Pretty Dead Things

By: Kelsey Cox

Narrators: Narrated by Andrew Eiden; Brittany Pressley; Mia Wurgaft; Saskia Maarleveld; Stevi Incremona

ISBN: 9781250446930

Publisher: Macmillan Audio

Minotaur Books | St. Martin's Press

Publication Date: 07/07/2026

Format: Audiobook

My Rating: 5 Stars + (ALC) (ARC)

JUL 2026-MUST-READ BOOKS

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Secrets emerge as a Texas beauty pageant turns deadly in this rich and addictive novel with a jaw-dropping twist from psychological suspense author Kelsey Cox.

This program features multicast narration.

2000: Isabelle Whitmore vanishes at Sherman Ranch in Anhalt, Texas, without a trace.

2025: The Lone Star Princess Pageant is about to begin, but this year it’s offering more than an annual dose of rhinestone heels and plunging necklines. Competition is stiffer than ever —and long standing grudges are about to resurface. Ingrid fled Anhalt in the wake of her sister Isabelle’s disappearance and has now returned, just in time for a construction crew to start digging up Sherman Ranch; the pageant brings up past traumas that Melanie can't forget; Cat, newly sober, starts to feel threatened in ways that bring back old demons; and Sarah Lynn, who comes from a long line of pageant winners, knows that losing is not an option.

When old resentments and new confrontations reach their boiling point, temperatures drop to deadly degrees as a record-setting storm brings down the state’s power grid. With everyone trapped under one roof, scores will be settled, and more than one person will end up dead.

Beauty dies. Secrets never do.

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My Review

Sinister. Scorching. Cinematic. “A flawless, fast-paced, and biting Southern locked-room mystery that delivers a devastating ‘crown’ of a twist! The audio multicast narration is nothing short of epic—Five Epic Voices, One Masterpiece of a Thriller.”

Kelsey Cox’s Pretty Dead Things completely shatters the mold of the standard, predictable commercial thriller, delivering an elevated, sophisticated piece of suspense that proves the ultimate joy of reading is being spectacularly proven wrong.

The Hook

Twenty-five years ago, in 2000, the Lone Star Pageant in Anhalt, Texas, Isabelle Whitmore vanished without a trace, and everyone thought she was dead and murdered by her boyfriend, but the body was never found. What happened to her?

Now it is the 25th anniversary of the pageant, a brutal winter storm collapses the power grid, trapping the townsfolk inside the pageant venue with a ruthless legacy winner—and a trail of dead flowers and fresh bodies that signals a killer is making up for lost time.

The Elevator Pitch

Think Big Little Lies meets a classic, locked-room mystery. When the 25th anniversary of a small-town Texas beauty pageant collides with an unprecedented ice storm that collapses the local infrastructure, a decades-old cold case thaws out. With multiple generations of women trapped together under one roof, long-buried grudges boil over into a dangerous, high-stakes game of survival.

The Details

📍 Setting: Anhalt, Texas (Sherman Ranch). The glitzy, high-stakes backdrop of a local beauty pageant transforms from a sea of rhinestone heels into a pitch-black, freezing pressure cooker when a winter storm destroys the local power grid.

🎉 Vibe: Claustrophobic Southern Gothic drama. It is a mix of superficial pageant glamour, small-town malice, freezing isolation, and deep-seated history.

🔍 Genre: Psychological Suspense / Locked-Room Mystery.

The Themes

⛓️ Generational Trauma

❄️ Buried History

🏗️ The Sherman Ranch Development

🎯Teen Bullying

👑 Rhinestones, Rumors, and a Rising Body Count

Savage survival instincts cloaked in small-town high society.

The Standout Lineup & Legacy Rivalry

The real horror of the Lone Star Pageant isn't just the freezing blackout—it is the ruthless cycle of history repeating itself. Twenty-five years after a crown was stolen, the daughters of the original three women are back on the same stage, turning a teenage competition into a vicious, multi-generational battleground.

~Kennedy Claire Preston: The reigning winner from the night Isabelle disappeared. She cements herself as one of the most evil, narcissistic, and chillingly manipulative characters on the page. She ruthlessly takes over her daughter's tactical tracking board—using the red pins to map out targets and manipulate her behind her back to eliminate competition.

~Sarah Lynn: Kennedy’s legacy contestant daughter. In a refreshing subversion of the "mean girl" trope, Sarah Lynn is actually a nice, supportive girl who encourages her friends to compete alongside her—completely unaware of how her mother is weaponizing her tactical data against them.

~Olivia: Catherine’s (Cat) daughter. Quiet and shy offstage, she is the ultimate dark horse of the competition. Her long, hidden history of intensive dance training and onstage experience completely blindsides Kennedy, transforming this unassuming girl into a lethal threat to the Preston family legacy.

~Hannah: The daughter of Melanie (nurse), who carries lingering generational trauma from the intense small-town bullying her mother endured 25 years earlier.

~Cat: Olivia's mother. A newly sober woman fighting her old demons while under immense pressure in an incredibly toxic environment. Her isolation is palpable—she lives eerily isolated inside a model home of the Sherman Ranch development, right on the edge of the past, desperately trying to reconnect with her estranged daughter.

~Ingrid Whitmore: The sister of the missing girl who returns to town to care for her ailing mother, only to be dragged back into the community's darkest history.

Author Writing Standout

Kelsey Cox excels brilliantly at crafting simmering, atmospheric tension that builds beautifully from messy small-town drama into a high-stakes, breathless survival story. Her ability to seamlessly orchestrate a wide, multi-POV cast without losing the reader's investment is a major triumph.

The Takeaway

You can flee your hometown, but you can never truly outrun its history. The secrets we bury to protect our reputations will eventually break through the surface, crack open, and destroy the very foundations we built upon.

Title Significance & Metaphor

Pretty Dead Things perfectly encapsulates the dual nature of the book. It refers to the trail of dead flowers, the physical bodies piling up, the superficial, highly curated aesthetic of the beauty queens, and the long-buried secrets rotting underneath. The book operates as a glittering mirror fractured by frost—an industry and a town designed to reflect flawless perfection, only to shatter into sharp, lethal shards under the cold, heavy weight of the truth.

Why You Should Read

You should read this for the masterclass pacing and a final act that will keep you guessing entirely until the final sentence. This is a deeply atmospheric, sophisticated domestic suspense literary thriller designed for readers who love complex characters, multiple twists, sharp social commentary, and high-stakes psychological tension.

My Thoughts

"Survival of the Prettiest: Why Kelsey Cox’s Latest is Movie-Worthy" This book is an absolute masterpiece of suspense!

I went into this blind without having read Kelsey Cox’s previous work, and I was highly impressed by how elevated and sophisticated the execution turned out to be. I typically do not enjoy beauty pageants or high-society drama, so I was completely surprised by how fantastic, ruthless, and entirely movie-worthy this narrative felt.

Shifting fluidly from the past to the present keeps you in a constant state of agonizing suspense as the layers of history unfold alongside the freezing modern blackout. It delivers the perfect blend of sharp, dramatic pageant infighting and legitimate, dark psychological dread.

The psychological dread is amplified by the small-town politics at play. Having the local law enforcement circling the edges of the Sherman Ranch development to "check in" on vulnerable residents like Cat creates a brilliant, deceptive layer of security that only makes the surrounding isolation feel more threatening.

It completely subverts expectations with a jaw-dropping twist and wraps up with an unforgettable, laugh-out-loud moment of protest where the daughters completely reclaim their power from their toxic mothers in a brilliant act of defiance. I loved both the book and the audio format, hanging on every single word.

The Audio 🎧 Standout "Five Epic Voices, One Masterpiece of a Thriller!"

This production is officially going on my list of the Top Audiobooks of 2026! The multicast narration is nothing short of epic and stands as the absolute best way to experience this story; the audio format is truly what pushed this experience over the top for me. Shifting seamlessly between five distinct perspectives and time jumps can get messy on paper; however, this stellar voice team—led by two of my absolute favorite narrators, Brittany Pressley and Saskia Maarleveld, along with Andrew Eiden, Mia Wurgaft, and Stevi Incremona—breathes brilliant, distinct, and gripping life into every single point of view. Their performances masterfully elevate the claustrophobic dread, making you feel trapped right alongside them in the darkness of malice and deception. It is an absolute masterclass in audiobook production!

The Verdict: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5 / 5 Stars "A beautifully vicious, movie-worthy thriller that turns a glittering pageant into a freezing house of horrors—delivering a masterclass in cutthroat suspense."

Highly recommend.

🎬 Movie-worthy! Prime for the big or small screen.

🔄 Twist after twist until the very end. An addictive must-read/listen!

Recs or Read-Alikes

🥂 The Hunting Wives by May Cobb: Mirrors the dangerous, clique-driven Texas dark-glamour vibe, toxic female peer pressure, and high-society secrets that turn lethal.

💎 The Last Mrs. Parrishby Liv Constantine: Matches the elegant, calculated psychological manipulation and deceptive high-class environments.

🤫 Dear Wife or The Marriage Lie by Kimberly Belle: Shares the same polished, addictive prose style and the slow, masterful unraveling of deep family secrets.

Special thanks to Minotaur Books, St. Martin's Press, #MacAudio2026, and NetGalley for sharing an advanced reading and listening copy in exchange for my honest thoughts.

@JudithDCollins | #JDCMustReadBooks

My Rating: 5 Stars +

Pub Day: July 7, 2026

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Praise

"Cox’s second suspenseful outing serves the exact amount of treachery you’d expect, with lots of figurative backstabbing and a few literal deaths. The diverting characters parade their messes across the page for the reader’s judging, and there’s no shortage of options for who’ll be crowned killer in the end."

―Booklist

"Cox builds to satisfying reveals and delivers well-honed critiques of pageant culture. Fans of suburban suspense will enjoy themselves."

―Publishers Weekly

"As twisted as a Texas rattler, Pretty Dead Things by Kelsey Cox will leave you breathless! I couldn’t put it down!"

―Lisa Jackson, #1 New York Times bestselling author

“Tense, twisty, and impossible to put down, Pretty Dead Things builds from simmering small-town secrets to a high-stakes locked-room nightmare. As rising tensions collide on the night of a glittering pageant, no one is safe and nothing is what it seems. Gripping, propulsive, and full of surprises―a dazzling, unforgettable thriller.”

―Tiffany Crum, New York Times bestselling author of This Story Might Save Your Life

"A juicy, addictive thriller packed with complicated women and a past that refuses to stay buried. Pretty Dead Things will keep you guessing until its jaw-dropping end."

―Daphne Woolsoncroft, author of Night Watcher

"I couldn't put this book down! Set in the world of glittering Texas beauty pageants, PRETTY DEAD THINGS is compelling and layered, rife with rich characters, juicy twists, and secrets upon secrets. Cox expertly ratchets up the suspense with every page, building to a finish I never saw coming!"

―Sophie Stava, author of Count My Lies

About the Author

Kelsey Cox received her MFA in fiction from Purdue University and works from home in the Texas Hill Country. You can often find her writing at Mammen Family Public Library, chasing around her two young daughters, or watching British mysteries with her mom and aunts. On nights when bedtime goes as planned, she enjoys curling up on the sofa, glass of wine in hand, and a book with complicated characters and a killer twist in her lap. WEBSITE