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Daughter of Rot
THE HOUSE DREAMS OF BIRTH & DEATH.
When the Velasquez family moves into a quaint adobe home surrounded by forest, it's the beginning of Isela's dream life. Isela Velasquez is a pathological liar with strange impulses that terrorize her at night. She wants the perfect family, but she regrets becoming a mother.
Olivia Velasquez is four years old when she first meets the house. Spending most of her days alone, Olivia befriends the house and looks after it. At night, the house whispers into Olivia's dreams, creating a bond between them.
The house takes on a maternal role after it gives birth to a brand new room. An immaculate conception, turning the two-bedroom house into a three-bedroom home. The new room lures Isela inside and shows her pieces of herself that she's refused to look at in her adult life. It teases her. It haunts her. When Olivia gathers the courage to enter the newly born room, she finds warmth and safety. The room creates lush and vibrant ecosystems right before her eyes.
DAUGHTER OF ROT blends magical realism with dreamlike botanical horror and explores the intertwining of toxic parenting with childhood innocence.
When the Velasquez family moves into a quaint adobe home surrounded by forest, it's the beginning of Isela's dream life. Isela Velasquez is a pathological liar with strange impulses that terrorize her at night. She wants the perfect family, but she regrets becoming a mother.
Olivia Velasquez is four years old when she first meets the house. Spending most of her days alone, Olivia befriends the house and looks after it. At night, the house whispers into Olivia's dreams, creating a bond between them.
The house takes on a maternal role after it gives birth to a brand new room. An immaculate conception, turning the two-bedroom house into a three-bedroom home. The new room lures Isela inside and shows her pieces of herself that she's refused to look at in her adult life. It teases her. It haunts her. When Olivia gathers the courage to enter the newly born room, she finds warmth and safety. The room creates lush and vibrant ecosystems right before her eyes.
DAUGHTER OF ROT blends magical realism with dreamlike botanical horror and explores the intertwining of toxic parenting with childhood innocence.
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Published September 8, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 65 reviews
September 27, 2026
Title/Author: Daughter Of Rot by Rios de la Luz
Format Read: physical book
Pub date: September 8, 2026
Publisher: Broken River Books
Page Count: 113 Pages
Affiliate Link: https://a.co/d/0eEiJRYn
Recommended for readers who enjoy:
- Motherhood/Womanhood/Domestic drama/Mothers & Daughters
- Coming-of-Age/Reincarnation
- Magical realism/Fantasy/
- Botanical Horror
- House in the woods/House has a personality (POV)
__
Minor complaints:
- zero complaints. It took me a minute to fall in step with the storytelling style and the direction we were going, but once I did, I was locked in.
Final recommendation:
"None of our family line comes from curanderas, my little Olive. Cooking is as close as we can get--a delicious meal makes you forget you're suffering."
I read this author's debut novel, ITZÁ in October 2024 and was blown away. It was an easy 5 stars. It's about family, intergenerational trauma, female resiliency, complicated relationships, magical realism, and has a vignette-style (mosaic) storytelling with short chapters. In Daughter of Rot, Rios de la Luz flexes her signature storytelling style, exploring similar themes. This time, readers have a front row seat to Olivia's whole history--who she was *before* she was Olivia, her birth, her childhood, the toxic relationship she has with her mother, Isela , her thought life, the move to a magical adobe house in the woods, we meet The Mother she creates and destroys...all of it. it is equal parts beautiful and tragic
Painful and magical
devestating and hopeful
While I understand how some women ultimately regret motherhood and have a difficult time with instinctual nurturing/self sacrifice, it is extremely hard (as a mother) to engage with stories where mothers abuse their children psychologically, physically, and emotionally.
"A mother is an unpredictable lightining storm. Sometimes, she will say nothing to you all day and sometimes she is sweet in her own way."
There are several scenes that broke me--unforgiveable acts (Go Go, the birthday cake, and the letters-you will know when you get there, feel free to talk to me about it)
Just really, really upsetting. I love this book--Rios de la Luz is an insta-buy author. This is a top shelf favorite for the year
Comps: ITZÁ by Rios de la Luz, On Sundays She Picks Flowers by Yah Yah Scholfield (very similar themes with the neglectful mother, abuse, and the magical house in the woods of healing), Disco Mama by Tiffany Meuret (another really raw & tumultuous mother/daughter horror story-mother who regret their choice to have children)
Format Read: physical book
Pub date: September 8, 2026
Publisher: Broken River Books
Page Count: 113 Pages
Affiliate Link: https://a.co/d/0eEiJRYn
Recommended for readers who enjoy:
- Motherhood/Womanhood/Domestic drama/Mothers & Daughters
- Coming-of-Age/Reincarnation
- Magical realism/Fantasy/
- Botanical Horror
- House in the woods/House has a personality (POV)
__
Minor complaints:
- zero complaints. It took me a minute to fall in step with the storytelling style and the direction we were going, but once I did, I was locked in.
Final recommendation:
"None of our family line comes from curanderas, my little Olive. Cooking is as close as we can get--a delicious meal makes you forget you're suffering."
I read this author's debut novel, ITZÁ in October 2024 and was blown away. It was an easy 5 stars. It's about family, intergenerational trauma, female resiliency, complicated relationships, magical realism, and has a vignette-style (mosaic) storytelling with short chapters. In Daughter of Rot, Rios de la Luz flexes her signature storytelling style, exploring similar themes. This time, readers have a front row seat to Olivia's whole history--who she was *before* she was Olivia, her birth, her childhood, the toxic relationship she has with her mother, Isela , her thought life, the move to a magical adobe house in the woods, we meet The Mother she creates and destroys...all of it. it is equal parts beautiful and tragic
Painful and magical
devestating and hopeful
While I understand how some women ultimately regret motherhood and have a difficult time with instinctual nurturing/self sacrifice, it is extremely hard (as a mother) to engage with stories where mothers abuse their children psychologically, physically, and emotionally.
"A mother is an unpredictable lightining storm. Sometimes, she will say nothing to you all day and sometimes she is sweet in her own way."
There are several scenes that broke me--unforgiveable acts (Go Go, the birthday cake, and the letters-you will know when you get there, feel free to talk to me about it)
Just really, really upsetting. I love this book--Rios de la Luz is an insta-buy author. This is a top shelf favorite for the year
Comps: ITZÁ by Rios de la Luz, On Sundays She Picks Flowers by Yah Yah Scholfield (very similar themes with the neglectful mother, abuse, and the magical house in the woods of healing), Disco Mama by Tiffany Meuret (another really raw & tumultuous mother/daughter horror story-mother who regret their choice to have children)
October 4, 2026
I took my time with this one because it felt like a continuous jab to the heart. Beautiful, tragic, heartbreaking, relatable, inspiring, devastating, painful, hopeful. I felt and cried and shook and raged.
I tabbed the hell out of this little book.
One for the daughter's of mothers who made it abundantly clear that they never wanted to be a mother.
Full review to come. 🩶
4.5 stars 🌟
I tabbed the hell out of this little book.
One for the daughter's of mothers who made it abundantly clear that they never wanted to be a mother.
Full review to come. 🩶
4.5 stars 🌟
Read
September 22, 2026Four Ceramic Chickens and a Woman with a Stopwatch
TL;DR: A house that dreams of drowning, a room that gives a lonely kid everything, and a mother who gives her nothing. De la Luz writes in species names and open wounds. It goes lush where it should go lean, but when it lands it takes your feet out from under you. Believe the flowers. Fear the mother.
Daughter of Rot has a room in it that grows its own weather. It has a house that daydreams about drowning. It has an oak tree that cannot remember its first language and is a little embarrassed about it. All of that is good and some of it is better than good. But the thing that put my stomach through the floor was a mother timing her daughter in the bathroom. Fifteen minutes to piss, shower, brush your teeth, fix your face. Come out with your hair wrong and she takes you by it and fixes the hair herself, with no regard at all for how hard she is pulling.
Rios de la Luz does not linger on that scene and that’s why it works.
Here is the setup, which arrives sideways and in pieces, the way everything in this novella arrives. Olivia Velasquez lives in an adobe house at the end of a gravel road in New Mexico with a father who is functionally a rumor and a mother named Isela who wanted to be a famous clairvoyant and got a teller window at a bank instead. Olivia is six. Then she is eight. Then she is ten. She dusts the ceramic chickens. She microwaves her own fideo. She makes juice concoctions as a treat for her one kidney, because she was born with one and nobody ever explained what it does. And then the house, which has its own chapters and its own interior life and wants very badly to die by the sea, grows a new room, and the room has a name, and the room starts handing out gifts.
The chickens are where I knew this writer had me. There are four of them on a shelf. The silkie is Leonora because it sounds fancy. The Polish is Magdalena, Mags on days when her eyes look deeper than they are supposed to. And the speckled Sussex is Roberta the Second, because Roberta the First broke in a “spectral” accident, which means Isela got off the phone angry and pulverized a ceramic hen with a hammer. That is the funniest sentence in the book and it is also a complete forensic report on a childhood, and it is delivered by a kid who has already learned to repeat the family’s official version. No setup. No comment after. De la Luz just sets it down and walks off, and I sat there with my thumb on the page for a while.
The prose is doing something I want to be honest about, because I loved most of it and got tired of some of it. She writes in species. Not flowers, but gold flame honeysuckle and mountain hydrangeas and scarlet waxcap mushrooms and blue oat grass. Not birds, but a black-billed magpie. It reads like a woman naming things so they cannot be taken from her, and at its best it is genuinely a spell, the room shifting cloud forest to wildflower field to shoreline while a kid lies on her back and lets pollen fizz on her tongue. At its worst it is a nursery catalog. Somewhere past the halfway point the transformations started to feel like a lava lamp to me, gorgeous and unfalsifiable, one more chapter of the room being beautiful when I wanted the room to want something. Beauty has diminishing returns. Dread does not.
And the dread here is not mechanical. Nothing is being built. There is no trap tightening, no clock. If you came for architecture you will be pissed off. What there is instead is a permanent hum of wrongness in a small house, and a mother whose chapters are, hand to God, the most electric writing in the book. Isela gets rendered from the inside, not excused, and it is so much worse than a villain. She does not hate her daughter. She is bored and furious and grieving something she never had, and the girl is in the room. De la Luz gives her a monologue over a pot of caldo de albóndigas that starts in mint and oregano and family lineage and slides, by degrees you can barely track, into asking a child whether she wants to ruin her own body on a baby someday. Every immigrant grandmother’s recipe in the world has been sentimentalized to death. This one is a weapon and it is still, somehow, also a recipe. I wrote it down. I am going to make it.
De la Luz has been at this a decade. She is a queer Xicana and Guatemalteca writer who came up through the small presses, The Pulse between Dimensions and the Desert at Ladybox in 2015, then the novella Itzá at Broken River in 2017, then the story collection An Altar of Stories to Liminal Saints in 2023, plus anthology work at Seal Press and the Feminist Press. She has said she builds an altar and talks to her ancestors before she writes, and that she is after healing from trauma through magic rather than around it, and she teaches workshops on body stories, which explains a lot about how this book locates every emotion somewhere anatomical. Her named influences run Sandra Cisneros, Lidia Yuknavitch, Han Kang, del Toro, Ari Aster. You can see all of them in here and she does not sound like any of them. Itzá was a survivor’s spell that she has described as letting the girl heal all the way. This one is tougher and less merciful and better built, and it knows something the earlier work was too generous to say, which is that some people get out and are still not okay.
The best chapter is about past lives. In 1952 Olivia is a Venus flytrap on a windowsill belonging to a young woman who wants to learn how to devour, who bites her own arms, who writes obituaries for the insects and prays they come back as hunters. Three pages. No explanation afterward. I have read it four times.
I read this in one sitting on a Tuesday and then I called my mother, who is fine, who has never once timed me in a bathroom, and I did not tell her why.
TL;DR: A house that dreams of drowning, a room that gives a lonely kid everything, and a mother who gives her nothing. De la Luz writes in species names and open wounds. It goes lush where it should go lean, but when it lands it takes your feet out from under you. Believe the flowers. Fear the mother.
Daughter of Rot has a room in it that grows its own weather. It has a house that daydreams about drowning. It has an oak tree that cannot remember its first language and is a little embarrassed about it. All of that is good and some of it is better than good. But the thing that put my stomach through the floor was a mother timing her daughter in the bathroom. Fifteen minutes to piss, shower, brush your teeth, fix your face. Come out with your hair wrong and she takes you by it and fixes the hair herself, with no regard at all for how hard she is pulling.
Rios de la Luz does not linger on that scene and that’s why it works.
Here is the setup, which arrives sideways and in pieces, the way everything in this novella arrives. Olivia Velasquez lives in an adobe house at the end of a gravel road in New Mexico with a father who is functionally a rumor and a mother named Isela who wanted to be a famous clairvoyant and got a teller window at a bank instead. Olivia is six. Then she is eight. Then she is ten. She dusts the ceramic chickens. She microwaves her own fideo. She makes juice concoctions as a treat for her one kidney, because she was born with one and nobody ever explained what it does. And then the house, which has its own chapters and its own interior life and wants very badly to die by the sea, grows a new room, and the room has a name, and the room starts handing out gifts.
The chickens are where I knew this writer had me. There are four of them on a shelf. The silkie is Leonora because it sounds fancy. The Polish is Magdalena, Mags on days when her eyes look deeper than they are supposed to. And the speckled Sussex is Roberta the Second, because Roberta the First broke in a “spectral” accident, which means Isela got off the phone angry and pulverized a ceramic hen with a hammer. That is the funniest sentence in the book and it is also a complete forensic report on a childhood, and it is delivered by a kid who has already learned to repeat the family’s official version. No setup. No comment after. De la Luz just sets it down and walks off, and I sat there with my thumb on the page for a while.
The prose is doing something I want to be honest about, because I loved most of it and got tired of some of it. She writes in species. Not flowers, but gold flame honeysuckle and mountain hydrangeas and scarlet waxcap mushrooms and blue oat grass. Not birds, but a black-billed magpie. It reads like a woman naming things so they cannot be taken from her, and at its best it is genuinely a spell, the room shifting cloud forest to wildflower field to shoreline while a kid lies on her back and lets pollen fizz on her tongue. At its worst it is a nursery catalog. Somewhere past the halfway point the transformations started to feel like a lava lamp to me, gorgeous and unfalsifiable, one more chapter of the room being beautiful when I wanted the room to want something. Beauty has diminishing returns. Dread does not.
And the dread here is not mechanical. Nothing is being built. There is no trap tightening, no clock. If you came for architecture you will be pissed off. What there is instead is a permanent hum of wrongness in a small house, and a mother whose chapters are, hand to God, the most electric writing in the book. Isela gets rendered from the inside, not excused, and it is so much worse than a villain. She does not hate her daughter. She is bored and furious and grieving something she never had, and the girl is in the room. De la Luz gives her a monologue over a pot of caldo de albóndigas that starts in mint and oregano and family lineage and slides, by degrees you can barely track, into asking a child whether she wants to ruin her own body on a baby someday. Every immigrant grandmother’s recipe in the world has been sentimentalized to death. This one is a weapon and it is still, somehow, also a recipe. I wrote it down. I am going to make it.
De la Luz has been at this a decade. She is a queer Xicana and Guatemalteca writer who came up through the small presses, The Pulse between Dimensions and the Desert at Ladybox in 2015, then the novella Itzá at Broken River in 2017, then the story collection An Altar of Stories to Liminal Saints in 2023, plus anthology work at Seal Press and the Feminist Press. She has said she builds an altar and talks to her ancestors before she writes, and that she is after healing from trauma through magic rather than around it, and she teaches workshops on body stories, which explains a lot about how this book locates every emotion somewhere anatomical. Her named influences run Sandra Cisneros, Lidia Yuknavitch, Han Kang, del Toro, Ari Aster. You can see all of them in here and she does not sound like any of them. Itzá was a survivor’s spell that she has described as letting the girl heal all the way. This one is tougher and less merciful and better built, and it knows something the earlier work was too generous to say, which is that some people get out and are still not okay.
The best chapter is about past lives. In 1952 Olivia is a Venus flytrap on a windowsill belonging to a young woman who wants to learn how to devour, who bites her own arms, who writes obituaries for the insects and prays they come back as hunters. Three pages. No explanation afterward. I have read it four times.
I read this in one sitting on a Tuesday and then I called my mother, who is fine, who has never once timed me in a bathroom, and I did not tell her why.
September 8, 2026
Pub Day Review
This is one of those stunning tales that feels like a fever dream. Her writing is poetically exquisite and I read it in one sitting.
Let me be clear, this book is so weird! I loved it! I think fans of weird girl lit and weird girl horror will love this. Themes of generational trauma,motherhood, and forgiveness are lined within the pages.
If you love botanical horror, definitely give this a read! It’s beautiful.
4 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
This is one of those stunning tales that feels like a fever dream. Her writing is poetically exquisite and I read it in one sitting.
Let me be clear, this book is so weird! I loved it! I think fans of weird girl lit and weird girl horror will love this. Themes of generational trauma,motherhood, and forgiveness are lined within the pages.
If you love botanical horror, definitely give this a read! It’s beautiful.
4 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
May 21, 2026
Thank you, Rios, for giving me the opportunity to read Daughter of Rot before anyone else!
Rios takes us in an onirical journey of rot, desperation and forgiveness. On the one hand, we have a mother who is overwhelmed by her responsibilities to Olivia.
But seeing the impact this has on Olivia, we can’t help but continue to be present in a vouyeristic fashion, watching Olivia’s heartbreak. Nonetheless, eventually, pain leads to creation.
Life cannot be eternal, or fixed, it can merely be passed on.
What a beautiful book.
Rios takes us in an onirical journey of rot, desperation and forgiveness. On the one hand, we have a mother who is overwhelmed by her responsibilities to Olivia.
But seeing the impact this has on Olivia, we can’t help but continue to be present in a vouyeristic fashion, watching Olivia’s heartbreak. Nonetheless, eventually, pain leads to creation.
Life cannot be eternal, or fixed, it can merely be passed on.
What a beautiful book.
August 22, 2026
⊹˖࣪ Every single thing inside of her told her that being loved was a burden. A difficulty. Being loved was something that could only happen in her imagination ࣪ ˖⊹
𝑨𝑹𝑪 𝑹𝒆𝒗𝒊𝒆𝒘 <3
The Daughter of Rot explores generational trauma, abusive parents and the way hurt can be passed down through families, all wrapped up in some very strange magical realism. And when I say strange, I mean there is a HOUSE THAT BIRTHS A ROOM. 😭 I was immediately intrigued.
I especially loved the way the book handled the relationship between Olivia and her sisters. Their letters were probably my favourite part — rather than giving us these perfectly polished little pieces of exposition, they felt like actual letters someone would write, complete with things being scribbled out and awkward little thoughts. It gave the story a really lovely human edge.
Unfortunately, I found myself getting quite bored towards the middle. There were some scenes that I didn’t feel added much, and Olivia’s healing journey started to feel a little repetitive rather than something I was experiencing alongside her.
Ultimately, I think this could have been a bit shorter and sharper for me. There are some genuinely beautiful ideas here, and I can absolutely see what the book was trying to say, but I found myself more interested in the concept than the actual story.
A very solid 3★ for me, definitely not a bad book, just one that didn’t quite click.
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
𝑨𝑹𝑪 𝑹𝒆𝒗𝒊𝒆𝒘 <3
The Daughter of Rot explores generational trauma, abusive parents and the way hurt can be passed down through families, all wrapped up in some very strange magical realism. And when I say strange, I mean there is a HOUSE THAT BIRTHS A ROOM. 😭 I was immediately intrigued.
I especially loved the way the book handled the relationship between Olivia and her sisters. Their letters were probably my favourite part — rather than giving us these perfectly polished little pieces of exposition, they felt like actual letters someone would write, complete with things being scribbled out and awkward little thoughts. It gave the story a really lovely human edge.
Unfortunately, I found myself getting quite bored towards the middle. There were some scenes that I didn’t feel added much, and Olivia’s healing journey started to feel a little repetitive rather than something I was experiencing alongside her.
Ultimately, I think this could have been a bit shorter and sharper for me. There are some genuinely beautiful ideas here, and I can absolutely see what the book was trying to say, but I found myself more interested in the concept than the actual story.
A very solid 3★ for me, definitely not a bad book, just one that didn’t quite click.
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
October 5, 2026
When Olivia first meets the house, she is a tender four year old, already bearing the burden of generational trauma that haunts the women in her family, including her mother: Isela Velasquez, a pathological liar who dreams of the perfect life, but doesn’t want to put in the work to get it.
Where Isela fails as a mother, the house succeeds, giving birth to an extra room - The Inflorescence; a room full of magic and power that comforts Olivia in her darkest moments in a way only a mother can. From pain grows a whole ecosystem that Olivia becomes familiar with, a world only they share.
Isela isn’t so lucky. The Inflorescence haunts her, showing her the pieces of herself that are just a little too hideous to stare at for too long. The mother and daughter had a strikingly different welcome, and the contrast in their experience was damn satisfying.
Nature is a big, beautiful part of this story, with Olivia being a free spirit who believes in things that others would scoff at. We all need an Olivia in our lives, someone who believes in the whimsy of the world.
When I first caught wind of Daughter of Rot, the synopsis had captured me completely. Botanical horror just has something sacred about it, and with snappy, short chapters and only 133 pages of magic; Daughter of Rot was the five star read I prayed it would be, showing the resilience of women who break cycles and rule their own worlds.
May Olivia’s closure inspire us to seek our own, and may Olivia’s bravery inspire us to break our own familial cycles of trauma.
Where Isela fails as a mother, the house succeeds, giving birth to an extra room - The Inflorescence; a room full of magic and power that comforts Olivia in her darkest moments in a way only a mother can. From pain grows a whole ecosystem that Olivia becomes familiar with, a world only they share.
Isela isn’t so lucky. The Inflorescence haunts her, showing her the pieces of herself that are just a little too hideous to stare at for too long. The mother and daughter had a strikingly different welcome, and the contrast in their experience was damn satisfying.
Nature is a big, beautiful part of this story, with Olivia being a free spirit who believes in things that others would scoff at. We all need an Olivia in our lives, someone who believes in the whimsy of the world.
When I first caught wind of Daughter of Rot, the synopsis had captured me completely. Botanical horror just has something sacred about it, and with snappy, short chapters and only 133 pages of magic; Daughter of Rot was the five star read I prayed it would be, showing the resilience of women who break cycles and rule their own worlds.
May Olivia’s closure inspire us to seek our own, and may Olivia’s bravery inspire us to break our own familial cycles of trauma.
October 6, 2026
It took me a while to get through this book because it is so sad. But it’s also gorgeous and poetic, with surprising language. I had never heard the phrase “botanical horror” before reading this book, but man, I sure know what it is now.
August 28, 2026
This advanced reader’s copy provided by author.
Thank you Rios de la Luz for this advance reader’s copy of Daughter of Rot in exchange for an honest review. My words are my own.
What a phenomenal novel with gorgeous lyricism. De la Luz’s writing makes you bleed emotion with every page. It makes you ache, makes you swoon, makes you vibrate with anticipation. This was absolutely mesmerizing. I don’t remember the last time a piece of fiction was so poetic that I stopped every page to whisper them aloud to myself - to let the words reverberate in my mind and body. This book is not something you can read at a distance, or disengage with; it makes you bring forth yourself and feel the words. My senses, emotions and consciousness were alert the whole way through. I was not an observer, I experienced this. This book makes you feel alive.
Daughter of Rot is told from the dual perspectives of mother Isela Vasquez and her daughter Olivia. They exist in a fluctuating world in which the wildness of botanical and animalistic life bleeds into their indoor life and eventually their bodies; concurrently the internal psychological machinations of their minds permeate the organic world beyond the house. While Isela and Olivia are the two primary authorial perspectives, I would suggest a third main character exists in the form of their house. The house is sentient, it is purposeful, emotional, vengeful and capable of intervening in their lives in a way no human can.
Most significantly, the house has a body and soul. “…the soul of the house sleeps in the white shed…the soul of the house remains appeased as long as the plants around her are alive…the kidney of the house is in the kitchen…the chicken shelf was the heart of the house…Olivia’s room was an ear canal. A pleasant cavern with a winding path” (23-4). Beyond the corporeal, the house contemplates its method of death, birth and the afterlife: “…the house wants to die in a drowning accident. In obsidian waters, the house pictured itself slowly pulled toward the ocean floor…the house wondered if it could become a ghost…the house used to dream about being born” (40). Just as vividly, “the house dreams of death. White light fills the inside of all the rooms, beaming up to the sky…the house turns into stardust and spreads out into a never-ending universe” (41). The house has the most profoundly human instinct: “what a delight, thinks the house, to fade away into nothing” (41). The house heals traumatized Olivia and is punitive towards Isela. The house nurtures. The house realizes dreams.
Everything in this book speaks - has a language, is sensory. Sometimes it is even cross-sensory. Olivia states, “If you eat dirt you can tastes what ants think” (25). Here is an example of de la Luz’s command of a breadth of emotion - from tragically mystical to humorous - as well as deeply creative. The voices of the book are not just the human and structural narrator; every living thing also speaks. “The oak tree transmits messages in greens, reds, oranges, yellows, browns. A language of sorts…a dialect of mystics. An undeniable connectedness” (45). As the book deepens, de la Luz layers a chorale of insects, trees, flowers, animals, and the stars.
De la Luz does something extraordinary. She takes a book that is wholly based in the extra ordinary and shapes it in a way so that its wings skim the surface of the reader’s own lives, familial relationships, and imaginations. It is rare that speculative fiction can traverse the boundary of the surreal and hover over reality like this book does. There is something about the way the language is crafted that makes your imagination feel free; it tells you that anything wild you have ever dreamed of is possible, that you should imagine even greater. It settled a calmness in me, a remembrance of a time in childhood when the questions I had about the world were answered emphatically by my imagination, and when my imagination was law. I too have listened for the voices of insects in trees and whispered messages to them, with the absolute conviction that a conversation had been had. Returning to the certainty of those moments is magic. Rios de la Luz’s words are slow-cooked, must be savored; they are gorged with color and shockingly tangible. There are some triggering topics (verbal/psychological abuse, suicidal ideations, complicated mother/daughter relationships, body horror), but the florid imagery and sensual language overwhelm those underlying themes. I would recommend this book to anyone who isn’t triggered by those topics, especially to fans of body horror, speculative, Latynx, botanical, magical realism, psycho-thriller, women’s, and fantasy fiction.
Thank you Rios de la Luz for this advance reader’s copy of Daughter of Rot in exchange for an honest review. My words are my own.
What a phenomenal novel with gorgeous lyricism. De la Luz’s writing makes you bleed emotion with every page. It makes you ache, makes you swoon, makes you vibrate with anticipation. This was absolutely mesmerizing. I don’t remember the last time a piece of fiction was so poetic that I stopped every page to whisper them aloud to myself - to let the words reverberate in my mind and body. This book is not something you can read at a distance, or disengage with; it makes you bring forth yourself and feel the words. My senses, emotions and consciousness were alert the whole way through. I was not an observer, I experienced this. This book makes you feel alive.
Daughter of Rot is told from the dual perspectives of mother Isela Vasquez and her daughter Olivia. They exist in a fluctuating world in which the wildness of botanical and animalistic life bleeds into their indoor life and eventually their bodies; concurrently the internal psychological machinations of their minds permeate the organic world beyond the house. While Isela and Olivia are the two primary authorial perspectives, I would suggest a third main character exists in the form of their house. The house is sentient, it is purposeful, emotional, vengeful and capable of intervening in their lives in a way no human can.
Most significantly, the house has a body and soul. “…the soul of the house sleeps in the white shed…the soul of the house remains appeased as long as the plants around her are alive…the kidney of the house is in the kitchen…the chicken shelf was the heart of the house…Olivia’s room was an ear canal. A pleasant cavern with a winding path” (23-4). Beyond the corporeal, the house contemplates its method of death, birth and the afterlife: “…the house wants to die in a drowning accident. In obsidian waters, the house pictured itself slowly pulled toward the ocean floor…the house wondered if it could become a ghost…the house used to dream about being born” (40). Just as vividly, “the house dreams of death. White light fills the inside of all the rooms, beaming up to the sky…the house turns into stardust and spreads out into a never-ending universe” (41). The house has the most profoundly human instinct: “what a delight, thinks the house, to fade away into nothing” (41). The house heals traumatized Olivia and is punitive towards Isela. The house nurtures. The house realizes dreams.
Everything in this book speaks - has a language, is sensory. Sometimes it is even cross-sensory. Olivia states, “If you eat dirt you can tastes what ants think” (25). Here is an example of de la Luz’s command of a breadth of emotion - from tragically mystical to humorous - as well as deeply creative. The voices of the book are not just the human and structural narrator; every living thing also speaks. “The oak tree transmits messages in greens, reds, oranges, yellows, browns. A language of sorts…a dialect of mystics. An undeniable connectedness” (45). As the book deepens, de la Luz layers a chorale of insects, trees, flowers, animals, and the stars.
De la Luz does something extraordinary. She takes a book that is wholly based in the extra ordinary and shapes it in a way so that its wings skim the surface of the reader’s own lives, familial relationships, and imaginations. It is rare that speculative fiction can traverse the boundary of the surreal and hover over reality like this book does. There is something about the way the language is crafted that makes your imagination feel free; it tells you that anything wild you have ever dreamed of is possible, that you should imagine even greater. It settled a calmness in me, a remembrance of a time in childhood when the questions I had about the world were answered emphatically by my imagination, and when my imagination was law. I too have listened for the voices of insects in trees and whispered messages to them, with the absolute conviction that a conversation had been had. Returning to the certainty of those moments is magic. Rios de la Luz’s words are slow-cooked, must be savored; they are gorged with color and shockingly tangible. There are some triggering topics (verbal/psychological abuse, suicidal ideations, complicated mother/daughter relationships, body horror), but the florid imagery and sensual language overwhelm those underlying themes. I would recommend this book to anyone who isn’t triggered by those topics, especially to fans of body horror, speculative, Latynx, botanical, magical realism, psycho-thriller, women’s, and fantasy fiction.
September 7, 2026
4.75 stars rounded to 5
An eerie, macabre, dream-like, beautifully written, botanical horror. It’s also giving Chiron in Cancer in astrology
“Olivia copes by loving herself. A skill she formed as a child like a shield. She loves herself in spite of and to spite her mother. She wonders if she will ever stop being haunted by Isela”
This book has multiple POVs: Olivia, Isela, and the House.
Isela is a wounded girl who grows to be an unhealed mother
“Isela didn’t know how to love herself but she carried theories. She knew how to mold herself in order to make a man fall for her.”
“She fantasizes about dancing in the rain until floodwaters take her, swift and violent, and most of all, the water could make her disappear”
“When you’re a mother, everything gets in your way. Time is non-linear. It feels like a smear. Time blurs together in the dull repetition of going to work every single day in order to exist and then coming home to expectations of a nurturer. You are made to believe that the world is your responsibility. Every sound or grunt or creak. All the hunger”
Olivia is the daughter, trying her best to live in the House with her mother.
“If you follow mommy around, she locks the door in your face and tells you to go outside. If you follow mommy around, she hides her crying by making you clean up the broken glass she’s strewn across the floor”
“According to Olivia, a role of the daughter is to escape by any means necessary. Ten more years until she gets to the magic number. Ten more years until she can finally be free.”
Anyone who’s ever had a difficult relationship with their parents would be able to relate to this book. I saw parts of myself in Olivia, and in Isela too. Which makes sense, as parts of myself are in my mother, she has parts of her in me as well. I think the Inflorescence, was the House trying to provide for both of their needs. For Isela, it was a place to decompress and get away from it all, and I’d like to think it even tried to show her how to heal and be reborn as a better person and mother. For Olivia, a place where she can feel some semblance of maternal love, a place where she can be herself and not walk on eggshells.
I love the symbolism in this book, it’s such a beautiful way to tackle a heavy topic. I felt like it healed a little bit of my heart and I wish the same for the other readers
Thank you, author for being so kind as to send me an advance copy to read when I asked 😂🖤✨
An eerie, macabre, dream-like, beautifully written, botanical horror. It’s also giving Chiron in Cancer in astrology
“Olivia copes by loving herself. A skill she formed as a child like a shield. She loves herself in spite of and to spite her mother. She wonders if she will ever stop being haunted by Isela”
This book has multiple POVs: Olivia, Isela, and the House.
Isela is a wounded girl who grows to be an unhealed mother
“Isela didn’t know how to love herself but she carried theories. She knew how to mold herself in order to make a man fall for her.”
“She fantasizes about dancing in the rain until floodwaters take her, swift and violent, and most of all, the water could make her disappear”
“When you’re a mother, everything gets in your way. Time is non-linear. It feels like a smear. Time blurs together in the dull repetition of going to work every single day in order to exist and then coming home to expectations of a nurturer. You are made to believe that the world is your responsibility. Every sound or grunt or creak. All the hunger”
Olivia is the daughter, trying her best to live in the House with her mother.
“If you follow mommy around, she locks the door in your face and tells you to go outside. If you follow mommy around, she hides her crying by making you clean up the broken glass she’s strewn across the floor”
“According to Olivia, a role of the daughter is to escape by any means necessary. Ten more years until she gets to the magic number. Ten more years until she can finally be free.”
Anyone who’s ever had a difficult relationship with their parents would be able to relate to this book. I saw parts of myself in Olivia, and in Isela too. Which makes sense, as parts of myself are in my mother, she has parts of her in me as well. I think the Inflorescence, was the House trying to provide for both of their needs. For Isela, it was a place to decompress and get away from it all, and I’d like to think it even tried to show her how to heal and be reborn as a better person and mother. For Olivia, a place where she can feel some semblance of maternal love, a place where she can be herself and not walk on eggshells.
I love the symbolism in this book, it’s such a beautiful way to tackle a heavy topic. I felt like it healed a little bit of my heart and I wish the same for the other readers
Thank you, author for being so kind as to send me an advance copy to read when I asked 😂🖤✨
Review of advance copy received from Author
First and foremost, thank you to Rios de la Luz for the ARC of this beautifully tragic story.
Reading this book feels like experiencing and dissecting a piece of art that the creator put their whole heart and soul into; with dreamy yet raw prose that touches on difficult topics like abuse, motherhood, and longing for a self that exists an alternate universe where they are safe and loved.
There are few things more painful and unfortunately relatable to many than a complicated relationship with an abusive parent.
Isela, a narcissist and pathological liar, is regretfully thrown into motherhood. She represents the result of an abused child becoming an abusive mother, and how generational trauma can haunt children down the line for many years to come. She has trouble connecting with others, displaying love to herself and daughters, keeping relationships, and regulating her emotions. Isela was not meant to become a mother. Her youngest daughter Olivia, our main character, is unfortunately the target of Isela's self-hatred and buried grief in a way that entirely heartbreaking.
The home the Velasquez family moves into begins to care for Olivia in a way that a mother "should." The home births a new room filled with vines, moss, delicate florals, and creates a safe space for Olivia to exist. I loved the idea of using the house as a channel for Oliva to explore future growth, destruction, and healing, and how the wild nature grown here mimics that idea. Nature is everchanging, it is born, it dies.
This story is exactly why I love reading horror. We are able to explore grief and emotions that we have no idea are buried so deep inside our souls in a way that is so unique. We can relate to the most imperfect and awful characters in some way or another and that is what makes us all human. We can reflect and grow from horrible circumstances, or we can stay affixed to grief and let it change us for the worse, and we see both examples of that in this book through Isela and Olivia. I am 100% recommending this read to everyone.
Reading this book feels like experiencing and dissecting a piece of art that the creator put their whole heart and soul into; with dreamy yet raw prose that touches on difficult topics like abuse, motherhood, and longing for a self that exists an alternate universe where they are safe and loved.
"Then, selfish.
Then, a nuisance.
A brat.
A waste.
A regret.
There were a lot of different names for daughter."
There are few things more painful and unfortunately relatable to many than a complicated relationship with an abusive parent.
Isela, a narcissist and pathological liar, is regretfully thrown into motherhood. She represents the result of an abused child becoming an abusive mother, and how generational trauma can haunt children down the line for many years to come. She has trouble connecting with others, displaying love to herself and daughters, keeping relationships, and regulating her emotions. Isela was not meant to become a mother. Her youngest daughter Olivia, our main character, is unfortunately the target of Isela's self-hatred and buried grief in a way that entirely heartbreaking.
The home the Velasquez family moves into begins to care for Olivia in a way that a mother "should." The home births a new room filled with vines, moss, delicate florals, and creates a safe space for Olivia to exist. I loved the idea of using the house as a channel for Oliva to explore future growth, destruction, and healing, and how the wild nature grown here mimics that idea. Nature is everchanging, it is born, it dies.
This story is exactly why I love reading horror. We are able to explore grief and emotions that we have no idea are buried so deep inside our souls in a way that is so unique. We can relate to the most imperfect and awful characters in some way or another and that is what makes us all human. We can reflect and grow from horrible circumstances, or we can stay affixed to grief and let it change us for the worse, and we see both examples of that in this book through Isela and Olivia. I am 100% recommending this read to everyone.
Review of advance copy received from Author
Daughter of Rot is the kind of horror that is like a fever dream that clings to you as you wake. Lush, strange, and unsettling, it uses botanical horror and magical realism to explore motherhood and the wounds that flourish inside a family. The house at the center of the story is wonderfully bizarre. Its transformation from simple home to something alive gives Daughter of Rot an eerie, organic quality, but the real horrors lie in the reflections of the characters. The newly born room becomes both sanctuary and nightmare, revealing truths that have been buried beneath layers of trauma. Olivia is the heart of the story. Her innocence makes her connection with the house especially affecting and there is something simultaneously beautiful and heartbreaking about watching her find comfort in a place that seems to understand her better than any adult around her. Isela, her mother, is much more difficult to embrace, but that discomfort is what makes her perspective so compelling. Her complex relationship with motherhood refuses to reduce that experience to something universally fulfilling. De la Luz's prose is absolutely lush, filling the pages with vivid imagery that makes this world feel so vibrant and grotesque. The horror grows alongside the beauty, blurring the distinction between nurturing and danger. Daughter of Rot is unsettling and emotionally heavy. It is a haunting examination of toxic motherhood, dark family secrets, and the erosion of childhood innocence that manages to be just as beautiful as it is disturbing. Thank you so much to Rios for sending me a copy for review. This book made me reflect on my own complex relationship with my mother when she was alive and how I see it now that she is gone. Motherhood is not always perfect and this tale is one I think is important to read. You can preorder this now from Broken River Books. It publishes September 08, 2026 so don't miss it!
Review of advance copy received from Author
Daughter of Rot is a short, dreamlike (or nightmarish, depending on the character) novella. We start by seeing Olivia born, but it's not a typical birth. She's simulatenously forgetting a violent ending (from a previous life?) and being thrust into this new one. We can see from moment one that her mother isn't going to be the warm and fuzzy nurturing type.
Isela is a villainous mother, but she's also a broken woman - we're not sure what happened to her but it's obvious that something did. She lives in her own fantasy world and wants a perfect family but she's the rotten one, inflicting neglect and abuse on her children. The father here is largely absent.
The house Olivia and her mom share has a a secret. One day, an entire room is birthed and both mother and daughter visit it and come across very different worlds. For Olivia it is lush and maternal and her mother sees a more twisted, nightmare-like world. The house is a reckoning of their internal selves, in a way, but Isela is stubbornly unable to grasp onto any kind of self-awareness and pushes it away even as she's continously drawn to it.
I loved the gorgeous and sometimes violent descriptions of the the flora and plantlife and fungal webs growing in the secret room, and the interaction of the house with the characters and the outside trees and plants. The entire novella is inside Olivia or Isela's head and I sometimes wished for a little more action, but it's a satisfying read about intergenerational trauma, broken families, and healing. Ultimately it's the house and the vegetation that looms larger than any of the human characters and will outlive and outlast all of them, possibly all of humanity itself.
Recommended if you want to immerse yourself in a weird, sentient garden/botanical fairy tale that explores twisted mother/daughter dynamics with some elements of botanical horror and a good dose of magical realism (or maybe surrealism)
Thank you to the author for a digital ARC of this!
Isela is a villainous mother, but she's also a broken woman - we're not sure what happened to her but it's obvious that something did. She lives in her own fantasy world and wants a perfect family but she's the rotten one, inflicting neglect and abuse on her children. The father here is largely absent.
The house Olivia and her mom share has a a secret. One day, an entire room is birthed and both mother and daughter visit it and come across very different worlds. For Olivia it is lush and maternal and her mother sees a more twisted, nightmare-like world. The house is a reckoning of their internal selves, in a way, but Isela is stubbornly unable to grasp onto any kind of self-awareness and pushes it away even as she's continously drawn to it.
I loved the gorgeous and sometimes violent descriptions of the the flora and plantlife and fungal webs growing in the secret room, and the interaction of the house with the characters and the outside trees and plants. The entire novella is inside Olivia or Isela's head and I sometimes wished for a little more action, but it's a satisfying read about intergenerational trauma, broken families, and healing. Ultimately it's the house and the vegetation that looms larger than any of the human characters and will outlive and outlast all of them, possibly all of humanity itself.
Recommended if you want to immerse yourself in a weird, sentient garden/botanical fairy tale that explores twisted mother/daughter dynamics with some elements of botanical horror and a good dose of magical realism (or maybe surrealism)
Thank you to the author for a digital ARC of this!
Review of advance copy received from Author
From her characteristic lavish and luxurious imagination, Rios de la Luz births her best work yet! In "Daughter of Rot" the familial turns nightmarish for little Olivia, whose determined that “the role of the daughter is to escape by any means necessary.”
Instantly endeared to the protagonist, I gulped up this book in one sitting! In a word-whirlwind of spells, ghosts, pink lantanas, reincarnation tales, gelatinous orbs, fabulous flora, fever dreams and friendly oaks (for starters), I love the way this book frames wounds with wilderness, exploring what we inherit and what we choose to disinherit. It not only appears to invite us to carve creative paths through forgiveness and healing, but also to consider showing gratitude to the wild spaces that feed and house us while we do — as Olivia does, leaving “pieces of herself behind as reciprocation.”
"Daughter of Rot" artistically braids together the achy vocabulary of survival with a lush botanical wonderland—complete with a purring placenta—delivering new ways to navigate generational trauma. Ways that don’t shy away from the painful work of remaking. For, when roots give way to a new ecosystem, birth and destruction, Olivia argues, “are both the same thing.” Through ritual and rot, it inspired me to witness Olivia “speak to the spirits of the land,” model their resilience and burst out like a poppy flower.
Yes, Rios de La Luz has done it again! In lyrical beauty she spoke to a buried part of me and gave it permission to grow and grieve without reservation, for “we are wild animals when people die and that’s okay.”
Oh! And this novella fulfilled my desire to run into the word “petrichor” (one of my favorites) in a book. Twice! Thank you Rios, and congratulations!
Instantly endeared to the protagonist, I gulped up this book in one sitting! In a word-whirlwind of spells, ghosts, pink lantanas, reincarnation tales, gelatinous orbs, fabulous flora, fever dreams and friendly oaks (for starters), I love the way this book frames wounds with wilderness, exploring what we inherit and what we choose to disinherit. It not only appears to invite us to carve creative paths through forgiveness and healing, but also to consider showing gratitude to the wild spaces that feed and house us while we do — as Olivia does, leaving “pieces of herself behind as reciprocation.”
"Daughter of Rot" artistically braids together the achy vocabulary of survival with a lush botanical wonderland—complete with a purring placenta—delivering new ways to navigate generational trauma. Ways that don’t shy away from the painful work of remaking. For, when roots give way to a new ecosystem, birth and destruction, Olivia argues, “are both the same thing.” Through ritual and rot, it inspired me to witness Olivia “speak to the spirits of the land,” model their resilience and burst out like a poppy flower.
Yes, Rios de La Luz has done it again! In lyrical beauty she spoke to a buried part of me and gave it permission to grow and grieve without reservation, for “we are wild animals when people die and that’s okay.”
Oh! And this novella fulfilled my desire to run into the word “petrichor” (one of my favorites) in a book. Twice! Thank you Rios, and congratulations!
Review of advance copy received from Author
Thank you to Rios de la Luz for the advance readers copy. All opinions are my own.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Dedication:
"To the daughters who are cycle breakers. To the daughters who have faced their shadows. May your joy be boundless."
—
I planned to include more quotes in this review, but my highlighted quotes are rather long and spoiler-y, so you will have to just believe me that the writing is deeply moving and emotional.
Daughter of Rot is a magical realism horror novella featuring a mother and daughter's strained relationship, their sentient house and its dreamlike magic.
It is a story, first and foremost, about generational trauma and cycle breaking, but it is narrated in the most whimsically horrifying voice that will make you cling to every word.
de la Luz doesn't shy away from the uncomfortable. Her brutal portrayal of postpartum and reluctant motherhood brought me to tears and Olivia's keenly observant, yet sheltered, worldview was equal parts refreshing and horrifying.
Isela is deeply, uncomfortably human, garnering empathy and loathing simultaneously from the reader as they uncover her story.
The house is its own character, its motivations unclear, but it is a vastly important point of view as it watches family struggles and reaches out to mother and daughter alike, offering support through an enchanted room the characters can retreat into to learn more about themselves and escape their realities.
I do not have the words to express everything this book made me feel. Interweaving harsh reality with dreamlike forestscapes and nightmares, I never knew what I would discover next.
This book is brutal, experimental, and unusual. I highly recommend it.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Dedication:
"To the daughters who are cycle breakers. To the daughters who have faced their shadows. May your joy be boundless."
—
I planned to include more quotes in this review, but my highlighted quotes are rather long and spoiler-y, so you will have to just believe me that the writing is deeply moving and emotional.
Daughter of Rot is a magical realism horror novella featuring a mother and daughter's strained relationship, their sentient house and its dreamlike magic.
It is a story, first and foremost, about generational trauma and cycle breaking, but it is narrated in the most whimsically horrifying voice that will make you cling to every word.
de la Luz doesn't shy away from the uncomfortable. Her brutal portrayal of postpartum and reluctant motherhood brought me to tears and Olivia's keenly observant, yet sheltered, worldview was equal parts refreshing and horrifying.
Isela is deeply, uncomfortably human, garnering empathy and loathing simultaneously from the reader as they uncover her story.
The house is its own character, its motivations unclear, but it is a vastly important point of view as it watches family struggles and reaches out to mother and daughter alike, offering support through an enchanted room the characters can retreat into to learn more about themselves and escape their realities.
I do not have the words to express everything this book made me feel. Interweaving harsh reality with dreamlike forestscapes and nightmares, I never knew what I would discover next.
This book is brutal, experimental, and unusual. I highly recommend it.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
September 14, 2026
Poetically haunting of the experience of breaking generational curses, embracing her culture, and finding herself through a sister bond. The ecosystem is magical, but what can we really believe is real. Are the readers experiencing Isela’s karmic cycle or finding white lies that hide trauma. The connection here is deeper than magic, but the way our ancestral roots, traditions, and language are all we need to find the answers.
The novella begins with a spectral perspective that the reader is going to witness something so uncanny. A self-published book that is well edited just as it is beautifully written. Every line, thought, repetition, and dialogue is written with purpose to drive the entity if the haunted house. Is a house haunted because of experiences or is it the impression of traumas that continue to unfurl in its presence? The bond of feeling suffocated by your own mother while navigating where you belong in the world is captured eloquently in this narrative.
The trees and the flowers are speaking, and they will silence anyone that gets in the way of their ways. Time to walk through an enchantment and hope the flowers you smell do not kill you. A story that will make you think of magic differently and conscientiously challenge polarizing narratives. A novella rooted in culture and written by a Latinx author for the community and beyond. All opinions are my own.
For more tarot readings, recommendations, and reviews, visit my blog, brujerialibrary.wordpress.com
The novella begins with a spectral perspective that the reader is going to witness something so uncanny. A self-published book that is well edited just as it is beautifully written. Every line, thought, repetition, and dialogue is written with purpose to drive the entity if the haunted house. Is a house haunted because of experiences or is it the impression of traumas that continue to unfurl in its presence? The bond of feeling suffocated by your own mother while navigating where you belong in the world is captured eloquently in this narrative.
The trees and the flowers are speaking, and they will silence anyone that gets in the way of their ways. Time to walk through an enchantment and hope the flowers you smell do not kill you. A story that will make you think of magic differently and conscientiously challenge polarizing narratives. A novella rooted in culture and written by a Latinx author for the community and beyond. All opinions are my own.
For more tarot readings, recommendations, and reviews, visit my blog, brujerialibrary.wordpress.com
August 13, 2026
Wow! I don’t think I’ve ever read anything like this and it’s left a distinct impression on my heart.
Woven with witchcraft, a green and protective magic, lush botanical prose, and scathing internal dialogue, this story will crack something deep inside anyone whose parent figures were not nurturing safe places, but rather cruel, hard edges on which to land.
I don’t want to spoil but Olivia’s birthday party scenes were absolutely devastating and haunting. The characterization of Isela’s mental state and her abuse of Olivia are both so well written here. The way that the house pushes Olivia to her freedom and Isela to her breaking point. Provides healing and answers and forces both to control the truth.
The story is told in a fast paced cadence that feels intentionally chaotic, like a fever dream that spans generations, memories, and years. It’s told through both perspectives: Isela (mother) and Olivia (daughter), which I appreciated as it showed events from different perspectives. I found it difficult to keep track of where I was in the story. Especially how much time had passed and how old Olivia was at the time. As I neared the end, I found myself with some factual and chronology questions even if I did a very careful read. Perhaps that sense of fracturing is an editorial choice, but it was challenging for me to process.
Thank you to the author for the opportunity to read this e-ARC!
Woven with witchcraft, a green and protective magic, lush botanical prose, and scathing internal dialogue, this story will crack something deep inside anyone whose parent figures were not nurturing safe places, but rather cruel, hard edges on which to land.
I don’t want to spoil but Olivia’s birthday party scenes were absolutely devastating and haunting. The characterization of Isela’s mental state and her abuse of Olivia are both so well written here. The way that the house pushes Olivia to her freedom and Isela to her breaking point. Provides healing and answers and forces both to control the truth.
The story is told in a fast paced cadence that feels intentionally chaotic, like a fever dream that spans generations, memories, and years. It’s told through both perspectives: Isela (mother) and Olivia (daughter), which I appreciated as it showed events from different perspectives. I found it difficult to keep track of where I was in the story. Especially how much time had passed and how old Olivia was at the time. As I neared the end, I found myself with some factual and chronology questions even if I did a very careful read. Perhaps that sense of fracturing is an editorial choice, but it was challenging for me to process.
Thank you to the author for the opportunity to read this e-ARC!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 8, 2026
Advanced reader copy review of Daughter of Rot provided by Rios de la Luz.
What a trip this book was! 😳
Daughter of Rot is strange, unsettling, emotional, and absolutely dripping with vivid imagery. The writing creates such a rich, surreal atmosphere that I could practically see everything unfolding in my head.
I got some serious Coraline vibes from this book, especially in the way it blends childhood, family, the fantastical, and the deeply unsettling. There were also moments that reminded me of Pan’s Labyrinth, particularly because of the dark, fantastical imagery and the way the beautiful and disturbing exist side by side.
I had a lot of complicated feelings about the characters, particularly the mother-daughter relationship at the heart of the story. There is so much pain, resentment, trauma, and love tangled together. For me, the story also felt like a cautionary tale about the ways a parent's untreated mental illness and unresolved trauma can profoundly affect their children.
One of my favorite elements was the exploration of Olivia's past lives. I thought this was such a fascinating addition to the story.
This was definitely an emotional read, and there were times when it was difficult to sit with everything happening on the page. But the ending was absolutely beautiful and, for me, made the journey worthwhile.
If you're looking for something atmospheric, surreal, darkly fantastical, and a weird, this one is worth picking up.
What a trip this book was! 😳
Daughter of Rot is strange, unsettling, emotional, and absolutely dripping with vivid imagery. The writing creates such a rich, surreal atmosphere that I could practically see everything unfolding in my head.
I got some serious Coraline vibes from this book, especially in the way it blends childhood, family, the fantastical, and the deeply unsettling. There were also moments that reminded me of Pan’s Labyrinth, particularly because of the dark, fantastical imagery and the way the beautiful and disturbing exist side by side.
I had a lot of complicated feelings about the characters, particularly the mother-daughter relationship at the heart of the story. There is so much pain, resentment, trauma, and love tangled together. For me, the story also felt like a cautionary tale about the ways a parent's untreated mental illness and unresolved trauma can profoundly affect their children.
One of my favorite elements was the exploration of Olivia's past lives. I thought this was such a fascinating addition to the story.
This was definitely an emotional read, and there were times when it was difficult to sit with everything happening on the page. But the ending was absolutely beautiful and, for me, made the journey worthwhile.
If you're looking for something atmospheric, surreal, darkly fantastical, and a weird, this one is worth picking up.
Review of advance copy received from Author
I won't lie, this book broke me a little. It was so beautifully devastating.
There are a lot of heavy subjects in it, but also a lot I resonated so deeply with. The vivid descriptions in combination with so much emotions just pouring from the pages really did it for me. I felt so much reading it.
Olivia was such a beautiful character to read about and even though Isela wasn't it was incredibly insightful to have her views.
Motherhood is something that is seen as such a natural and uncomplicated thing, when there are so many different mothers in the world. Being a mother can be a blessing or a curse depending on who you ask. And even though it is devastating to read about a character like Isela, it is also something so incredibly healing and important.
From beginning to end I just needed to keep reading (although I did force myself to take a break when it hit a little harder). I felt so deeply connected to the story and I wish it had been longer even though I do not feel it was missing absolutely anything.
This is the first work I have read from Rios de la Luz, but she has such a way with words that I am definitely checking out her other work.
Thank you so much to Rios de la Luz for letting me read this eARC. I will definitely also add it to my physical collection once it comes out. All my opinions are my own.
There are a lot of heavy subjects in it, but also a lot I resonated so deeply with. The vivid descriptions in combination with so much emotions just pouring from the pages really did it for me. I felt so much reading it.
Olivia was such a beautiful character to read about and even though Isela wasn't it was incredibly insightful to have her views.
Motherhood is something that is seen as such a natural and uncomplicated thing, when there are so many different mothers in the world. Being a mother can be a blessing or a curse depending on who you ask. And even though it is devastating to read about a character like Isela, it is also something so incredibly healing and important.
From beginning to end I just needed to keep reading (although I did force myself to take a break when it hit a little harder). I felt so deeply connected to the story and I wish it had been longer even though I do not feel it was missing absolutely anything.
This is the first work I have read from Rios de la Luz, but she has such a way with words that I am definitely checking out her other work.
Thank you so much to Rios de la Luz for letting me read this eARC. I will definitely also add it to my physical collection once it comes out. All my opinions are my own.
Review of advance copy received from Author
I was lucky enough to have the author of Daughter of Rot send me an ARC of the book a few weeks ago. After finishing it, I had to sit with it for a while. It is a beautifully written story about generational trauma, abuse, and toxic motherhood. The story is told through plants and a house that is alive, listening to and seeing everything that happens within its walls. This is why I love magical realism so much. It feels like just another part of life.
Isela is an abused child who grows up to become an abuser herself, her trauma turning her into a pathological liar and a terrible person. She leaves her older daughters behind to follow a man and later has another daughter, who bears the brunt of her abuse. I wanted to scream while reading the birthday scene in the middle of the book. As a mom of daughters, this story just hurt my heart. The house itself was fascinating. It even births a room where the inhabitants confront their emotions and thoughts. The room is different for every person who enters it. The magical elements never felt out of place.
I cried at the end and needed some time to sit with everything after I finished reading. Thank you so much, Rios de la Luz, for sending me this fantastic novella.
Isela is an abused child who grows up to become an abuser herself, her trauma turning her into a pathological liar and a terrible person. She leaves her older daughters behind to follow a man and later has another daughter, who bears the brunt of her abuse. I wanted to scream while reading the birthday scene in the middle of the book. As a mom of daughters, this story just hurt my heart. The house itself was fascinating. It even births a room where the inhabitants confront their emotions and thoughts. The room is different for every person who enters it. The magical elements never felt out of place.
I cried at the end and needed some time to sit with everything after I finished reading. Thank you so much, Rios de la Luz, for sending me this fantastic novella.
Review of advance copy received from Author
I want to say thank you to the author for a chance to read this! My thoughts and reviews are my own.
This book was not something I have read before the beautiful imagery, thought provoking idea of a parents love, and the simplistic mind of a child who is only trying to survive. There are heavy moments so keep that in mind. The fast pace and the flow of almost dream like and reality weaving together as you begin to feel as if you are there experiencing what Olivia goes through.
There's a mixture of witchcraft and protective magic that surrounds Olivia as she asks the house to ultimately protect her. The house creates a room for her where she can enjoys the warmth, the comfort, the love her mother does not offer. At the same time the house seems to haunt Isela in return. A contrast of protective space and one that ultimately takes over you and breaks you down.
I absolutely loved just how vividly descriptive and that glimpse of the mind of a child. Truly this book was for the children of parents who never had the love and care they should of had. It hits home and definitely gets you as the book ends. (Which I won't spoil, but it's a beautiful ending)
This book was not something I have read before the beautiful imagery, thought provoking idea of a parents love, and the simplistic mind of a child who is only trying to survive. There are heavy moments so keep that in mind. The fast pace and the flow of almost dream like and reality weaving together as you begin to feel as if you are there experiencing what Olivia goes through.
There's a mixture of witchcraft and protective magic that surrounds Olivia as she asks the house to ultimately protect her. The house creates a room for her where she can enjoys the warmth, the comfort, the love her mother does not offer. At the same time the house seems to haunt Isela in return. A contrast of protective space and one that ultimately takes over you and breaks you down.
I absolutely loved just how vividly descriptive and that glimpse of the mind of a child. Truly this book was for the children of parents who never had the love and care they should of had. It hits home and definitely gets you as the book ends. (Which I won't spoil, but it's a beautiful ending)
Review of advance copy
I pre-ordered this book and the author was kind enough to send a digital copy while I wait for the paperback. Not only did I devour it in two days (would've been in a single sitting if I didn't have to work) but I'm just itching to go back and re-read it.
I have a soft spot for the topic of mothers and daughters, and as someone who dealt with severe post-partum depression, the complexities of motherhood really hit home. The way Rios De la Luz wrote the mother/ daughter dynamics between Isela and Olivia are just... wow. From page one, the writing is beautiful and simultaneously painful in a way that draws you in and all I wanted to do was curl up inside a blanket and wallow. There is truly nothing I can say that will make justice to how beautifully this book is written, so I'll leave you with some of my favorite spoiler-free quotes:
"She's a tiny prink stranger to the planet with ghosts built into her blood."
"Isela didn't know how to love herself but she carried theoris. She knew how to mold herself in order to make a man fall for her."
"Do you want a daughter? A baby of your own? A baby who will ruin your body and suckle you dry?"
I have a soft spot for the topic of mothers and daughters, and as someone who dealt with severe post-partum depression, the complexities of motherhood really hit home. The way Rios De la Luz wrote the mother/ daughter dynamics between Isela and Olivia are just... wow. From page one, the writing is beautiful and simultaneously painful in a way that draws you in and all I wanted to do was curl up inside a blanket and wallow. There is truly nothing I can say that will make justice to how beautifully this book is written, so I'll leave you with some of my favorite spoiler-free quotes:
"She's a tiny prink stranger to the planet with ghosts built into her blood."
"Isela didn't know how to love herself but she carried theoris. She knew how to mold herself in order to make a man fall for her."
"Do you want a daughter? A baby of your own? A baby who will ruin your body and suckle you dry?"
September 8, 2026
Daughters of Rot by Rios de la Luz is a strange and haunting story about a broken family, a living house, and daughters trying to find their own way. Reading it often feels like experiencing a fever dream.
It is beautiful and terrifying at the same time. The writing is poetic, incredibly well crafted, and deeply layered, yet there were moments when I found myself wondering what exactly I had just read.
If this book were a film, it would undoubtedly be an arthouse movie—not something everyone would understand or appreciate, but visually striking, beautifully strange, and deeply loved by the people who connect with it.
For me, it was a wonderful reading experience that I thoroughly enjoyed. There was something captivating about its atmosphere, its strangeness, and the way the story unfolded.
I will definitely be keeping an eye on Rios de la Luz and am looking forward to reading more of her work in the future.
This is a clear recommendation from me. The book delivers exactly what it promises, and with its short chapters and just over 100 pages, it also makes for a perfect after-work read for busy readers who are looking for something unusual and atmospheric.
It is beautiful and terrifying at the same time. The writing is poetic, incredibly well crafted, and deeply layered, yet there were moments when I found myself wondering what exactly I had just read.
If this book were a film, it would undoubtedly be an arthouse movie—not something everyone would understand or appreciate, but visually striking, beautifully strange, and deeply loved by the people who connect with it.
For me, it was a wonderful reading experience that I thoroughly enjoyed. There was something captivating about its atmosphere, its strangeness, and the way the story unfolded.
I will definitely be keeping an eye on Rios de la Luz and am looking forward to reading more of her work in the future.
This is a clear recommendation from me. The book delivers exactly what it promises, and with its short chapters and just over 100 pages, it also makes for a perfect after-work read for busy readers who are looking for something unusual and atmospheric.
August 12, 2026
Review from ARC provided by the author. Thank you Rios!!
Daughter of Rot is a lyrical fever dream depicting a house that nurtures a small girl into an adult woman, while also torturing her absent mother.
The house listens to Olivia. When she shares her secrets, her feelings, her hurts. It also listens when her mother lies, when she dismisses Olivia, when she abuses her. The house doesn’t like the status quo of the family, and so it births a room. A loving, beautiful room to Olivia, but when her mother enters, the room is horrifying, showing her things she doesn’t want to face. Olivia grows and eventually leaves the house, but knows it will always take care of her.
I can’t say enough about how beautifully written this book is. Rios de la Luz is a master of lyrical storytelling. I thought it was absolutely imaginative, and fun to read. The one criticism I have is that the characters don’t seem to grow too much, or learn much throughout the novel. But the botanical horror is so descriptive you can absolutely imagine yourself inside the room. 3.5/5!
Daughter of Rot is a lyrical fever dream depicting a house that nurtures a small girl into an adult woman, while also torturing her absent mother.
The house listens to Olivia. When she shares her secrets, her feelings, her hurts. It also listens when her mother lies, when she dismisses Olivia, when she abuses her. The house doesn’t like the status quo of the family, and so it births a room. A loving, beautiful room to Olivia, but when her mother enters, the room is horrifying, showing her things she doesn’t want to face. Olivia grows and eventually leaves the house, but knows it will always take care of her.
I can’t say enough about how beautifully written this book is. Rios de la Luz is a master of lyrical storytelling. I thought it was absolutely imaginative, and fun to read. The one criticism I have is that the characters don’t seem to grow too much, or learn much throughout the novel. But the botanical horror is so descriptive you can absolutely imagine yourself inside the room. 3.5/5!
Review of advance copy received from Author
Thank you to Rios for this ARC! All writing and reviews are my own.
"She was an ecosystem, a splatter, and then, a shimmering skeleton, night after night."
A new favorite botanical horror novella of mine! Packed with beautiful, lush nature, fever-dreamy prose, magical realism, vivid sensory body horror, mysterious dread, and mommy issues. I was hooked from the beginning--vultures feasting on a decomposing body in a desert?! Vibes were immaculate. The writing also felt very sacred and beyond-more-than-human. I particularly loved the parts of past lives as different creatures, sentient birthing houses, and what it means to be born with a birthing parent/mother you didn't choose. I related to some of the mommy issues as I, too, have that and some parts of it were painful/emotional to read. Nonetheless, it was cathartic to read. A study on mothering, human and the earth, and our connections to them as daughters. Not a perfect rating because I wanted more "oomph" to bring it home towards the end of the book and less gendered roles. All in all, I highly recommend this!
"She was an ecosystem, a splatter, and then, a shimmering skeleton, night after night."
A new favorite botanical horror novella of mine! Packed with beautiful, lush nature, fever-dreamy prose, magical realism, vivid sensory body horror, mysterious dread, and mommy issues. I was hooked from the beginning--vultures feasting on a decomposing body in a desert?! Vibes were immaculate. The writing also felt very sacred and beyond-more-than-human. I particularly loved the parts of past lives as different creatures, sentient birthing houses, and what it means to be born with a birthing parent/mother you didn't choose. I related to some of the mommy issues as I, too, have that and some parts of it were painful/emotional to read. Nonetheless, it was cathartic to read. A study on mothering, human and the earth, and our connections to them as daughters. Not a perfect rating because I wanted more "oomph" to bring it home towards the end of the book and less gendered roles. All in all, I highly recommend this!
Review of advance copy received from Author
This is one of the most beautiful books I have ever read and I could see myself reading it again. Just to fully digest Rios de la Luz's writing. (I have so many highlighted passages.) It's beautiful and grotesque at the same time. The story itself is heartbreaking and relatable. The relationship between Olivia and Isela is so raw and harsh while also being so beautifully written. And when the house is introduced as it's own character and births the new room? Incredible. I love how the room was different for Isela and Olivia. While it can get trippy and dark, the story shows how trauma can pass from generation to generation. I'm not saying the story has the happiest of endings, but it shows that with growth, it is possible to break cycles.
I highly recommend this to readers who don't mind a mix of grotesque and beautiful imagery, toxic mother/daughter relationships, botanical horror, and books with beautiful writing that pulls you into the story.
Thank you so much to the author for sending me a copy in exchange for a review. I can't wait to read more!
I highly recommend this to readers who don't mind a mix of grotesque and beautiful imagery, toxic mother/daughter relationships, botanical horror, and books with beautiful writing that pulls you into the story.
Thank you so much to the author for sending me a copy in exchange for a review. I can't wait to read more!
Review of advance copy received from Author
This is a book for the dark souls of daughters. The ones ready to abandon shame and stare the trauma straight in the face. Daughter of Rot by Rios de la Luz is a tightly woven novella, told in vignettes that move between the mother and daughter’s voice, with interjections from the house. It’s starts very visceral and gory— de la Luz does not spare you details and while I’m sometimes squeamish, the horror elements of this book feel thoughtfully placed and a thread of the story. When their new home births itself a room, the Inflorescence, both Isela and Olivia are faced with the new parts of themselves that are brought forth by the magical elements of this room.
The fragmentation of the narrative spoke really clearly to me of the trauma embedded in mother-daughter relationships, and the layers of abuse in this specific dynamic. There are so many moments where pain is gnashed against more pain, no room for breath. Instead the narrators and the house beat their teeth at each other. It’s writing that surprised me and kept me engaged all the way through
The fragmentation of the narrative spoke really clearly to me of the trauma embedded in mother-daughter relationships, and the layers of abuse in this specific dynamic. There are so many moments where pain is gnashed against more pain, no room for breath. Instead the narrators and the house beat their teeth at each other. It’s writing that surprised me and kept me engaged all the way through
Review of advance copy received from Author
ARC review 🌿
Daughter of Rot is an intensely raw story of generational trauma and mother wounds. The story follows mother Isela and her daughter Olivia as they come across a magical room in their home which somewhat reflects to them who they are and what they should know. de la Luz does a beautiful job weaving magical realism with harsh realities.
Isela is a complicated woman who resents being a mother and takes it out on her daughter, Olivia, for basically her whole life. Isela herself has gone through intense traumas and abuse growing up and unfortunately perpetuates the cycle onto her daughter.
They’re both dreamers, Iselas soul is just quite literally rotted.
This was a quick read as it’s not that long of a story but not necessarily an easy read. There are some intense topics and passages that may be a trigger for some readers and there were various chapters that I had to let marinate before continuing.
The book is filled with beautiful prose and metaphors that will definitely haunt me.
Thank you Rios for the opportunity to get to read and review your novella!
Daughter of Rot is an intensely raw story of generational trauma and mother wounds. The story follows mother Isela and her daughter Olivia as they come across a magical room in their home which somewhat reflects to them who they are and what they should know. de la Luz does a beautiful job weaving magical realism with harsh realities.
Isela is a complicated woman who resents being a mother and takes it out on her daughter, Olivia, for basically her whole life. Isela herself has gone through intense traumas and abuse growing up and unfortunately perpetuates the cycle onto her daughter.
They’re both dreamers, Iselas soul is just quite literally rotted.
This was a quick read as it’s not that long of a story but not necessarily an easy read. There are some intense topics and passages that may be a trigger for some readers and there were various chapters that I had to let marinate before continuing.
The book is filled with beautiful prose and metaphors that will definitely haunt me.
Thank you Rios for the opportunity to get to read and review your novella!
Review of advance copy received from Author
This is a story about a child desperately wanting to be loved by a woman whose own childhood drove her into the creature she became. Daughter of Rot manages to be incredibly brutal, while somehow remaining dreamy and disarming. The gritty mix of abuse, magical realism, and childhood innocence reads so much like Tideland, but with living parents (which is so much worse), and better neighbors.
I can't say that I enjoyed this; it's too tender of a thing, and that's the wrong sentiment entirely, but I felt an aching kinship with Olivia and her absolute necessity of manifesting magic and meaning into every fiber of her existence. The contrast between both characters' coping skills was interesting; Isela who tells the world stories about herself, constantly reinventing her identity, and Olivia who tells herself stories about the world, reshaping and reinventing reality itself - two sides of the same coin, but with starkly different values and outcomes.
I appreciate the opportunity to read an early copy from the author.
I can't say that I enjoyed this; it's too tender of a thing, and that's the wrong sentiment entirely, but I felt an aching kinship with Olivia and her absolute necessity of manifesting magic and meaning into every fiber of her existence. The contrast between both characters' coping skills was interesting; Isela who tells the world stories about herself, constantly reinventing her identity, and Olivia who tells herself stories about the world, reshaping and reinventing reality itself - two sides of the same coin, but with starkly different values and outcomes.
I appreciate the opportunity to read an early copy from the author.
Review of advance copy received from Author
In Daughter of Rot, Rios de la Luz conjures a lush, bioluminescent world where toxic motherhood, girlhood magic, and witchy survival intertwine with breathtaking intensity. Told through the watchful gaze of a daughter both innocent and wise beyond her years, the story pulses with crisp, enchanting language and a matter-of-fact reckoning of painful truths. Here, the weight of maternal expectation collides with the hidden violences of generational trauma, asking: where does a child’s love go when a mother cannot hold it? Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl” meets Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street meets Ray Bradbury’s “The Veldt” in this saturated ecosystem where a daughter transforms to protect herself when no one else will. This magical coming-of-age story about healing bloodlines and reclaiming the wilderness of one’s birth devoured me in a single breathless sitting. I’ll return to its searing insights again and again like a beloved haunted room of a magical real house.
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