Bitterbloom

King (Spit Back the Bones) delivers an atmospheric gothic fantasy steeped in religious dread, grief, and ghostly unrest, anchored by a striking premise and an intensely lyrical voice. In the village of Rixton, Adelaide Thorn is blamed for a string of mysterious deaths and confined in a tower by her father, the local vicar, who believes her illness-driven blackouts mark her as a servant of the Devil. When Addie sneaks out and discovers a strange bell hidden in a riverbed, she learns that her visions are not curses but the voices of the dead, trapped in a purgatorial forest known as the rowan wood. Joining forces with the ghost of her childhood friend and an enigmatic young lord who has a perilous plan to rescue his late mother, Addie ventures into the wood, where buried truths and competing desires strain fragile alliances and threaten to upend everything she believes about her past. King’s greatest strength lies in scene-setting, with lush, poetic prose and unsettling imagery combining to create a vividly oppressive world, particularly within the hellish landscape of the rowan wood. That same density of language, however, often blurs narrative clarity, while uneven pacing and underdeveloped romantic threads weaken the emotional payoff. Still, readers who don’t mind stories that prioritize vibes over plotting will be drawn in by this dark, moody tale. Agent: Amy Giuffrida, Belcastro Agency. (Mar.)