Synopsis:
Book II in the Root & Vein Trilogy
Sequel to Rooted in Silence
Grief makes people accept stories that are easier than the truth.
Tragedy hits Monica like a freight train of emotion. She isn’t like everyone else accepting a truth that isn’t hers. She vows to settle the score.
As Monica begins to untangle the lies surrounding the woman everyone else pities, she is drawn into a psychological chess game with two women who understand control better than anyone: Emily Black—a widow with a perfect smile, a spotless home, and far too many poisonous plants growing in plain sight who performs grief like a role. And Volkova, a mysterious neighbor who teaches Monica how to sharpen her instincts and starve her doubt
But the closer Monica gets to the truth, the more dangerous it becomes to want it.
Bound in Botany is a dark psychological thriller about obsession, performance, and the terrible hunger that grows when a need for control becomes its own kind of fire.
Shop The Book: Bound In Botany
Shop The Series: Rooted In Vein
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Oh my gosh. This series gets even dirtier and even more complicated and I cannot get enough. When is book three coming? I need to know immediately.
If you suspected someone was hiding a dangerous truth behind a perfect performance, how far would you go to find out what was really underneath?
The Story
Bound in Botany is the second book in the Root and Vein Trilogy and the sequel to Rooted in Silence. When tragedy strikes, Monica refuses to accept the story everyone else has been handed. She vows to settle the score. As she begins to untangle the lies surrounding the woman everyone else pities, she is drawn into a psychological chess game with two women who understand control better than anyone. Emily Black, a widow with a perfect smile, a spotless home, and far too many poisonous plants growing in plain sight. And Volkova, the mysterious neighbor who teaches Monica how to sharpen her instincts and starve her doubt. But the closer Monica gets to the truth, the more dangerous it becomes to want it.
Reading Experience
I think I finished this one even faster than Rooted in Silence, and I read that one quickly. I immediately jumped from book one into Bound in Botany and finished it that day or the next. The books are the perfect length for the stories they are telling. They do not need to be any longer. But I wished they were so, so much longer because I loved being inside this earthy, floral, poisonous, secretive world that A.M. Walker has built. And now I have to sit here and wait for book three and that is simply not fair.
Writing Style
The writing is still as eloquent and poetic and mysterious as book one, leaving holes in just the right places, letting your imagination wander instead of explaining everything. What is so impressive is that this same writing style is applied to a completely different character and you can feel the difference. The book is a little more chaotic this time, the emotions a little more all over the place, but that is because Monica is not Emily. She is not as practiced and polished. And seeing the same writing style used on two such different personalities while still capturing something distinctly different about each of them is genuinely impressive craft.
Characters
This is where it gets so intriguing. Emily and Monica are both led by emotions but in completely different ways.
Emily was reserved, quiet, intentional. She moved exactly as she wanted to move and let you see only the parts of herself she chose to show. She researched and practiced and planned and had everything perfected before she ever made a move.
Monica is not like that at all. She is messier. She lets emotions overtake her and struggles to keep her thoughts straight at times. She makes spontaneous, rash decisions based on how she is feeling in the moment or based on feelings that have been building and building and finally spill over. Where Emily put herself in dangerous situations with intention and a plan, Monica got caught up in the tangle of lies and suspicions and almost trapped herself.
Watching both of these women navigate similar situations for completely different reasons with completely different intentions was one of the most fascinating reading experiences I have had in this genre. Their approaches are night and day and yet they are orbiting the same world.
We also get to see Emily again in this book and she is her typical stoic self, which I deeply appreciated. The consistency of her character was grounding. And we get a bigger peek inside Volkova, more of her personality, more of her flavor, and I need so much more of her. More Volkova please. She is everything.
Heartbeat
The heartbeat of Rooted in Silence was about how we never truly know what is going on inside another person. Bound in Botany feels like the flip side of that same coin. We form judgments toward people and toward situations based on our own experiences and our own values and our own morals, without ever having been in those situations ourselves. And we truly do not know what we would do or how we would react until we are in it. Everyone is entitled to their feelings, especially when something directly affects their life. And we can absolutely judge decisions that are clearly wrong or dangerous. But to judge a person’s character, you cannot do that unless you have walked in their shoes. That truth sits underneath everything in this book and it makes the whole story feel quietly devastating in the best way.
Final Thoughts
Can everybody read this series? Honestly? Because what A.M. Walker has built here is this extraordinary oxymoron of a world. It is so dirty in such a clean and floral and elegant way. It is gritty but so neat and tidy. It is so wrong but so intoxicating and appealing. Like a poisonous flower. So bright and so beautiful and so compelling that you just want to be in its presence even knowing it could hurt you. That is exactly what these books are. Eloquent and poetic and floral and beautiful on the surface, gritty and dirty and psychologically damaged underneath. And I am completely obsessed.
Book two of the Root and Vein Trilogy, Bound in Botany, releases July 14, 2026. If you have not started this series yet, begin with Rooted in Silence, released December 3, 2025, and then come find me so we can wait for book three together.
My 2026 Book Stack:
https://amzn.to/3YQVeZC
Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/ashleykbooks
Goodreads:
https://www.goodreads.com/ashmandak
ARC provided by Harbor and Stone Press. All thoughts are my own.
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