LITTLE WHITE FLOWERS by Amber Hathaway

Published by Deadly Seeds Press (July 1, 2025)

Review by The Horror Zine Staff Reviewer Jonathan Chapman

Buy the book HERE

The ancient Greeks didn’t have novels to read nor movies or Tik Tok. For them, the leading entertainment was the theater. They saw live plays. Of these, the popular ones would be done again and again by different production companies. The crowd knew the story, the crowd knew the themes and the conflicts. They had seen, say, Antigone, a dozen times. What brought them back each time was for the experience of the new twist, the new nuance, the new way of presenting familiar characters with each production company. They enjoyed the familiarity, yet graded the new twists and turns provided by each new interpretation.

Such is the world of horror novels. There are only so many creatures. Vampires, ghosts, werewolves, zombies. Each is well known to the reader, yet The Walking Dead is a different experience from Train to Buson. In horror novels there are many familiar roads, such as this one: “the family inherits an old house in the woods and must go clean it up before selling it” pathway. We all love the “old house where terrible things happened” format. We read on, waiting to see what fresh spin the writer brings to the table.

In Little White Flowers, Amber Hathaway brings her own distinct spin to a familiar format. The story starts with siblings Andy and Alice Drayton visiting their dying “grammy” in the hospital. A mysterious and beloved figure, their grandmother had held family secrets for years from Alice, a horror buff and also a determined family historian. Alice has sought for years details about the family history, but her grandmother had been resolute in her denial. The hospital scene is regular, almost typical, and the reader is just moving along when grandmother suddenly divulges a shocking secret about “little white flowers.” From that moment the reader is suddenly attentive as the hook is set. My feeling was, Oh! Oh, really?

After grandmother’s death, it turns out that she had recently inherited a family home, far in the forests and away from where they live. The family determines to sell the home, and Alice and Andy set out to clean the place up and make it ready for sale. They arrive at a small town with odd, insular people with an Amish sort of demeanor. Odd, strange and different, the local townspeople watch them arrive with a suspiciousness that is frightening.

I am a big believer in revealing as little as possible about the plots of books I review. I am reluctant to give a larger plot reveal, since there are some many threads here that blossom later in the story. There is the creepy old house, where tragedy struck in the past, where horrible trauma and misdeeds went on. There is the mystery of the village itself, and the history of the place. Ther is the genealogy aspect, as Alice tries to figure out her family history. And there is the personal aspect of the protagonists, and their own issues in their lives. All of these plot threads overlap and twist together as the book moves ahead with increasing pace. Ms. Hathaway divides the book into short chapters, dealing the stepping stones out in bite size chunks, making the reading easy, despite the multiple threads.

So, if we are like a Greek play, knowing as we go in that we are seeing a “Old inherited creepy house in a creepy village where terrible things happened long ago with family mysteries” on the table, what do we come away with as the twist this writer puts on it to make it original, new and compelling? Surprisingly, it is the personal aspect of the book that strikes home. The personal journey of Alice and Andy and the family are often the most impactful aspects of the story.

There is a weird time in life, between about seventeen and twenty-four, where we are adults, but still dependent upon our parents. Where we are new at life and messy and making mistakes and learning how to deal with those mistakes, and coping with our lives as adults, yet still beholden to our sometimes-dictatorial parents or guardians. Ms. Hathaway captures that feeling perfectly. I felt what it felt like to be eighteen again. Not in the rosy glow of idealized memories, but with clarity – the embarrassment of blowing it with your family, failing at life, the judgement of parents and peers, the interactions of family and the difficulty of those negotiations. From the details on Alice’s bedroom wall to Andy’s seeking to overcome his reputation as the family failure, to being forced to do tasks out of family loyalty, to the music chosen on the ride out of town, all hit home. And the plotlines as they unfold are increasingly compelling as the drumbeat of the story moves along.

Oh, there’s plenty of other aspects. Ms. Hathaway has a unique voice that runs from the mundane to suddenly morbid, from scary and uncomfortable, but her writing always conveys a warmth within the lead characters that make them human and likeable. That humanity, contrasted with the growing horror of the situation, makes this a great read. This is a great Autumn, “curl up on the couch with a blanket” book. I would hesitate to call it a young adult book, but I wish I had read it at eighteen. It would have spoken to me directly. In all, a success and a worthy read.