Book Review: The Return

Image: The cover of the book is mostly a hot pink and black version of a black and white photo. It is a view of a hallway with vertical striped wallpaper that goes halfway up the wall. On the back wall, two fancy light fixtures sit partly obscured by the hallway's end. To the left at the ent of the hallway is an upholstered dining chair and next to it on the floor a dark shadow of a person can be seen standing there. Across the top in large black letters is the title. Above that in small letters it says "her friend disappeared, a stranger came back." Across the bottom in large pink letters is the author's name: Rachel Harrison.

I won a copy of this book from goodreads giveaways. I don't often enter fiction drawings unless I know the author, but I admittedly judged this book by it's excellent cover and decided, "Why not?" I feel that I can describe The Return by Rachel Harrison with a food analogy. If I am eating french fries from a frozen bag that I baked at home, I know they are not fine cuisine, but they're still fun to eat. This book is not a book I would say is written well and parts of it lack much originality. Yet, I found myself generally immersed and enjoying myself while reading it much of the time. It follows 4 female friends as they go on a vacation and a bit of a friendship reunion. One friend has recently returned after being missing for 2 years with no recollection of what had happened. It's a horror novel, so, you can imagine that things don't go very well on this vacation.

At first while reading the book, I almost gave up. It was just not drawing me in and mixed with the writing and organization, I thought I was wasting my time. I decided to stick with it anyways and did get pretty into it, especially during the middle, most suspenseful sections. One of my biggest issues though even with this section was how poorly written the most supernatural scenes were. To avoid spoilers I won't give details, but Harrison creates a decent amount of suspense and unease and then at the times where what we are waiting for happens, it's as if she rushes through them. They could have been created as longer, more eerie and unnerving scenes but every single one fell flat. When I reached the ending, I was disappointed again. I will, again, avoid spoilers. But, let's just say that the tropes involved were unoriginal, tired, and not at all in line with what I was hoping for from this cast of women characters.

Would I read something else by this writer? Likely not, unless the next book showed promise of being much better than this one. But, Harrison is a new novelist and many first novels have lots of issues. She has some creativity and ability that can be honed into something better. So, I am open to seeing what comes next, but won't be holding my breath.

This was also posted to my goodreads.