The Return is a solid psychological thriller with plenty of horror elements. One girl, Julie, from a group of friends goes missing and exactly two years later, she reappears with no memory of where she was or what happened to her. The friends decide to meet at a remote inn, but it soon becomes clear that Julie is not the same person. The story gets creepy. The characterization is strong. This is a good novel to pick up around Halloween when you're looking for a spooky read. Highly recommended to readers who enjoy psychological thrillers with a dash of horror. Fans of Paul Tremblay would enjoy.

Julie disappears without a trace and her loved ones were left to mourn. Julie comes back with no memory of where she’s been or what’s happened to her. She’s changed. What happened?

This book is different than what I’ve been reading lately. There’s a certain creepy vibe to it but it only enhanced the story for me. I was curious to find out what had happened to Julie. You’re introduced to Elise and the other best friends. Their personalities are different and why they’re so close. I both liked and disliked them all. Especially Elise. I think that’s a big part of why the story worked for me. Yeah I’m weird. Strange things start to happen and you feel like maybe you’ve been transported to parts of The Shining. Then the story takes an unexpected turn and it kind of blows your mind. I didn’t see that ending coming. Nice job Miss Harrison. The story will haunt you long after you’re done. I’m still thinking about it. This is a wonderful debut for the author. I look forward to reading more. I give this 4 stars.

First line: “What do you mean she’s missing?”

Summary: When one of their friends goes missing they are all shocked but Elise does not believe that Julie is dead. Even after a year and a funeral she still holds out hope that she will return. Then suddenly after two years she reappears with no memory of what happened to her.

In the hopes of learning what happened and reconnecting the friends decide to get together for a long weekend in a swanky new hotel in the mountains. Upon arrival they notice that something is wrong with Julie. She looks different. She acts different. But no one wants to bring up these changes. As the weekend continues Elise starts noticing strange happenings around the hotel. She cannot decide if it’s her imagination or something truly odd is occurring.

My Thoughts: I do not know how to feel about this book. I like it but something is not sitting well with me too. At the beginning I compared it to The Shining and Pet Semetary but as the story progressed it verged away from this. I liked the little hints of creepiness. I loved the strange hotel. But the ending was just not what I expected. It became more gory than spooky. And the final chapter was just kinda dumb.

The characters were a little bland. I liked Elise. I could relate to her. But I got two of the friends constantly confused and the fact that their names both start with M made it even more confusing.

FYI: A good start for a debut author.

4.5 stars

I was NOT expecting this slim novel to be so awesome, so horror-based, and so suspenseful. Loved it. It would have been an automatic 5 stars, but some things didn't jive.

Suspense: ★★★★★
Pacing: ★★★
Setting: ★★★★★

The Return comes out on March 24, 2020!

Elise is told her best friend, Julie, went missing on a solo hiking trip. Two years go by, and Elise refuses to believe or accept that Julie's dead. She's sure Julie will turn up again, good as new.

Two years to the day that Julie disappears, she returns. She doesn't remember anything about her time missing, and things are...different. But Elise is ecstatic anyway—Julie came back.

To celebrate Julie's return, Elise and Julie's two other friends organize a girl's weekend at a lodge in the New England woods. The lodge is crazy wacky—think individually-themed rooms, Alice in Wonderland, Tim Burton, and The Shining all in one—and the girls are immediately set up for a weird time.

But the lodge isn't the weird part. Julie is.

Something's wrong with Julie, and it might not be what Elise is expecting...

Wow. What a cool, unique, horrific debut. This clocks in at just under 200 pages, and I devoured it in one sitting. The suspense was killer—at any given moment, I was on pins and needles waiting for the next creepy thing, the next reveal. The girls' friendship dynamics were painfully raw, honest, and full of recognizable traits that I identified with from my own friends. The reveal, while easier to guess than others, was still well done and I loved the final climax.

The only thing that kept The Return from being an automatic 5 stars for me was the overall pacing. You can tell that this story had a killer hook and good suspense, but due to the lack of a side-plot or believable red herrings its pacing suffered. Lots of dialogue-based scenes and not enough significant action. However, as the suspense was done SO well, this was relatively easy to ignore. It would have been a much bigger problem if this novel had been longer.

Thank you to Berkley via NetGalley for an ARC of this title in exchange for an honest review.

Creepy and entertainining with a fantastic atmosphere, The Return is a great first novel -- I hope Rachel Harrison writes more in the same genre.

This book fell flat for me. Stilted dialogue, confusing plot line that never really reached a conclusion. Sorry, I wanted to like it but ended up skimming a lot of it.

Elise and two friends are devastated when their fourth best friend (Julie) goes missing. After two years of presuming she is dead, she appears back to her house in the clothes she left in. She has no memory of where she was or what she was doing.

Mae plans a weekend away for the four girls to reconnect, but when the see Julie, something is just not right about her .... but what is it?

This book started out great for me, but ended up not finishing up as strong as I had hoped. The unique setting of the eclectic hotel ended up having nothing to do with the plot, which I found strange. It was a bit slow in parts, with the three girls talking the whole time about what could be wrong with Julie but never confronting her. The book, however, was a quick read for me, as I wanted to know what happened. The end was satisfying, as we find out what really happened to Julie.

The synopsis caught my attention, the story kept my attention, but when I finished, I summed it up with a EH. I liked Elise and that’s probably why she kept my interest but that was about it. The descriptions of the ‘creatures’ in the woods reminded me of ‘Twilight’ and while I loved that series years ago, it disappointed me now. A decent read but wouldn’t say a ‘have to read’.

I would like to thank NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for my honest review.

Wow. This book was hard to put down. Fun and spooky. Great beginning though is does wander a little toward the end. Great debut novel, cant wait to see what else she writes

Thank you so much for the opportunity to read and review an advanced copy of The Return. I will be posting my review to my social accounts sometime between March 23-25 and I will email Berkley with the links.

My Review:
The Return is suspense done right! If The Shining had a sister I’m pretty sure this would be it. This is a hair-raising, unsettling, edge-of-your-seat story about four friends and the loyalty that connects them.

This is the first book that’s been able to properly spook me and I loved it. I’m not going to lie—I could not read this at night because I was too jumpy. The mental image of Julie in that freaking hotel had me unsettled to the point where I was tempted to check under my bed to confirm nothing had crawled under there.

The way Harrison built the suspense and anticipation was amazing. There were several moments where she had me white knuckling my e-reader and wanting to cover my eyes. I thought it was so smart how she would ramp up the intensity and then quickly tone it down. That style of writing made the scarier parts, and the book overall, more tolerable for me.

With that being said, the book kind of lost me a little bit with the ending. It was creative and I didn’t see it coming, but I didn’t think it matched the flow of the rest of the book. I still really enjoyed the book as a whole even though the ending kind of came out of left field.

Rachel Harrison is now absolutely on my list of my auto-buy authors. I would definitely check this one out if you can handle some gore in your thrillers or are a horror fan.

Content Warning: Gore; Blood; Car wreck

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When I was talking up The Return the other day with a group of librarians, I urged them to think about four close women friends and what might happen when one of them disappears. In The Return, Julie’s three friends are devastated when she goes missing, but Elsie, Julie’s best friend, believes she will stroll back in with a slick explanation for her absence. For two years, Elsie clings to the idea that Julie is alive. And then, Julie does comes back, but she isn’t the same. In fact, she is more than a little creepy., She has no explanation for where she has been, slick or otherwise, and insists she can’t remember anything about the missing time.

What follows is a girls’ weekend at a chic boutique hotel, which sounds like a great idea until it isn’t. The hotel seems to take on an ominous feel, more “something’s not right here,” than spooky. The longer they stay in the hotel, the more Julie appears to be de-evolving and Elsie must decide how much she is willing to sacrifice to hold onto their friendship.

The Return is a bizarre tale about ordinary relationships and extraordinary circumstances.
I am not normally a horror fiction fan. I seldom read books that keep me up all night with the lights on. This book is my kind of horror, subtle and personal.

Thank you, NetGalley, for the review copy.

I could not put this book down, I read it into the wee hours. This book was nothing like I expected and I certainly didn't see the ending coming.

A little long on detail descriptions, but a good read for a friends reading group. I would recommend to reading groups.

2.5 stars rounded up

This book had so much potential, but the story fell flat in certain ways. For example, the setting of a strange and eccentrically designed hotel could have been utilized better. I love books where the setting becomes like another character, which is what I was expecting with this inn, but alas, it was merely used as a staging area for these characters to sit and talk endlessly. That brings up another issue--I needed more action and less dialogue. All these women seemed to do was move from one area of the hotel to another and talk. By the time Julie was finally confronted about her odd behavior, the book was almost over.

I decided to round up to 2.5 because although I did find things to nitpick, I never considered giving up or skimming until the end. I was committed to finding out what was up because the author did do a good job of describing all the spooky things happening to Julie and her friends while at the hotel, even though the reveal at the end was unsatisfying.

Oh my goodness, y'all, this book...this book was deliciously and vividly CREEPY. And humorous at times. And touching.
Sound like an odd combination?
Yes.
And it worked. What a page turner!

This is the story of four friends who meet up for a weekend away to reconnect after their friend Julie, missing and thought dead, turns up on her front porch on the two year anniversary of her disappearance.

Only Julie is...different.

The story is told from the point of view of Elise, who is closest to Julie. WIth them at what is possibly the oddest and uncomfortably overdone and creepy hotel is Mia and Molly. They all have their own issues and a lot of history together. The tale is part exploration of relationships, of shared pasts and how they bind us together (good and bad), and part pure horror.

Harrison dangles scary bits and bobs at us through the first part of the story. Enough to make us question what Elise is seeing, maybe to wonder if she is paranoid or has more to worry about, and then she really dives into the horror and gore. Her descriptions are vivid, the setting is delightfully weird and the atmosphere is dark. The story picks up speed in the second half and will have you checking windows and doors (and possibly put you off ground beef for a while.)

A fantastic debut from Rachel Harrison - I look forward to reading more from this author.

THE RETURN messed me up. Don’t be fooled by the pretty pink cover, this book is F*CKING SCARY. THE SHINING meets SEX AND THE CITY when 4 friends decide to go on a girls trip and reconnect after one of the friends mysteriously reappears 2 years after going missing. Said friend returns...different. Disheveled appearance, rotten teeth, an extreme craving for raw meat. And if that’s not weird enough, there are strange things happening at the tacky hotel they’re staying at...missing employees, hallways dripping blood, you know, all of the super fucked up scary things; the perfect book to read while I was home alone the other night! A definite recommendation for my horror friends (@llbookrat, you’ll love this one!), but for everyone else, you might be annoyed by these women and their inability to notice shit is MESSED UP, RUN! You’ve been warned.

Thank you to NetGalley for a copy of this book.

This book surprised me. I wasn’t sure if it was going to be just another girls-going-on-a-trip-and-spooky-stuff-happens book. It’s not. There were parts in the middle that dragged a tiny bit, but overall the pacing was on par with other suspense books. My only complaint would be that the creepy stuff didn’t come into the story fast enough for me and quite a bit of the book was just gossip and girl talk for longer than necessary. When you finally get to the real story, the plot moves very quickly. I was hoping for more of a straight up horror novel, but it’s not that easy to pin this book down. There’s quite a bit of gore, so you might not enjoy this book if that bothers you. I think if you don’t go for traditional horror but still like creepy mysteries you’d probably enjoy this one.

Thank you @berkleypublishing #partner for a free copy to review.

I was SO excited to see this book in my mailbox and read it right away! I'm so glad to say this is my first review of 2020 and I give it 5 glittering black stars!!!✳️✨ Off to an amazing start!!

It provided me with so much more than I expected. Not only was the psychological thriller portion of this book on point, but it gave elements of horror, mystery, friendships, and loss. This book had it all.

We're taken on a journey of 4 friends meeting to catch up with life and bring back what they had. The experience of a lifetime as a friend of theirs is back from being missing for 2 years. The journey and experiences are so surreal that the pages don't turn fast enough! The characters are easily relatable and real, you really feel for them just like you're right there with them.

I highly recommend this book to everyone when it releases 3/24/2020! You won't regret putting this novel on your TBR and library!!

I've had my eye on this for well over a year and it did not disappoint! A group of four college friends are struggling to maintain the friendship they once had when one of them goes missing. Elise considers herself to be the closest to Julie and even though they’ve had her funeral and people are moving on, she has a hard time believing Julie is actually dead.. Elise is right; Julie comes back two years to the day after she disappeared. The friends reunite at a girls weekend in an eclectic, remote hotel in the Catskills, where it becomes immediately apparent that Julie is very, very different.

I loved this. It’s not a perfect novel- some of the dialogue was tangential and for a horror novel, it took awhile for things to get scary, but I was completely immersed in the story and the setting. The author nailed the relationship between the four best friends. The setting was awesome and by the end, I was literally reading in bed on my Kindle with one eye cracked open because I was creeped out but I couldn’t put it down. I got a bit of a Head Full of Ghosts vibe from this one.

Thank you to NetGalley and Berkley publishing for the ARC of The Return by Rachel Harrison. I was initially intrigued by the premise, attractive cover and thriller/horror genre.

A group of four friends reunite for a fun girl’s weekend after Julie mysteriously disappears for two years. She has no memories of where she has been or what happened to her. Elise is happy that she did not give up hope that Julie was still alive. But Julie is not the same best friend that she remembers.

Harrison does a great job with the characterization of the four friends. I enjoyed the playful banter between the girls and really gained an understanding of how their friendship works. However, I do feel that there was a lot of talking that didn’t further the plot. The setting of this strange hotel with crazy room designs and odd staff was intriguing, but I wish that it also led somewhere. The reveal was very strange and I’m not sure that it really makes sense. This was a fun read, but left me with a lot of unanswered questions.

3/5 stars