First order of business, I need you to check the trigger warnings at the start of this book because Yah Yah Scholfield doesn’t sugar coat anything, ever.

Second order of business: I need you to know that this is Scholfield’s debut, because you won’t believe me when you read it.

On Sundays She Picked Flowers is a Southern Gothic horror about a woman who escapes her abusive mother and neglectful aunts and rediscovers who she is in a tumbledown house in the woods in Georgia. 

For a short book, the meat of this plot is impressive. Scholfield doesn’t waste a single word and keeps you on your toes from page one. We’re invited into Judith’s world with a tooth-rattling slap and the pace grips us by the throat until Judith finally feels like she’s out of danger. We explore themes of generational trauma, metamorphosis, grief, rage, and the murky side of justice. Scholfield handles every topic deftly and will leave you feeling raw by the end of this novel.

The writing is concise but it doesn’t shy away from metaphorical language that leaves you wondering why we ever described those things any other way. There’s a particularly disgusting use of an f-bomb in the latter half of this book which you can’t deny the accuracy of, but you may resent the graphic mental image that accompanies it.

The horror elements in this story are well-placed and aren’t gratuitous, they are simply the facts of life laid bare for the reader to digest in their own time and Scholfield makes no apologies for them. They touch on the fantastical – haints haunt Judith’s house in the woods and the house has a mind of its own. It informs Judith of its opinions by clogging pipes and sending furniture through floorboards. She takes this in her stride, taming the house and the haints, and learning to live with their cantankerous quirks in solitude. 

This is a beautiful story with enough depth and emotion to hollow the reader out, leaving them empty and unsure of how any other book could possibly follow this one. I would strongly recommend this to fans of Tananarive Due or Octavia E Butler, or to anyone who’s looking for a fantastic Southern Gothic horror that they can sink their teeth into.

On Sundays She Picked Flowers is available now – you can order your copy on Bookshop.org