After an accident involving their mother, Cara and her brother Stephen are sent to live with their aunt and uncle. They’ve never met, and yet are thrust into the bosom of their mother’s childhood home. Things are different, and though each looks forward to the experience it soon becomes clear that things will not go as either side hoped.
A rather languid start sets up the oppressive atmosphere in the new home. Cara and Stephen are expected to follow their aunt’s rules. Though she desperately wants them, nothing prepares her for the reality of children. The noise, the capriciousness and the conflict from someone trying to assert their own will on a situation. They never meet their uncle, but his presence is felt through the rules enforced.
Cara fights their new reality. She becomes increasingly upset. Stephen, desperate for a mother’s love, is more willing to adapt his behaviour.
As the children adjust to their new home we are given details that indicate that their aunt is struggling with her mental health after suffering miscarriages/deaths of her five pregnancies.
After what seems like a long time, we start to see things unravel in spectacular fashion. Genuinely creepy at this point, and it would have been great to have seen this element introduced earlier/perhaps offering a little more background to their lives. By the time we’re privy to what’s happening, it’s too late to do anything other than look on in horror and wonder how such a thing could happen without anyone being alerted to the oddness of the situation.
Thanks to NetGalley for granting me access to this prior to publication.

Such Pretty Things is a thriller of human drama with a weird tie-in horror elements that unfortunately fit awkwardly as they are only introduced into this mess without ever bearing fruit.
I really do like the premise of the book. The description provided by the publisher is of an enticing human drama.
Unfortunately, the author fails to build upon it. The beginning is so slow it continues up to about 60% into the book. None of the characters are relatable, not in their grief, nor sadness, loneliness, etc. They all act weirdly to the point of conversations making little to no sense, and the overall thought process of the main character Clara, whose point of view presents most of the book, read like a chat bot - tends to forget how she felt three sentences ago while still following the "same" train of thought and jumps into extraordinarily weird conclusions.
Then we get some kinda supernatural things thrown in, but not really, but kinda yes. It's infuriating, as the book swerves between "is it ghosts", "is it mental health", as it tries to prove both before it drives itself into a wall.
And then comes the conclusion, of one chapter which goes through more twists and turns than the whole book, running into the same issues all over again. And then we get the most confusing and overall bad ending of bad books I've had the stomach to finish, which sounded like the last 50 or so (given the length of ~179) pages were lost and rewritten into 5-10. There's no reward at the end, there's not one thing uncovered in the end, all the "mysteries" stay a mystery and it feels like the author has no idea what happened in her own story.
Don't get me wrong - a vague ending can be so good, if done well - for example, I wouldn't say any of Murakami's fiction books ever end with anything but vagueness, but the style is different and they are at least though provoking.

Overall, I would just not recommend this book at all. I really think the author should try again and actually work trough the story - the concept is so promising it's sad to see it wasted.

*Thanks to NetGalley and Titan Books for providing me with an ARC of this title in exchange for an honest review.*

Such pretty things by Lisa Heathfield.
This was a very good read. Little slow but I read it. I did think auntie was mad. I wasn't sure about the ending. 4*.

An atmospheric masterpiece, I highly recommend this thriller. The characters are realistic and the plot fast paced.