Dead Friends Forever

Dead Friends Forever: Selected as an Editor's Pick by BookLife Reviews (Publishers Weekly)

“As Lily falls ever deeper into the swamp’s thrall, its secrets drive a powerful question: how much of herself is she willing to sacrifice to solve the mysteries of her brother’s death and Amelia’s disappearance? As usual, Taylor skillfully molds imagery and language to convey the ethereal yet sinister beauty of her book’s setting, sweeping readers into each scene as unwilling participants in the horror, anxiety, and dread stalking Lily.”


-BookLife Reviews (Publishers Weekly), Editor's Pick



“Throughout, Taylor maintains an unnerving mood that refuses to let up. The narrative takes a shocking turn in the latter half, though it’s perfectly in line with everything that precedes it. A wholly absorbing dark mystery.”



-Kirkus Reviews



A tale of ghosts, betrayal, and the bayou's unforgiving dead.



The Third Doorway Into The Oblivion Cycle



Lily swore she’d never return—not after Amelia vanished, and the angel statue was set in the garden to mourn what could never be recovered. But when her brother’s body is pulled from the swamp, the past drags her back.
The house waits for her, sagging beneath silence, steeped in damp earth and secrets. Aunt Clara still tucks away letters and photographs in drawers, as if hiding the past will keep it from finding them.



It begins with small intrusions: a locket engraved MINE turning up where it doesn’t belong, Polaroids whose flash reveals more than darkness, and the sight of Amelia—smiling as she once did, though the girl before Lily is not the cousin she lost.



Every night the angel moves. One day it stands in the garden, the next in the cemetery, then ankle-deep in the swamp. Lily cannot tell if it is coming for her, or if she is already caught inside its gaze.



In the bayou, the dead do not rest. They wait for you to remember them—and to finish what you began.



Dead Friends Forever is a slow-burn Southern Gothic horror about memory and guilt, the corrosive pull of the past, and the dangerous comfort of letting the dead back in. It's the third novel in Rowan Taylor’s chilling new series The Oblivion Cycle— standalone horror novels united not by character or plot, but by a single devouring idea: what if identity is not a fixed truth, but prey?



Each book opens a different doorway into oblivion, revealing how the self can be stolen, rewritten, hollowed out, or willingly surrendered.