The Dark Sweetness at the Bottom of the Well by Chandra Fisher

Description

Some girls dream of love.
Elana Allard dreams of the well.

Since childhood, she’s been drawn to it—pulled as if by an unseen thread toward the place where a shadow-eating creature sleeps beneath the earth. Her family calls it a curse. They bind her to her bed at night, leather cuffs tight, desperate to keep her from wandering into the dark.

They want her married. Settled. Normal.

But Elana has never felt anything resembling love for the men they place before her—only the steady, aching pull of something deeper. Something waiting.

When a once-in-a-century storm cracks the stone seal on the well, that pull becomes unbearable. It hollows her out, leaving her weak, starving for something she can’t name—until she finally gives in.

And descends.

But the monster she finds isn’t a nightmare.

Nessa—the Darkness—is something else entirely. Curious. Lonely. Wanting simple things: a dress, a home, a moment in the world above. And in her presence, Elana feels something she’s never known before.

Desire. Connection. Recognition.

What blooms between them is tender, strange, and utterly forbidden.

As suspicion grows and her family tightens its grip, Elana is forced to choose: a life of quiet imprisonment, shaped by expectation and control—or a love that defies everything she’s been taught, one that may cost her family, her future, and her place in the world above.

Because some hungers aren’t meant to be cured.

And some darkness isn’t meant to be feared.

The Dark Sweetness at the Bottom of the Well is a lush, gothic queer fantasy about longing, autonomy, and the kind of love that transforms—even when it isolates.

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Book Details
Author: Chandra Fisher
Format: Paperback
Publication Date: March 31, 2026
ISBN: 1069838608