two worlds apart.
But forces from both conspire against her. When she discovers a secret society of elites attempting to break the bonds that have kept her “parent” imprisoned for millennia, Elodie is forced to commit an unspeakable act to save all of creation from the wrath of the darkness that birthed her.
Now the consequences of her actions have ignited the dark heart of her town, turning the sleepy tourist community of Rook Lake into a war zone. Pursued by adversaries both mortal and immortal, Elodie and Ezri risk everything to save reality itself from being unmade. But their enemies are ruthless and desperate, and the coming battle may cost Elodie her ordinary life, her greatest love, and even her own humanity.
Part supernatural fantasy, part coming of age romance, Ghost Flower is a journey through the darkness and the light, a tale of love, loss, and what it means to be who you truly are.
(Content Child abuse, homophobia, police brutality, death)
Elodie Morne lives two lives.
In one, she’s an eighteen-year-old high school student about to graduate, secretly in love with her best friend, Ezri, and unusual only by the standards of a banal world. In the other, she is the scion of the Outer Darkness, born of Cennend, the sentient nothingness from which all reality sprung. Determined to live as nothing more than an ordinary human, Elodie has done everything in her power to keep the two worlds apart.
But forces from both conspire against her. When she discovers a secret society of elites attempting to break the bonds that have kept her “parent” imprisoned for millennia, Elodie is forced to commit an unspeakable act to save all of creation from the wrath of the darkness that birthed her.
Now the consequences of her actions have ignited the dark heart of her town, turning the sleepy tourist community of Rook Lake into a war zone. Pursued by adversaries both mortal and immortal, Elodie and Ezri risk everything to save reality itself from being unmade. But their enemies are ruthless and desperate, and the coming battle may cost Elodie her ordinary life, her greatest love, and even her own humanity.
Part supernatural fantasy, part coming of age romance, Ghost Flower is a journey through the darkness and the light, a tale of love, loss, and what it means to be who you truly are.
(Content Child abuse, homophobia, police brutality, death)
454 pages, Kindle Edition
Published July 24, 2022
17 people are currently reading
91 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
August 27, 2022
Another thought-provoking novel from one of my favorite authors. In this outing, she turns to the fantasy/horror genre, so there are plenty of thrills and chills while still maintaining her trademark emotional and character-centered style. Elodie is living two lives: one as a not-quite-ordinary high school student and the other as the child of a dark and malevolent entity who is currently imprisoned in the local forest. Her two worlds collide over the course of the book much to the amazement of her best friend and secret love, Ezri. Soon the two of them are involved in a life-and-death struggle to prevent nothing less than the end of the world.
Relationships are forged and tested, secrets revealed, terrible mistakes are made, and tragedies ensue, but through it all, our two heroines hold fast to each other. The story is an interesting mix of butt-kicking action with more cerebral passages about identity, love and loyalty, found family, and what it means to be human. I loved the fantasy elements here. From the amazingness of Elodie's alter ego to a unique osprey friend to the idea of anima, the spirit that lives within all creation, there is a lot to enjoy for traditional fantasy lovers. Be warned, however, that there is blood and gore and death as this book straddles the line between fantasy and horror. Fans of sophisticated and character-centered fantasy with a touching LGBTQIA+ romance should give this one a try.
Relationships are forged and tested, secrets revealed, terrible mistakes are made, and tragedies ensue, but through it all, our two heroines hold fast to each other. The story is an interesting mix of butt-kicking action with more cerebral passages about identity, love and loyalty, found family, and what it means to be human. I loved the fantasy elements here. From the amazingness of Elodie's alter ego to a unique osprey friend to the idea of anima, the spirit that lives within all creation, there is a lot to enjoy for traditional fantasy lovers. Be warned, however, that there is blood and gore and death as this book straddles the line between fantasy and horror. Fans of sophisticated and character-centered fantasy with a touching LGBTQIA+ romance should give this one a try.
November 28, 2022
If anyone knows my reviews, they know the hill I will die on: Give me a character I want to spend 300+ pages with, in any genre, and take my money.
Ghost Flower is so much more than that. It's filled with characters I had to keep reading about. Through breakfast, lunch, supper. While I cooked. (I promise I read the recipes too!) While i cleaned. I read for three solid days until I got to the end, and then I was angry there wasn't any more.
Ghost Flower has love and loss, wild and creepy supernatural entities, villains you love to hate--as in, some of the worst parents on the planet. It has both an eerie, lyrical voice and a rapid-fire anime-action voice.
It's manga in prose form. it's anime that unfolds in your brain as you compulsively turn pages. I'm so glad I bought this book.
Ghost Flower is so much more than that. It's filled with characters I had to keep reading about. Through breakfast, lunch, supper. While I cooked. (I promise I read the recipes too!) While i cleaned. I read for three solid days until I got to the end, and then I was angry there wasn't any more.
Ghost Flower has love and loss, wild and creepy supernatural entities, villains you love to hate--as in, some of the worst parents on the planet. It has both an eerie, lyrical voice and a rapid-fire anime-action voice.
It's manga in prose form. it's anime that unfolds in your brain as you compulsively turn pages. I'm so glad I bought this book.
August 6, 2022
i loved this book!
It’s hard not to love a Jessica Conwell book. Her characters wrap sinew, veins and pump blood and life into my imagination making me wish I could hang out with them. I want to see a ghost flower, to see an osprey as beautiful as the one in the book. I want to know nature like Elodie does and connect to feel its very essence. I can see another book following this one, but it could just be a tease lol. I recommend this book to everyone, although it does contain a lot of violence and heartbreaking abuse. It also contains pure love and willingness to self sacrifice for that love.
It’s hard not to love a Jessica Conwell book. Her characters wrap sinew, veins and pump blood and life into my imagination making me wish I could hang out with them. I want to see a ghost flower, to see an osprey as beautiful as the one in the book. I want to know nature like Elodie does and connect to feel its very essence. I can see another book following this one, but it could just be a tease lol. I recommend this book to everyone, although it does contain a lot of violence and heartbreaking abuse. It also contains pure love and willingness to self sacrifice for that love.
September 4, 2024
I've been reading this over the space of a few months on my commute. It's been fascinating to see the story of this small town god spawn and a queer awakening and realizing that hey maybe your family is shitty and abusive, on several metaphysical levels! Definitely loved reading this and seeing things unfold, and I hope that the lure at the end of the book leads forward to more if Ms. Conwell chooses!
August 22, 2025
Very good, sad at times, moving. Cosmic horror, romance, gender identity. Great stuff. I like how the mythology wasn’t laid bare but we explore it with the characters. Also like how the love interest was a fully developed character with POVs and not just a strawperson damsel in distress. Gotta read for from this author.
September 9, 2022
All the tears
There were so many places this book made me cry. Between the thriller pacing, the deep romance, and the cool creation story, this book has everything you could want. Just bring some tissues, okay?
There were so many places this book made me cry. Between the thriller pacing, the deep romance, and the cool creation story, this book has everything you could want. Just bring some tissues, okay?
February 21, 2025
An incredible combination of folk and cosmic horror. I could not put it down; I finished the book in two sittings. Jessica Conwell immediately became one of my favorite authors.
May 9, 2023
Ghost Flower is a dark, original contemporary fantasy that starts and ends in sacrifice, but along the way comes found family and love worth fighting for.
This is as bittersweet, heartwrenching, and empowering a story of standing up to bullies and of queer true love and steadfast friendship, told in as literary a flashback-laden style, as I anticipated after having read Three Sharp Knives. After that first book I added the talented Jessica Conwell to a short list of authors who whose books I buy knowing I'm about to feel emotionally gutted.
In this novel as in life, children are difficult to control, even for an ancient deity of creation...and some ruthless parents only grasp harder for dominance the more their children question them and reach for independence.
And as in life, families and small towns are distorted by their need for secrets and keeping up appearances.
Parents are especially tricky to keep secrets from, and that goes double if you're the offspring of a malevolent deity like teenage Elodie is, or one of the few openly queer girls in a small town high school like Ezri is, raising hackles just by daring to exist without 'discretion' (read: shame) over being different.
And small towns like Washington's Rook Lake can be a hotbed of dark secrets and vicious gossip all at once, the pressure to conform and put on a pleasant facade positively smothering.
And another painful truth about secrets in these pages? When it comes to our heart's desire, sometimes it's ourselves we deceive the most, because deep down we feel unworthy of that special person, that unconditional love we hardly dare imagine.
The main characters of any book can make a story soar or falter for me, and this cast soars, sometimes literally. Elodie has convinced her progenitor Cennend to let her experience life among humans in a body she designed herself, but the lessons she learns aren't the ones her parent was counting on. Soon she's desperate to develop her anima (life force) manipulating powers for good, instead of joining Cennend's vicious plans with her corrupt following of Rook Lake's elite.
Ezri sees herself as Elodie's defender and the only one in a small-minded cesspool of a town who gets how awesome her awkward best friend is, and fantasizes about the two of them running away together—little guessing at the epic bonds tying Elodie to the land and its twisted sentient consciousness.
A study in contrasts, misfits Ezri and Elodie are impossible not to root for, the former tough and foul-mouthed and the latter gentle and generous to a fault, both loyal and fierce and occasionally funny and often self-doubting but inspired by one another to be their bravest and best selves.
Their tormentors are truly heinous and brutal and masters of self-justification (when they bother to reflect at all).
And then there's the mysterious entity that seems to watch Elodie's every move for reasons of its own, waiting to reveal itself and change forever what she thought she knew.
Elodie and Ezri must find their way to each other and their authentic selves past all obstacles, discover their own tenacity to survive and protect, and become all that stands between Cennend and its puppets who would destroy the world to remake it.
WHEN A BOOK ABOUT THE POSSIBLE END OF THE WORLD HAS YOU SEEING JOYFUL POSSIBILITIES IN A SEQUEL, BOOST THE SIGNAL!
December 7, 2024
Something I really love about self/indie published books is that you can get material that leans into itself far more than traditional publishing. Not always, but often traditionally published books always have an element of pandering to the audience about them, whereas a work like Ghost Flower feels like Conwell has taken the writing advice to bleed on the page seriously. It's intense, blunt, and a surprisingly successfully blend of queer, supernatural, and teen angst that probably if you'd told me about on paper I would have said wouldn't work but Ghost Flower DOES work.
So what is this book all about?
Well, as it says on the tin, our MC is living two lives: one as an 18 year old with a crush on her best friend, and one as a supernatural offspring of a mysterious forest entity. I admit the first few chapters of Ghost Flower have a lot to introduce and the juxtaposition of say school life, versus the supernatural story takes a while to make sense of - but by halfway through the book where things start to basically become action packed from whoa to go it does all come together.
I think my two favourite things of Ghost Flower is the humour and the insights. There is a lot of violence in this book and even more emotional trauma - yet somehow these unexpected comedy beats would leap out of nowhere and have me cackling. Same with the insights, there is a lot of time-jumps often between something more wyrd and a moment from the MCs school-life, which could have derailed the story, but instead Conwell is able to bring together something 'real-life' that is relevant to the conflict with deadly anima-bending possible immortal forest spirits/demons. Again I wouldn't thought this possible on paper but in Ghost Flower it works.
Finally I don't want to spoil anything, but this is first in a series and sheesh, I'll need to prepare myself for the next instalment, Conwell doesn't really pull any punches.
So what is this book all about?
Well, as it says on the tin, our MC is living two lives: one as an 18 year old with a crush on her best friend, and one as a supernatural offspring of a mysterious forest entity. I admit the first few chapters of Ghost Flower have a lot to introduce and the juxtaposition of say school life, versus the supernatural story takes a while to make sense of - but by halfway through the book where things start to basically become action packed from whoa to go it does all come together.
I think my two favourite things of Ghost Flower is the humour and the insights. There is a lot of violence in this book and even more emotional trauma - yet somehow these unexpected comedy beats would leap out of nowhere and have me cackling. Same with the insights, there is a lot of time-jumps often between something more wyrd and a moment from the MCs school-life, which could have derailed the story, but instead Conwell is able to bring together something 'real-life' that is relevant to the conflict with deadly anima-bending possible immortal forest spirits/demons. Again I wouldn't thought this possible on paper but in Ghost Flower it works.
Finally I don't want to spoil anything, but this is first in a series and sheesh, I'll need to prepare myself for the next instalment, Conwell doesn't really pull any punches.
December 27, 2024
I write this with mixed feelings, since I fell in and out of the book several times; some aspects of it were not for me, but it also did some surprising and interesting things that ultimately made it memorable.
The first quarter of the book went a little slow for me, and it took me a minute to embrace the supernatural aspect, which seemed kind of...traditional, at first anyway. But it picked up pace, and the narrative flip relating to the supernatural aspect was quite interesting, and ultimately what makes it worth a read.
I should caution readers that, while there is a lesbian romantic pairing, this is a dark book, though not without hope, and it is not a romance. That, of course, is my issue, not the book's, and one gets the sense there may be more to come of that plotline in the second installment.
In short, if you want to read a small-town horror book that's not afraid to kill the shit out of people, with some interesting supernatural stuff and a bit of lesbian romance (small r not capital R), you should check out Ghost Flower!
The first quarter of the book went a little slow for me, and it took me a minute to embrace the supernatural aspect, which seemed kind of...traditional, at first anyway. But it picked up pace, and the narrative flip relating to the supernatural aspect was quite interesting, and ultimately what makes it worth a read.
I should caution readers that, while there is a lesbian romantic pairing, this is a dark book, though not without hope, and it is not a romance. That, of course, is my issue, not the book's, and one gets the sense there may be more to come of that plotline in the second installment.
In short, if you want to read a small-town horror book that's not afraid to kill the shit out of people, with some interesting supernatural stuff and a bit of lesbian romance (small r not capital R), you should check out Ghost Flower!
October 16, 2023
Wow. This book has everything I could ever want in a novel. Tension, romance, tragedy, horror, and a unique dark fantasy element which felt both brand new and classically eldritch and almost Lovecraftian. The emotions were perfectly balanced throughout, giving us moments of loving tenderness and cruel heartbreak in equal measure, which ensured my heartstrings were always being pulled in one way or another (in the best possible way).
I loved the characters, and watching Elodie and Ezri's love for each other be realised on the page was just wonderful. The mix between present-day story and memories of the past was done extremely well, drip feeding us just enough information to keep me hooked. The pacing was bang on, and there was always an element of mystery to the story right until the very end, which is something that is difficult to pull off well, but was skillfully executed here.
All in all, an excellent read which I would highly recommend for any dark fantasy fan.
I loved the characters, and watching Elodie and Ezri's love for each other be realised on the page was just wonderful. The mix between present-day story and memories of the past was done extremely well, drip feeding us just enough information to keep me hooked. The pacing was bang on, and there was always an element of mystery to the story right until the very end, which is something that is difficult to pull off well, but was skillfully executed here.
All in all, an excellent read which I would highly recommend for any dark fantasy fan.
August 2, 2022
" Come And See "
This was awesome. From the very beginning this book pulled me in. Page after page I got immersed further and further into these characters lives and psyches.Well written, definitely dark, super witty banter, everything I look for and rarely find in the sapphic genre. I am REALLY hoping there is a sequel.
This was awesome. From the very beginning this book pulled me in. Page after page I got immersed further and further into these characters lives and psyches.Well written, definitely dark, super witty banter, everything I look for and rarely find in the sapphic genre. I am REALLY hoping there is a sequel.
January 1, 2025
Not my cup of tea.
I didn't quite make it through this book. I got the idea of what the ending would be and it isn't what I like in a book. It was an excellently written. The characters had some growth and depth. I really liked the story just too much pain and sadness for me to finish.
I didn't quite make it through this book. I got the idea of what the ending would be and it isn't what I like in a book. It was an excellently written. The characters had some growth and depth. I really liked the story just too much pain and sadness for me to finish.
October 21, 2023
Creative read
I'm bad at reviews but I liked the storytelling and voice and I think the story is very unique. The characters were fleshed out and likeable. I want to read more from this author.
I'm bad at reviews but I liked the storytelling and voice and I think the story is very unique. The characters were fleshed out and likeable. I want to read more from this author.
November 24, 2023
Astonishing world building
This has some of the best world and character building I have ever read.
The way it just sucks you in completely is amazing, and I cried more than once during the story.
This has some of the best world and character building I have ever read.
The way it just sucks you in completely is amazing, and I cried more than once during the story.
October 8, 2024
Melancholy
A very good book, my only issue is the inability for lesbians in literature to have happy endings. It's not a bad ending, just very melancholic.
A very good book, my only issue is the inability for lesbians in literature to have happy endings. It's not a bad ending, just very melancholic.
February 4, 2025
I absolutely loved this book. I didn't know I wanted a book like this but now that I have it I want more
October 12, 2024
I loved this book with its close focus on a small town, love and family, finding closeness even while being bullied and excluded. Elodie is as haunting a character as her name. I enjoyed the use of different points of view to tell a multi-faceted story. While the book absolutely completes its arc, I am happy to have preordered the sequel, because I want more from these characters.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews