REVIEW: On Sundays She Picked Flowers

By Denise @ Life With No Plot on March 19, 2026 • ( 0 )

I’m going a bit out of order with my reviews lately since I want to make sure to get my NetGalley stuff done first. So, without further ado . . .

About the Book

Title: On Sundays She Picked Flowers

Author: Yah Yah Scholfield

Series: none

Genre: Horror, Fantasy, LGBTQIA+

Pages: 240

Edition Read: NetGalley ARC

Dates Read: March 2 – 10, 2026

Blurb: When Judith Rice fled her childhood home, she thought she’d severed her abusive mother’s hold on her. She didn’t have a plan or destination, just a desperate need to escape. Drawn to the forests of southern Georgia, Jude finds shelter in a house as haunted by its violent history as she is by her own.

Jude embraces the eccentricities of the dilapidated house, soothing its ghosts and haints, honoring its blood-soaked land. And over the next thirteen years, Jude blossoms from her bitter beginnings into a wisewoman, a healer.

But her hard-won peace is threatened when an enigmatic woman shows up on her doorstep. The woman is beautiful but unsettling, captivating but uncanny. Ensnared by her desire for this stranger, Jude is caught off guard by brutal urges suddenly simmering beneath her skin. As the woman stirs up memories of her escape years ago, Jude must confront the calls of violence rooted in her bloodline.

Haunting and thought-provoking, On Sunday She Picked Flowers explores retribution, family trauma, and the power of building oneself back up after breaking down.

Review

This book was . . . a lot. You can tell from the blurb that this book deals with a lot of trauma, from racial trauma growing up in the deep South in the lingering shadows of slavery, to family trauma going back generations. It’s part of why this book took a while for me to read, despite being fairly short. There’s so much to unpack.

You know when a book starts off with a brutal murder that you will need to hold on to something for the rest of the ride. I don’t consider that a spoiler, since it happens literally in the first chapter, and Jude is the one who does it. And despite this violent act, she is still completely sympathetic, having lived under the abuse of this person her entire life. Leaving that environment and the only family she has ever known takes a tremendous amount of strength and you can’t help but wish her the best as she sets off to find a new future for herself.

But we have to talk about the house. The house that she lives in, nutures and cultivates down in Georgia. I love stories where an inanimate object is just as much of a character as the actual characters are, and this house is no exception. That house has a personality all it’s own and it has OPINIONS. It was so atmospheric and beautifully written – that house breathed through those pages. And then there’s Nemoira. The woman that shows up at the house and becomes Jude’s lover as well as her greatest test. From the beginning, you know something is just not quite right about Nemoira, but it’s hard to tell exactly what it is. It’s becomes apparent pretty quickly – this is a short book, after all – but it’s still pretty shocking.

This book isn’t so much about healing as it is about coming to terms and learning to live with who you are, who your family is, what you have done, and how to can move past your past. This book is definitely not for everyone, but I really appreciated how Scholfield was able to bring everything together.

GoodReads rating: 4 stars