An Immaculate Deception

One of my most anticipated books of the year is out today: An Immaculate Deception by Isabela Livino. This debut horror takes readers to 1877 in Brazil. Madalena is young and pregnant, and the only way she’ll be allowed to keep her baby is if her beau, Leandro, marries her. Madalena is excited to tell him the news, and hopeful for an immediate proposal, but then they’re in a carriage crash. She wakes up in his family’s remote home, a Doctor Lobo by her side. Leandro is there, too, but seems so different from how he was before the crash. Madalena begins to feel uneasy as she discovers incriminating clues around Leandro’s home, and his erratic behavior doesn’t help. Is Madalena in danger? Will she—and her baby—make it out alive?

What I Liked:

• Blending religious and occult themes. Madalena is from a very religious family. She believes in God and the Bible’s teachings; she’s memorized Dante’s Inferno and the nine circles of Hell. Her sense of Hellish, demonic sounds is especially vivid! By contrast, Doctor Lobo has a keen interest in alienism, astrology, and mesmerism. These opposing views crash into each other in An Immaculate Deception, unfolding in surreal and surprising ways.
• Nightmarish, Gothic atmosphere. This book puts a microscope on only a handful of characters: Madalena, Leandro, Doctor Lobo, and two maids. We get to see mental health deteriorate, the haunting effects of an isolated home, and how secrets can morph into something dangerous. I also particularly enjoyed how knowledge and perspective can completely alter how a scene is viewed. You’ll have to read this book to find out what I mean, though!
• Late 19th-century Brazil. I haven’t read enough books set in Brazil, and I loved getting a taste of the culture and history here. This book is rather insular in its focus on a handful of characters, but we do get glimpses of Brazil’s changing landscape in the late 1800s, their food and customs, and the language.

What Didn’t Work for Me:

• Abrupt change to Leandro’s POV. A little over halfway through the book, we switch from Madalena’s point of view to Leandro’s, but his goes back in time several weeks. It shifts the narrative into a slower pace for a bit, and while it ultimately leads to shocking reveals later on, it still was a lull, however necessary.

Final Thoughts

An Immaculate Deception is a gripping Gothic horror for anyone who likes surprising dual POV narratives, a combination of religion and the occult, and a nineteenth-century Brazilian setting. This was a wonderful debut that kept me on the edge of my seat, always guessing, and frequently surprised. I’m excited for more from Isabela Livino, as well as for more South American horror novels.

Special thanks to Dutton and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this book!

Get the Book

You can buy An Immaculate Deception here – it’s available as a hardcover, ebook, and audiobook.

An Immaculate Deception by Isabela Livino
Audience	Adult
Genre	Gothic Horror
Setting	Brazil
Number of Pages	304
Format I Read	Ebook (NetGalley ARC)
Original Publication Date	September 1, 2026
Publisher	Dutton

Official Summary

A debut Gothic horror set in 1870s Brazil—a tale of creeping suspense in which a young pregnant woman finds herself unable to escape her lover’s isolated family home, and a family’s deal with the devil goes terribly wrong

1877, Pernambuco, Brazil: Raised in a deeply religious household, Madalena knows Dante’s Inferno by heart and fears her mother’s reaction as much as she fears God. When she falls pregnant with a child conceived in sin, her mother issues a threat: marry or surrender the baby. Madalena is confident that the father, the dashing Leandro Neves, will do right by her and propose. But just as she is about to tell him about the baby, a violent storm sends their carriage careening off the road.

Madalena awakens in Leandro’s sprawling, secluded home, under the care of the mysterious and larger-than-life Doctor Lobo. Leandro is there . . . but he is no longer the charming poet she knew. He’s silent. Obsessed. Always watching.

Strange perfume haunts a locked room. Pages vanish from books. Jewels lie untouched in a forgotten wardrobe. And mirrors begin disappearing after Madalena sees something—or someone—ghastly in the reflection.

Leandro is unraveling. Doctor Lobo may be hiding something even darker. Trapped in a decaying house of secrets, Madalena must uncover the truth before the men around her destroy her, and before the hell she fears becomes the one she’s living in.