The Return

I discovered Rachel Harrison last year and will very happily read anything she writes as she’s quickly become a favorite. Now that I’ve finished The Return, the only book I haven’t read yet is Bad Dolls, a collection of 4 short stories, and that’s only because it’s not available at my library right now (I have it on hold!).

In The Return, Harrison’s debut novel, the intricacies of friendships and how they grow and change are perfectly captured. Friendships can be hard to maintain, especially when it comes to the ones that start when you’re a teenager and follow you into adulthood (even as you grow into what can sometimes be an entirely different person) making a million mistakes along the way. It was refreshing to read about a group of friends loving each other while struggling with this reality instead of having perfect 10+ year long relationships. And of course the horror only made it better!

Elise, Molly, and Mae, the three friends Julie left behind when she went missing, all deal with her return differently. Upon seeing Julie for the first time, Elise immediately knows something is wrong, that Julie isn’t the same, but Molly and Mae are determined to find the Julie they’ve been missing in the one that came home. The three women struggle to agree on how best to treat Julie while Julie slips further into strangeness and the culmination of it all is perfect.

I’ve heard people refer to Rachel Harrison’s books as both ‘cozy horror,’ and ‘feminist horror,’ and I’d say both apply.

The horror can be high stakes, but the whole book isn’t edge-of-your-seat nightmare fuel. It’s the kind of horror you recommend to someone who doesn’t typically read horror and is a little interested, and you want them to read something excellent to get them hooked.

The feminist themes and strong women are present in every Harrison book and it’s something I love to see in horror.

When I put this on my “want to read” list, I'd seen some mixed reviews. I see why now. There's nothing groundbreaking about the plot, but Harrison does a good job of setting up the story. Woman goes missing, comes back two years later, and something feels off. Circle of friends decide to go to a fancy hotel to catch up and rekindle their relationship now that the friend has come back. Yadda yadda yadda.

The group of women were pretty hit and miss for me. Some of their conversations were funny but more often just really catty and annoying. And the women themselves, save for the protagonist, were pretty one-dimensional. Because of this, I felt like some of the dialogue seemed forced and unnatural. Tristan and Patsy seemed to have more personality and they were side characters.

I loved the setting. Most of the story takes place at hotel with themed rooms (ex: a gothic fiction room, a pink room, etc) with each woman getting their own hand-picked room by one of the friends. A solid 2/3 of the book takes place here, so the reader becomes pretty familiar with these rooms as well as the bar and dining area. Sounds like a good time.

OK, so we finally get to the climax, and that's it huh? I'm not exactly sure why Harrison chose to go from mystery to creepypasta, but I was let down. Maybe the marketing hurt this one, but I feel like the synopsis kind of gives things away more than it should, kinda like when trailers spoil all the good parts of a movie. I would have liked, maybe, the ending toned down a bit.

i really loved the friendship dynamics in this book and thought it was so well done but i just didn't really enjoy the horror in this story. rachel harrison's books are never really scary but i feel like the horror of this book was less than her others and i don't more paranormal horror like this but everything else i really really liked

Julie went on a hike one more and never came home. Two years later she's found sitting on her front porch like no time has passed. For Julie's best friend, Elise, she never really believed she was gone. After spending 2 years missing and mourning Julie, Elise and their two other best friends Molly and May, decide to have a girl's trip in a new hotel in New York where they all went to college together. On this trip they learn that Julie had changed in some drastic ways and are met with the realization that maybe the Julie they knew is not the Julie that's on the trip with them. This trip turns into a nightmare.

I very much enjoyed this one! I listened to the Audible version and thought that that aided in how much I liked this book. There is heavy dialogue between the girls and I thought the narrator did a great job in differentiating the girls and made the listen immersive and fun. The author did a great job and slowly creating the creep factor. I was incredibly intrigued about what happened to Julie and who (or what) she was now. The hotel also has an eery sense about it (however to avoid spoilers I won't say more about that). I highly recommend for those that are a fan of horror.

The Return by Rachel Harrison is a chilling novel about relationships, grief, the haunting of the past, and attachments we just can't let go. It's hard to explain, and even harder to articulate without spoilers, but it's a meditation on female friendships combined with monsters, a creepy hotel, and a bit more. There were parts that were really creepy, and I loved the characters. I did think the plot got bogged down too many times by flashback monologues where the protagonist would let the audience in on some pivotal information from the past, but overall this was an enjoyable listen. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

So for the majority of this book all I was really thinking was how the hell are they letting this go on? There's clearly a major problem here. Why are they all being so foolish? But then towards the end it really clicked in that it was like Jennifer's Body and that suddenly made more sense. Though even looking at it like that it still could have been done better, maybe leaned into more of a dark over the top comedic tone. 

Additionally, it could have been much shorter. There's a lot of the same back and forth, and a weird amount of time describing different themed rooms. 

Either there's a lot of wasted time in this book or something really went over my head here that perhaps I would have read differently if I'd not been listening to the audiobook. Idk. It was fine. I'm not gonna run out and tell everyone to go read it, but it was fine. 

A woman, Julie, appears after having been missing for a year, and, despite obvious trauma, can't recall what happened during the missing time.  Her best friends, who had scattered across the country in the mean time, come together at a multi-themed hotel in order to reunite and catch up.  While Julie is clearly Julie, her behaviors and personality have changed so much that the friends begin to wonder who, or what, Julie really is.

This book is a standard metaphor for loss and letting go told by the standard body snatcher type horror beats.  Uninspired, but otherwise competent, The Return is enjoyable, but nothing amazing.  Rating:  **

This is a horror book about a group of 4 friends, one of them goes missing, returns 2 years later, but she is not the same person as she once was. 

The synopsis really intrigued me, but I feel like I was expecting more than what the book offered. The female friendships was done pretty well, but the pacing just didn't work for me. I feel like the story dragged on quite a bit in the beginning, nothing much happened for a big portion of the book, and it felt quite repetitive. Also there was a lot of side stories being told in between that pulled me out. 

The characters were unlikeable too, maybe that was intentional, but still, I didn't feel like I was rooting for any of them. They each had their own quirks, and personalities yet I found that i couldn't connect to them for some reason.

I enjoyed the ending though, it was quite fun. A little bit anticlimatic, since I was maybe expecting too much, but still fun nonetheless.

Julie went missing. Then, a few years later, she returned. She remembers nothing of her time away.
Her 3 best friends (Elise, Mae, and Molly) invite her to a girls weekend in the Catskills so they can catch up.
It's a disaster from the get-go. Julie shows up and is obviously not well. The weather goes bad, the hotel is full of weird vibes.
And then the story goes completely off the rails.
I've never read a bad Harrison book, in fact, I'm pretty sure I've give 5 stars to every single one of them. I might just be her perfect fit as a reader, but I loved this. I love the writing, I love never knowing what is going to happen next, I loved the banter between friends, I loved the kooky hotel decor.
I can say that, even up to the last chapter, I still wasn't 100 percent clear if there was more than one evil at work here.
Sigh, I was so sad it was over.