Synopsis:
Everyone says Briar’s mother killed four husbands… and her own daughter. Now Briar’s home, and she’s about to find out if the rumors are true.
When Briar comes home to her family’s sprawling estate for her sister’s funeral, she’s not planning on staying long—just get through the service and leave before her mother can sink her claws in again. Instead, she finds a note in her sister’s handwriting:
She’s not who you think.
You’re next.
Briar has spent years rebuilding her life—therapy, a purpose-driven career, and distance from her famous mother: a narcissistic control freak who cares more about appearances than her own daughters. But the second Briar steps back into her childhood home, the past comes rushing back.
Because her sister didn’t drown by accident. Briar knows that now.
And if she’s right, the person responsible is still close enough to kiss her cheek at the funeral.
Now Briar is determined to uncover the truth. Even if it kills her.
Pretty Dead Things is a dark and twisty, atmospheric psychological thriller perfect for fans of Ruth Ware, Riley Sager, and Freida McFadden. When a woman returns to her family’s decaying estate in the Everglades after her sister’s mysterious death, she’s drawn into a web of lies spun by her Old Hollywood mother, a woman who might be both victim and monster.
It’s The Haunting of Hill House meets The Heiress: a gothic thriller simmering in Florida heat, buried secrets, and family madness.
Shop The Book: Pretty Dead Things
Shop My Stack: 2026 Books Read
I have a thing for beautiful covers on dark books. The juxtaposition of pink peonies against a story this dark and gruesome, and that title, Pretty Dead Things, the oxymoron of it pulled me in immediately. I had been seeing this one floating around Bookstagram as an ARC and I wanted it so badly. So when Books and Bloom PR announced the tour I squealed and signed up without hesitation. Thank you to Books and Bloom PR for having me on this one.
The Story
Pretty Dead Things follows Briar, who returns to her family’s sprawling Everglades estate for her sister’s funeral with one goal, get through it and leave before her mother can pull her back in. But she finds a note in her dead sister’s handwriting that changes everything. What follows is a gothic psychological thriller set in a decaying Old Hollywood estate, soaked in Florida heat and buried secrets, with a mother at the center who is both victim and monster and a mystery that keeps twisting long past the point where you think you understand it.
Reading Experience
I read a lot of books that pull you into another world. Books that make you forget reality for a while. And Pretty Dead Things is one of the best at that feeling I have ever encountered, if not the best. I almost forgot to breathe. I forgot to eat. I lost all track of time. I entered this hypnotic state of just being completely inside this book. And when I finally put it down to take a break it felt like being physically pulled out of another world, blinking back into my own life and remembering that I have children and a house and things that exist outside of these pages. That kind of reading experience is rare and special and this book delivered it completely.
Writing Style
What Liv Lowry does with memory in this book is genuinely brilliant. Normally I find it frustrating when characters know things that are not being revealed to the reader. It can feel like a cheap trick to manufacture mystery, but here it is different. The things being withheld are not always secrets that the characters are keeping from us. They are suppressed memories so traumatic that these daughters literally do not have access to them anymore. They have pushed them down for so long that they genuinely do not remember. That makes for an unreliable narrative that feels completely organic rather than forced.
As a reader you know there is more. You can feel the shape of things that happened without being able to see them clearly. And your imagination goes wild trying to fill in the blanks. Are these things catastrophic or are they being overplayed? Is this going to be a revelation that explodes everything or something that turns out to be far less than you feared? That delicious uncertainty is threaded through every single page and it never lets up. I loved that!
Lowry also handles the toxic family dynamic in a way that I deeply appreciated. It would have been so easy to make Vivienne a Disney villain, all cruelty and no complexity. Instead she gave us both sides. The sweetness and the abuse. The love that feels real alongside the manipulation that is calculated. The way Vivienne can wound her daughters and then turn around and make them feel like she is doing it for their own good. Having experienced narcissistic abuse personally, I felt that portrayal in my bones. It is one of the most realistic depictions of that kind of relationship I have read in fiction.
Characters
Briar is everything. She has lived through this mother, left, rebuilt herself, created a life with therapy and purpose and distance, and now she has to walk back into all of it. I loved her toughness. I loved that she did not become a shell of a human during the trauma. She fought back, she left, and now she is back and she is not going to let herself be swallowed again. I resonated with her deeply.
Vivienne, the mother, is one of the most colorful and enraging characters I have read in a very long time. I hated her but I also loved reading about her. She is sadistic and manipulative and yet so magnetic, and Lowry never lets her become black and white. That balance is incredibly hard to pull off and it works.
Portia, Briar’s sister, was also a character I loved and felt deeply connected to. Juliet, the younger sister, was more of a side character since she was much younger, but I felt for her all the same. The complicated, loving, and also distant relationships between these sisters, shaped by the same damaging upbringing but experienced differently by each of them, was one of the most affecting parts of this book.
I honestly also loved Odette, even though we entered the book at her funeral so we never got to know her in “real time” we saw enough of her through memories and grief that I felt like I got to connect with her as well and mourn her in my own way.
Themes and Tone
Underneath all the gothic atmosphere and the mystery and the twists this book is really about family. About what a narcissistic parent does to the core of who you are. About nurture versus nature and whether the constant rollercoaster of abuse changes you, shapes you, breaks you, or somehow makes you. About what family is willing to go through for each other and what they are willing to do to stand up to each other to defend what is right or what is healthy even when it is the hardest thing in the world. And about just how messy and deeply gray all of those things can become when you are in the middle of them. There are no clean lines here and that is exactly the point.
Final Thoughts
When I finished Pretty Dead Things I walked around my house in a state of shock. I found myself staring off into the distance just trying to process everything I had been through. I gasped out loud more times than I can count. Twists kept twisting long past the point where I thought I understood what was happening and every layer that came apart revealed something I was not prepared for.
This is one of the best books I have ever read. One of my all time favorites. I cannot say much about the plot without giving everything away but I can say that it completely wrecked me in the most beautiful and devastating way and I am already sad that it is over. I need to sit with this one for a while before I can move on to anything else.
If you love gothic psychological thrillers, morally complex family dynamics, and a story that will make you forget you exist outside of its pages then this one is an immediate and enthusiastic yes from me.
Content note: some gore and abuse
Thank you for allowing me to be a part of this virtual book tour Books & Bloom PR.
My 2026 Book Stack:
https://amzn.to/3YQVeZC
Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/ashleykbooks
Goodreads:
https://www.goodreads.com/ashmandak
About the author
Liv Lowry lives in Germany with her husband and her son. When she’s not plotting her next thriller, she can usually be found reading true crime, exploring old castles, or sipping tea while dreaming up new ways to keep readers up at night.
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