Vanishing Daughters

A Thriller

By: Cynthia Pelayo

Narrated by: Joe Knezevich, Emily Lawrence

A haunted woman stalked by a serial killer confronts the horrors of fairy tales and the nightmares of real life in a breathtaking novel of psychological suspense by a Bram Stoker Award-winning author.

It started 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, 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 greystone.

A serial killer has claimed the lives of fifty-one women in the Chicago area. 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.

©2025 by Cynthia Pelayo. (P)2025 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

Critic reviews

“Pelayo transports readers, blending fairy tales, history, and urban legends with a true sense of fear…”—Library Journal

“An elegiac, profound, and lyrical study in grief, this novel is an atmospheric and original ghost story that hooks readers with its compelling mystery but reels them in with Bri’s voice.”—Booklist

“A riveting read with the lights full on…Deftly crafted suspense thriller that will linger in the mind and memory of the reader long after the novel is finished and set back upon the shelf, Vanishing Daughters is especially and unreservedly recommended…”—Midwest Book Review

Not bad.

Well, this was certainly an interesting spin on Sleeping Beauty. However, I think it could've been so much better had the pace been a bit faster, and certain parts had been more condensed.

Good

I thought the author took the story of sleeping beauty and twisted it into something dark. I did like the narrators, especially when they used one for briar and one for the killer. It wasn’t quite as dark when briar was speaking, but it got pretty twisted when the killer was supposed to be the one speaking. Especially when he talked about how his father killed his victims and also other serial killers throughout history. I also thought this book was long and drawn out more than it really needed to be. I definitely did not want to read this book before bed because I knew it would give me nightmares.

Excellent Novel

I loved thus novel.
Far too much to describe.
I shall try. Tha narration was stellar, both narrators. I could close my eyes and be there amd experience the heroine's, Briar Rose Thorne, feelings, emotions, her fear of almost insanity. I could see the parks she traveled through in Chicago.
I was entertained 70% of this novel while driving, yet the emotional didn't change, or the feeling of the settings. (It helped I grew up in Chicago and visited often as an adult. Ironically, one thing that resonated with me were family trips to the Forest Reserves, and many Catholic graveyards.), this helped immensely with my personal visualization.
However, even if I hadn't been born in the Chicago area and halfway grew up there, the author did an amazing job with her research. Anyone listening or reading this novel would feel the intensity, the beauty, even the starless of winter there.

I loved the heroine, it took her time to come into her own, yet the story moves without loss, as Briar is dealing with immense loss which affects all that she does, feels, and thinks.

Anymore, and I feel I would ruin this novel for others.

This is my first book by this author, and I adored it. In all fairness, this is one time I believe the narrators made it so much more fore me.
I look forward to more by this author.

A terrific thriller!
kljm

unsatisfied

to many unnecessary words.the story had a buildup that was not worth the ending

DNF

Gave it like 8 chapters of a grieving woman wandering around her dead mother’s house interjected only by the disturbed ramblings of…an Intergenerational serial killer? Decided I couldn’t give this book 8 more hours of my life.