“What if a haunted house is a loving thing? A record. A memory. A being itself that longs and loves. Maybe haunted houses aren’t scary things. Maybe haunted houses are extensions of your family, are your family. And maybe those hauntings, those things that you see, are little loving messages, reminders, or warnings. A house loves you like a mother loves you. We should all believe in something beyond death, if even story, because stories keep us connected to each other and the fabric of space.” @cynthiapelayoauthor

Briar Rose Thorn just lost her mother. She’s reeling from the grief. She’s not sure where her reality is- her dreams feel real and her waking moments are like nightmares. Her family’s Chicago home is sending messages- she sees and hears from her dead mother. She is destined to fight an age old evil to release those kept captive in death.

Good fairies, bad fairies, folklore and fairytale- @ will take you on a journey into the veil.

⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

Thank you to @netgalley for this #advancedreaderscopy -pub date was 3/25/25

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Cynthia Pelayo has done it once again with Vanishing Daughters! Her prose was beautiful and tragic. Seriously even if you don’t vibe with this story Cynthia’s writing style alone makes her one of the greats in story telling. Vanishing Daughters centers around the tragic life of a haunted woman and the serial killer who is killing women left and right in Chicago. While the second half of that description got a little lost in the middle the story still came together in the most creepy atmospheric way ! I can’t wait to add the physical copy of this book to my library! Happy reading! X

Thanks Thomas & Mercer for the ARC.

This book was a really interesting blend of fairytales in their true original form, serial killers, and the concept of the fae. I think some of the ideas could have been a little more fleshed out in parts, but on the whole, I really enjoyed the story and the concept. It gave me goosebumps in places, and I can tell the writer really cared about the setting and history of each place they wrote about.

If you are looking for a quick read on a weekend, i'd recommend checking this out.

Pelayo sets the tone and proves her talent for eerie yet thought-provoking storytelling with Vanishing Daughters. Briar’s current narrative includes flashbacks with her mother and how it connects to her current state of mind. Yet the storyline was easy to follow, given the slower pace. Readers also get the serial killer’s POV, where we get more insight into his background and motivations.

The author also weaves in real Chicago history, scientific theories, and inexplicable phenomena to offer a sophisticated exploration of grief and loss. Paralleled with ongoing violence against women and the media’s coverage of cold cases, Vanishing Daughters is a noteworthy addition to your reading list.

First and foremost, a big thank you to Netgalley and Thomas & Mercer for the eArc! Really appreciate the opportunity to read this!

2.5 ⭐️ (rounded to 3⭐️)

I am honestly a bit torn about this book. It was a solid 4 ⭐️ read for me UNTIL about 86% in. It was a beautiful Sleeping Beauty re-telling with a psychological thriller twist, but the end was what really ruined it for me.

What I liked: The atmosphere was heavy, linking themes of grief and loss to dreams and streams of consciousness to supernatural energies of the spirits that lingered from the restless victims of serial killers. My favorite theme was how Cynthia Pelayo weaved the story of Sleeping Beauty in every possible version to the protagonist and I was excited as to where the plot could go! At first, I was a bit annoyed about the dual pov bc the chapters weren’t labeled with who’s pov it was, BUT I learned to love it bc it was kind of fun trying to figure out who’s perspective the chapter was about!

What I didn’t like: The ending was such a let down for me. I was expecting a cat and mouse kind of situation with Briar and the serial killer, but instead we got some totally unrelated entity that has been haunting Archer Avenue for years waaay before Briar’s story. I was quite disappointed since the tense build up between their relationship basically fell flat just by Briar ‘bringing her home’…

All in all, it did not meet my expectations and was lacking in a climactic plot. While I enjoyed the read, I unfortunately do not recommend this one :(

Unfortunately, this book was just not for me. I feel like the author tried to throw everything at the wall and it was just way too much. Really just way too messy and it makes it hard to read. the weaving of the fairytales into the modern tale felt strange and did not work for me. As other users have said, it felt a bit like a fever dream.

The idea and intent behind the novel were great. It started off intriguing, and I was keen to see where it would lead.

Unfortunately, the writing left very much to be desired. The dialogue was awkward, and the inner thoughts felt unnatural, like no would actually speak or think that way. The back and forth between the otherworldly and reality was not seamless at all, and as a result the writing came off amateurish. And then in the middle of the book there were large sections of fact and history dumped on us. I could tell the author tried to weave it into the story, but the result was clunky and awkward to read.

I didn’t even mind that there was a lot going on. What I did mind was the fact it felt like none of it was handled very well.

Overall, a disappointing read for me. But if you like reading about the eerie histories of folklore and fairytales and being swept up in the atmosphere over a more traditional plot structure, you might enjoy this.

Like always, Cynthia Pelayo comes in with her magical prose that puts me in such a calm state, it’s truly cathartic for me and I love that about it! Vanishing Daughters was everything I have come to love and expect from Pelayo. This dark, fairytale retelling turned serial killer/ghost story is haunting and so atmospheric. Pure perfection.

I love that her work is centered around Chicago, and she sets the scene so beautifully that it feels like I’m revisiting the city each time I read her work, but with a different vantage point this time. The grief packed in these pages was heavy and if you know me, you know I’m here for that.

If you enjoy fairytale retellings, be sure to give this one and Forgotten Sisters a try. Thanks to Thomas and Mercer and Kaye Publicity for my copy! Vanishing Daughters is available now.

If you’re looking for a surreal, gothic nightmare wrapped in an inverted fairy tale, Vanishing Daughters delivers a uniquely haunting experience. Pelayo’s prose is rich with imagery—at times, it feels like pure poetry. The novel’s premise is equally compelling, blending horror with folklore and true crime elements.

However, while the dreamlike writing is striking, the narrative structure can feel disjointed and meandering, making it occasionally difficult to follow.

Recommended for readers who enjoy:
•A fresh take on the horror genre, combining gothic fairy tale elements with true crime
•Atmospheric, haunting prose infused with supernatural themes and Chicago urban legends
•Exploration of grief, death, and trauma
-a crumbling Victorian mansion setting, complete with eerie visions and unsettling sounds
-A serial killer element woven into the story
•A blend of psychological thriller and horror
•Twists and an ambiguous ending

⭐ 3.5/5

Thank you to NetGalley and Thomas & Mercer for the eARC. Vanishing Daughters is set to be published on March 11, 2025.

I was hooked from the beginning!!
This book was just so good.
It was amazing, addictive, and engaging.
I was instantly sucked in by the atmosphere and writing style.
The characters were all very well developed .
The writing is exceptional and I was hooked after the first sentence.

This book may have an audience, but it isn’t me. Vanishing Daughters by Cynthia Pelayo felt both disjointed and far too long. Maybe it was the way I read it, in short stints, but I really struggled to finish the novel. The idea of weaving old fairytale storytelling with modern-day serial killers was a no brainer for me. I was hooked. But the execution, the long descriptions of radios and energy, seemed to drag the story down. I lasted to the very end, which unfortunately never really picked up.

The cover is absolutely beautiful and I love the title. I’ve never read anything by the author before.

I was really enjoying the first half of the book but then my interested waned and I couldn’t get back into the story. It is a unique take on a haunted house. I think my favorite part was how it spoke on the lingering effects of grief.

Thank you to NetGalley, Cynthia Pelayo, and Thomas & Mercer. I have written this review voluntarily and honestly.

This is such a unique book... I don't really know how to describe it but all I can say is that I was HOOKED from page 1.
Much like the main character, I felt like I was trapped somewhere between a haunting and a dream this whole book. It was the perfect balance of reflection on grief and the reality of the dead never truly leaving people.
Trying to understand the main character was a full time job and when you add in the thriller element and there is so much suspense and anticipation with this one. This is one giant mix of ghost stories, the history of Chicago, and the extreme ways that grief changes people.
If you're a fan of thrillers, this one is a MUST read!!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC and the opportunity to read it and share my honest thoughts!

I really wanted to love this book because it has all the makings of something that I would enjoy and love reading: psychological thriller, dark fairytale vibes, and sleep deprivation that leads to weird fever dreams but unfortunately the plot just seemed to fall kind of flat for me. I didn’t really connect to the main character and I felt like she was hopelessly stuck in her grief which was just hard to read for page after page.

I DNF’d at about the 15% mark which is rare for me to do so early on but as mentioned above, I was just not engaged with the characters or the story to continue reading.

This book is so unique in the way it combines a serial killer thriller with a retelling of Sleeping Beauty. I imagine this book would be amazing in audio. The story centers around Briar Thorne—a grieving woman who has just lost her mother. She moves into her mother's home and finds herself haunted by strange dreams and occurrences. The writing is lyrical and I enjoyed not being sure what was happening at times as the mystery unfolds. Fans of lighter horror and paranormal thrillers would enjoy this one.

Cynthia Pelayo has written a short story called Snow White’s Shattered Coffin which is inspired by the famous fairy-tale and urban legends surrounding the statue of Inez Clarke, a funeral monument in Graceland Cemetery, Chicago. And I thought it was fantastic. it was essentially what drove me to request this novel.

Bare bones: Briar Rose,a freelance journalist, just moved to her old house, following the death of her loving, eccentric mother Aurora. Her grief is immense and she has troubles sleeping and functioning without her mother. And maybe it's the grief that makes her see a young girl on a side of her eye, cries and worlds in the wind and sensation of house talking to her? Or maybe the ghosts of tragically vanished girls are trying to send her a message. A message about the man who's hunting them...

There are certain elements you can expect from Pelayo novel:

- Chicago. Her books are essentially a love letter to the city of Chicago. There is a certain whimsical and gothic undertone to her descriptions of the city monuments and architecture, the dark mythology of the city that give it its personality. It's more than just the place where the story is happening or the atmosphere, it's a character on its own and I guess it's even more effective if read by locals. The haunted Archer Avenue, Alsip and Holy Sepulchre Cemetery are just some of the few mentioned in this novel. Chicago seems to be ever an inspiration for Cynthia Pelayo.
-Fairy-tales. The magical, paranormal vibes of her stories is emphasized by integrating traditional fairy tales into the story, and often calling on their original horror forms. In Children of Chicago it was the Pied Piper, in Forgotten Sisters it was The Little Mermaid and in this one it's The Sleeping Beauty. While I think that it was done really well in Children of Chicago series or the aforementioned shorter story, here it would sometimes come off as a bit on the nose, especially when tying in was done referencing the mainstream versions of it which are Disney's animation and Maleficent duology. Hence, our main character is called Briar Rose, her mother is Aurora and the villain is Mal. And just in case you weren't aware, the killer keep calling his victims " his sleeping beauties."
-Lyrical prose. Poetic storytelling and atmospheric writing which Pelayo uses as her vehicle to contemplate on different topics and in this particular novel it's about grief, violence and womanhood. Bri's loss of her beloved mother is not something that kicks the plot going, it is present through the entirety of the novel as something she is dealing with. This is what makes the story slow to get going with the whole "killer who vanishes daughters". A lot of dreams that are clearly a vision, but Bri would doubt it as a part of her imagination or she would just ...not investigating when overcome with grief. So, if you expect a fast-paced thriller about catching the serial killer, this is not it. For me her writing clicks and I knew what to expect and still I feel like we took too long to get the story really going. There was a whole magic explanation about thin-spaces, time travel and astral projection and trans and honestly, I didn't enjoy those because they were infodumpy and delivered through character who seems invented purely for that purpose.

Vanishing Girls was enjoyable, but nor really the best I've read from her, especially when it comes to characterization. The writing and the vibes are still there, but as much as I love Pelayo's style, I do wonder if it's time for her to try something new. Which each new book, the excitement and wonder was less than it was when I picked up Children of Chicago. The plot about serial killer and vanishing girls had something to say from the feminist point of view and violence against women, but 1) the intention reminded me of The Shining Girls where it was done better and 2) I feel the purposeful tying with The Sleeping Beauty fairy tale constricted the point, especially because the idea of generational serial murder was interesting. Taking in consideration how long the build up was, the culmination was a bit flat.
Recommend if you like a slow-cooker of a ghost novel with some pretty writing. :)

DNF around 10% just had a really hard time getting into may try again at some point just not the right book for me at the time.

Vanishing Daughters is a lot of things in one story. It's part murder mystery, part paranormal ghost story, part psycho-babble musing, part mind-numbingly boring repetition about grief and part inner reflection of our main character, Briar. Sadly, it simply does none of these things well enough to pull any of them off.

The pacing is all over the shop. The first 30-40% of the story moves at glacial pace and rehashes grief and what dreams might mean over and over and over again. It was face-meltingly boring. I was so close to giving up on the book. The only saving grace was the chapters from the killer's POV. Those were interesting and offered the incentive to keep reading.

The middle part of the book was reasonable and kept me reading, but then the ending felt so rushed and glossed over you never really get much resolution. The last couple of chapters are so fast, if you blink you'll miss them.

Sadly, there was just too much internal reflection and new-aged meditation guff crammed into this story with fairytales and folklore, witches, fairies and ghosts it grew unwieldly and the story meandered around interesting central ideas but with little-to-no substance actually appearing.

The murder mystery theme promised a lot, and I feel that there is definitely some great content that could easily be explored in that realm, but it wasn't to be part of this story. Hints of ties to long-standing and infamous killers could have easily been explored and offered to the reader on a platter and I, for one, would have lapped that up. I longed for some new insight into the serial killers that had been mentioned, some fantastical and paranormal ties to the true life crimes. It would have been glorious!

My dislike of the pacing, content and lack of anything really new to worn out tropes aside, Cynthia can write and put together a great scene. The characters had some interesting bones and I was particularly taken with little Prairie, Briar's dog.

Overall, this book promised a lot, but didn't deliver. I would, however, be very interested to read something else Cynthia has written to see if another story idea would fare better in terms of execution.

Vanishing Daughters by Cynthia Pelayo was a book that I could not put down once I started to read it. I am glad the book cover caught my eye especially as I did not read what this book was about. Now, this book was a weird read but in a good way, as it had me interested from the very first few pages and I wanted to find out what happens next.
I found it, a great read for a cold stormy night outside whilst you are snuggled in your bed, this made the atmosphere perfect whilst reading it!

OMX now my lights have started to flicker!!!!!! and I live in the country side!

This is a very spooky read!

It started on the night journalist Briar Thorne’s mother died in their rambling old mansion on Chicago’s South Side.

The nightmares of a woman in white pleading to come home, when music switched on in locked rooms, and the panicked fear of being swallowed by the dark. . . . . . . . Bri has almost convinced herself that these stirrings of dread are simply manifestations of grief and not the beyond-world of ghostly impossibilities her mother believed in, and more tangible terrors still lurk outside the decaying Victorian grey-stone.

Now, a serial killer has claimed the lives of fifty-one women in the Chicago area. and when Bri starts researching the murders, she meets a stranger who tells her there’s more to her sleepless nights than bad dreams. they hold the key to putting ghosts to rest and stopping a killer.
But the killer has caught on and is closing in, and if Bri doesn’t answer the call of the dead soon,. . . . . . . . . .
She’ll be walking among them.

WoW. . . . . . . . . I loved this book and I ended up reading it all night till the very end!!!!

I highly recommend this book! Superb read,

Big Thank you to NetGalley and Thomas & Mercer for my ARC.

This one had so much potential but sadly didn't deliver for me.

It's a good premise that just didn't really go anywhere. Briar Rose is grieving. Her mother has recently died and she's gone to live back in her childhood home. She believes it's haunted. She's not sleeping well. Partly due to her mother's death and partly due to the house. Her dreams become meddled where she can't tell the difference between reality and dream. I felt the same way reading it. Perhaps the story was meant to be like that and leave you wondering.

There's a lot going on in the story besides grieving. There's the retellings (several) of, "Sleeping Beauty," curses and legends and there's a serial killer on the loose in the neighbourhood!

Perhaps it's my recent grief but I just couldn't connect to this story. I encourage you to read other reviews as many others enjoyed it more than I did. Just not my cup of tea.

Published March 11, 2025

I'd like to kindly thank NetGalley and Thomas & Mercer for granting me access to this Advanced Reader's Copy.