Nothing is more dangerous than a Texas beauty pageant. The Lone Star Princess Pageant is sure to feature the best and brightest young women from Anhalt, including Hannah, Sarah Lynn, and Olivia, but it also stirs up past guilt and tragic memories in their mothers, Cat, Melanie, and Kennedy Claire.

Twenty-five years ago, a contestant, Isabelle Whitmore, went missing, and her twin sister Ingrid was left devastated. The whole town believed Ben Sherman, Isabelle’s boyfriend, was responsible for her death, and her body was buried somewhere on the Sherman property. Now the property has been sold, and a new housing development is going up. Will Isabelle’s body be unearthed? The pageant’s past contestants are struggling. Ingrid is returning to town to help her to ailing mother and assist with the pageant. Cat is living at the model home, struggling with her sobriety and reconnecting with her daughter Olivia, and Melanie is trying to take care of everyone, as the mystery of Isabelle Whitmore’s disappearance swirls around them. As Hannah, Sarah Lynn, and Olivia prepare for the pageant, a cold winter storm moves in and brings with it a killer bent on revenge for a past crime.

PRETTY DEAD THINGS by Kelsey Cox is an addictive, fast- moving, suspenseful novel that keeps you guessing all the way until the end. The angst of teenage competition, overbearing mothers, feelings of inadequacy, mixed with teenage bullying, and bad decisions ignite this explosive plot which makes readers ponder what people are truly capable of when their identities are threatened. Good solid writing, with just the right number of red herrings and twists and turns, makes this story unputdownable. Told from the alternating viewpoints of both the young girls and their mothers, readers have a front seat to it all from bad behavior, incognito podcasters, trail cameras, jealousy, family loyalty, and dead bodies. PRETTY DEAD THINGS will hook you from the start and keep you engrossed all the way to its explosive surprise ending.