Book Review: Black Sheep by Rachel Harrison

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“How can anyone know when ruin wears the disguise of love?”

📚

Vesper Wright fled her home, toxic family, first love, and zealous religious community at age 18, knowing full well that she could never return. In the years since, she has struggled to make her way, find her stride, and fit in, dealing with lousy jobs, even lousier co-workers, pent-up anger, and downright strange occurrences. So when an envelope appears on her doorstep inviting her to a beloved cousin’s wedding, Vesper immediately accepts, returning home to her frosty, former movie starlet and horror icon mother, experiencing a horrific homecoming that forces her to confront the sinister truths surrounding her family, their beliefs, her own lack of faith, and her past and future.

Rachel Harrison’s writing is just so good. Syntax, characterization, plot structure, dialogue, delicious surprises and twists, title source reveal moment — you name it, this book does it, and does it incredibly well. And it dares to go there. Where, you ask? To the wonderfully dark, startling, macabre, and hugely satisfying places that are absolute delights to horror fans.

Black Sheep is a creative and awesomely horrifying story where evil secrets, unconventional familial dynamics, and the concept of “normal” are given fresh depth and new meaning. Filled with shocking curveballs and terrifying thrills, it’s exhilarating, enjoyable, and rife with page-turning dread and truly haunting, hair-raising scenes — a chef’s kiss reading experience that has cemented Rachel Harrison as one of this reader’s auto-buy authors. 

Next up in the Harrison universe: Cackle, Bad Dolls, and forthcoming release So Thirsty, which is currently scheduled for a September release.

❤Amanda

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