I tried hard to get through this book, but it just wasn't for me. I'm sure there are horror fans out there who may love it, but I'm not one. DNF.

A deliciously creepy story of friendship and young adulthood gone terribly wrong. The what ifs and this can't be happening are handled realistically and the genre-blending makes it unique, plus a narrator just unreliable enough to keep you guessing. I don't know if I will ever look at boutique hotels the same way again, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

This was, uh, interesting?

That cover is perfection but, sadly, the story between the pages could have been so much better.

This is between a three and a four for me. I thought The Return was a lot of fun. It kept me on the edge of my seat and entranced to the point that I finished it in less than 48 hours. I found the relationship of the four women really dynamic and I wanted to see more of it. The horror/thriller dynamic was also really interesting. There was much more body horror than I was expecting, but I am pleasantly surprised by it. Rachel Harrison really shined by creating atmospheric tension. I felt quite unnerved by a few of the descriptions and that can be difficult for me. ****Mild spoiler I also LOVED the monster things. Super creative, nice take. **** Also, full disclosure, I am legitimately switching between 3 and 4 stars because I'm petty and I was offended by the quote: "This is the room Mae picked out for me. I'm mildly offended. I like gothic fiction, but I've never shopped at Hot Topic. This isn't Brontë. This is Edgar Allan Poe." I like gothic fiction, the Brontë sisters, Edgar Allan Poe, AND Hot Topic. The room described sounds straight up like the red room in Jane Eyre. I would've been ecstatic with Mae's choice.

A group of four friends seems to have a tragedy— one of them goes missing for two years then suddenly returns with amnesia. They decide to go on a trip to the Catskills together and talk, talk, talk, talk. There is so much dialogue in this book that goes nowhere. I usually love dialogue heavy books, but these ladies just went on and on and it didn’t do much to push the plot along. They all sounded like the same character. The resort they stayed at had more personality than all four women combined. The premise of this book was very interesting and I think it would have been a bit better with a good editor to cut down some of the needless dialogue.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for sending me a free copy of this ebook in exchange for an unbiased review.

Four college friends, Molly, Mae, Julie, and Elise, end up spread across the country after graduation, but still love each other dearly and talk regularly. When Julie goes missing, they have no idea how to react. As time passes, Molly and Mae come to accept Julie's death, but Elise is convinced she's still out there somewhere. One year after she goes missing, Julie's husband decides to have a funeral for her and the friends reunite to mourn. However, Elise still believes in her heart that Julie is alive.

Two years after she went missing, Julie returns with no memory of the last two years. When the friends get together for a Girls Weekend it is obvious that something is wrong with Julie, but what is it and what happened while she was gone?

Compulsive, this one kept me reading the whole way through. I loved the friendship between the women, it rang so true to me. Although the plot was unrealistic and a bit out there at times, I still enjoyed the whole thing and I definitely recommend it!

Disclaimer: I received a free electronic copy of this book from the publisher through Netgalley.com in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

How do you pointedly question your best friends demeanor and actions? Find a way, or you may find yourself becoming something else. Confusing and terrifying.

First sentence:

What do you mean she's missing?

So, I really wanted to love this book. Everything about it screamed READ.ME.NOW.! And … I did but I didn’t love it as much as I thought I would. If you read the summary, you’ll see that Julie (Jules) goes missing for 2 years and then suddenly returns with no recollection of where she’s been. She reunites with her three BFF’s on a long weekend to a remote hotel.

Let me start with the good! The story-line is well-paced and incredibly creepy; in fact, I read this while my husband was at deer camp and I actually got up and locked the doors. So, the eerie atmosphere was there and it definitely played on my imagination. I feel like the author set up a really great and compelling story that had all the chills and thrills that I love in a good horror story. I liked that until the end, I wasn’t quite sure what exactly happened to Jules, clearly something horrible was happening and frankly, I’m not positive I know now. This isn’t to say there was a cliff-hangar or an open ending, I think this is Ms. Harrison’s intent, it’s meant to provoke a certain feeling and to play on the imagination.

While the story was captivating and scary, I didn’t love the characters. There is a strange co-dependency among these women that didn’t make sense and I just didn’t understand it; their friendship felt forced and fragmented. They were friends in college and then scattered to different cities and states – it just didn’t seem like outside of college drinking shenanigans that there was much to bond them in the level of friendship that the author wanted to portray. Then there’s the fact that these women are fairly close to thirty but I felt more like I was eaves dropping on teenagers. This still didn’t take much away from the solid story-line and the terror I felt in the last 4 chapters.

All in all, this is a good horror and a great debut novel. 3.5 rounded up to 4

A big thank you to NetGalley, Berkley Publishing Group, and Rachel Harrison for providing a copy of The Return in exchange my honest review.

The story of a creepy hotel, a mysterious disappearance and re-appearance, and the complexities of friendships that have started to wane, THE RETURN is a creepy and suspenseful horror novel with a lot of scary imagery and heart-stopping moments.

No not for me. It was simplified and gave no atmosphere of gothic or horror style story. I wasn't impressed. I was bored the entire way through, and the reason characters did anything made no sense.

I received an ARC of this novel from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Good premise. I did not get the ending--was it a dream sequence, did it happen?

Not at all what I was expecting. I think there are some horror fans who will love it, I just have to figure out how to hand sell it. Very strange story.

With shades of Jennifer's Body in the Overlook Hotel, The Return is a wholly unexpected and slow-building horror story that keeps the reader and characters off-balance the entire time, all while exploring haunting aspects of adult friendship dynamics. Loved the light but layered reading experience.

What if your best friend went mysteriously missing then two years she suddenly shows back up. BUT SHE IS DIFFERENT.!
She’s emaciated, with sallow skin, chipped teeth, and odd appetites. So who or what is she

In many ways, Julie seems to be the friend they all loved and lost. But in others, she seems to be a stranger.

The friends decide to reunite at the eccentric, remote Red Honey Inn. Bad weather traps them inside the hotel. Well that’s not a new plot. Things begin to get weird as they do in these situations. Elise begins to hear scratching within the walls and then there is the slither of shadows cast by nothing. As the weekend progresses, it becomes impossible to deny that the Julie who vanished two years ago is not the same Julie who came back.

This book has a great cover.

Oooohhh this was super creepy. To the point that I had to stop reading because it was late at night and I was legitimately scared and wasn’t going to be able to sleep. This definitely wasn’t what I expected it to be...so much scarier!!!

I really struggled with this one toward the end of the book. I do not think it is marketed correctly. Without giving anything away, I think a lot of people will be either surprised or baffled by the ending. And it had so much promise when it started.

An entertaining book that is scary enough to keep you interested with a few twists along the way. It's creepy and unsettling. I would recommend to horror lovers who also want a dose of friends bantering.

Could not put this book down. Dynamically written. Startling storyline. It has the kind of slow burn that you are enjoying until you realize the house is burning down.

Overall I enjoyed this a great deal. I found the reveal and the ending, perhaps a little unsatisfying. I'm seeing this billed as a "thriller" and it definitely has those elements, but it certainly fits in the horror genre as well, as it does have supernatural elements that I don't think you normally see in most thrillers. I found the characters interesting, the descriptions of Julie's physical deterioration very effective. Genuinely creepy at times. An interesting blend of vampire and zombie tropes with the classic haunted hotel element. This was a hard one to put down, but I think that the pacing was very well done and not too runaway train. I'll definitely be purchasing this for my public library adult fiction collection.

Welcome to the DISAPPOINTED BOILING READERS REHABILITATION CENTER:

PATIENT NAME: Nilufer (we couldn’t get proper last name, she confused us with a waiter because she determinedly pointed the empty glass she held in her hand and shouted us to pour more Chardonnay)

SYMPTOMS: Cursing, punching on the walls, yelling, screaming “give my money back” and then she calms down and adds: “Oh thank God! This is ARC COPY! I didn’t pay for it” and she makes some undefinable, horrifying moves between caged animal’s banging their heads at the bars and jumpy cat who recently lost its tail. She defined this moves as her happy dance.

TREATMENT: We gave her “Shining”s signed copy and poured a big glass of wine to shout her up! And of course we stole her dancing shoes so she is not gonna scare the other unhappy readers ( We have a huge group stopped by lately who recently read “Testament” and they’re in big pain right now!!! Terribly sorry for big Handmaid’s Tale fans!)

Okay, this is me again! As you read my anxious reader patient report above, I had an unexpected hysterical book-down ( it was not a breakdown! I just want to put the book down forever and never want to read it again!) I’m disappointedly leaving my two stars on the table. (I felt like a town sheriff who is resigning, taking to her horse to the Old Town Road)

Here’s the thing! I love horror so much. I love ghost stories, supernatural, paranormal things because they make me stronger to deal with real life’s suffocating problems and entertain me so much ( I never claimed I’m a normal person but I’m not gonna sing “Creep” in my cover version and bleed your ears, don’t worry!)

But when it comes to this book:
I was so excited to read a new brilliant debut author’s work. And the cover is magnificent! The blurb is intriguing: Julie goes for a hike and disappears into thin air. Nobody knows where the hell she is. Three besties and newly husband are so worried (after one years later they arrange a ceremony for declaration of her death! Two of her friends start to see shrinks! Poor silly girls!)

But Elise, who has a special relationship with Julie never believes she is dead. And she is right. Julie is found at her house’s porch, in same clothes she wore when she disappeared. She has no idea about her lost two years.
So the besties arrange a trip at shabby version of Overlook located at Catskill Mountains (I don’t want to imagine this special place where too many legendary comedians perform their first acting experiences as horrifying place!)

So here’s my boiling points:
Julie came back! She is thinner! She had bad tooth. She looks the shell of herself! And surprisingly she loves meat so much! (It’s so strange right because before she disappeared she was a vegetarian. So she gathers her wits in two years, it is not a bad thing, right?)

All her friends have no common, talking like teenagers not nearly 30 years old people, keep saying “I love you’”s but they don’t have any idea why the hell they love each other so much are really worried about their friends. But they don’t ask what is going with her.
All the characters including best friend Elise are so boring, artificial. I still don’t understand the reason why Elise’s afraid of her own shadow. I thought she had a traumatic past but when I read the background story I found out she is a regular silly girl who made unreasonable choices and now she is penniless and suffering from Electra complex.
And why these four friends came to this tasteless, kitschy place? There is nothing out of ordinary with this place, instead of designing failures and creepy hotel crew! This is not Overlook! This is not even a creepy motel located in the middle nowhere. So I did’t understand the reasoning of the author to bring those girls to this place! They can go to cabin in the woods and it will be more effective place, fitting better with the story.
And the last point: I waited for a good conclusion and better satisfying ending. As you may understand that I’m still seething and eating a big bag of Doritos Poppin Jalapeno (they’re freaking delicious by the way) the ending didn’t work well with me!
FINAL RESULT: POTENTIALS WASTED FOR NOTHING!

Lately I read too many great thriller ARC COPIES (Like brilliant Sun Down Motel) so I was really expecting too much and so excited to read this book but you cannot find the winners every time. Let’s forget this book and move to the next one!

Thanks to NetGalley and Berkley Publishing Group to share this ARC COPY in exchange my honest review. I wish I could enjoy it like the last thrillers I’ve read lately.