This book drew me in from the start. The characters were pretty well developed, and I feel like I got a good sense of each of them, each of their distinct personalities and viewpoints, even though the story was told by the point of view of the same person. The first 75% of the book was fantastic, but the last 25% dragged a little. I think it just took too long to wrap up at the end, otherwise I'd have given this more than 3 stars.

Julie (Jules), Elise, Mae and Molly are best friends and have remained that way for most of their lives. However, Jules disappeared on a hike two years ago and her body was never found. Suddenly one afternoon she shows up on her husband's doorstep with no explanation and claims she has no memory of the last two years... Mae wants the five of them to reunite so she arranges for them to visit a kitschy hotel in upstate New York, and it will be the first time any of them have seen Jules since she returned. At first they are confused about her appearance and behavior, but then it becomes apparent something is deeply wrong. Can a lifelong friendship survive a return from the dead?
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Julie has been missing for two years when she suddenly reappears with no memory of what happened to her or where she has been. Her friends Elise, Molly and Mae, rally around her, taking the obviously distraught Julie to an inn in the country for a weekend of girl time. But Julie is radically different, so much so, her friends are very uneasy. And they should be as there is no way of knowing what happened to Julie, if she is even the same person at all. If she’s even human. I wasn’t ready for the scare factor in this book, the isolated inn, the unsuspecting friends and the realization that they are dealing with something so terrifying, it defies the imagination

If I have one complaint about this novel, it's this: for something called The Return, it takes a while to get past Jules' disappearance when we know that she does in fact return after two years missing. Once her best friends decide to have a girls' weekend to put the trauma behind them, the horror kicks in while the writing shines.

My absolute props go to making the main characters so distinctive and diverse without feeling like the writing was engaging in tokenism. Each woman felt real to me, and their friendships rang true as someone who has friends from school in other states. As for the horror, I'll let you experience it for yourself. I will say that fans of Stephen King's scares would not be left wanting.