Rachel Harrison (3)Recensioni

This book had me intrigued as to what the heck happened to the friend. Like all books of Rachel Harrison, it always goes a little weird! I definitely enjoyed the whole book more than I enjoyed the ending. I just felt like the ending didn't explain much. Like were the monsters that changed Julie the ones that followed her to the hotel and made weird things happen at the hotel? I feel like I missed something in the end, and I was listening to the audio book, so maybe I did. But after some quick Google searching, I don't think I did. It's a story about four friends and growing apart and wanting to be seen and grief and acceptance. Overall, I'm glad I listened but maybe wasn't my favorite book of all time.½

*cricket cricket* this was OKAY. honestly i think it had too many words at some points.. the chapters were soooooooo long and they could've been shortened to keep the plot moving along. but at the same time i LOVED the way Rachel Harrison writes. i just think she can use less words. she is incredibly talented and i will read more by her despite not loving this one. the story and plot did grip me. i was just looking for more of a believable mystery at the end

DNF’d at page 115. I couldn’t do it. I’ll write a more in-depth review later once I’ve recovered from this book disappointment lmao

I was really disappointed. I was told by SOO many people that this book would be a really great read. I was promised spooky and wholesome but I didn’t find it that way. At first I did really like the narrative and the author’s writing was really enjoyable. But as I continued to read, I found the descriptions to be so so repetitive and annoying. Like we did NOT need a grand description every other paragraph!! And that’s seriously saying something from me because normally I am ALL about the sensory imagery. That’s literally exactly why I loved Great Gatsby so much and my favorite poems are the ones chock full of glorious descriptions. But in Cackle, it was very overdone. Moderation is key.
Next, the plot. It took WAY too long to establish the point of the story. 115 pages in and I STILL could not tell you where the plot was going. Wine-obsessed stereotypical 30 year old thinks she’s ancient because she’s just turned 30, moves to a small town and sees a bunch of spiders in her new apartment while getting bullied by obnoxious high schoolers and meets a mysterious woman who’s supposed to be charming but is just plain annoying with like 45 red flags. So that’s the set up and scene but where is it going? It’s not a terrible premise I suppose but it had no direction and the main characters got really annoying really fast. 115 pages into a 305 page book is too far in to not have a point to the plot. That far in to the book and we’re still at the very beginning of the story. That’s messed up.

Now the characters. Annie was relatable and sweet at first. As someone with depression and other mental health struggles myself, I could really relate to her and empathize with her. But then it went on and on and on. And I know this is a me problem but it really did make me think about how other people view me when I’m feeling crappy. Like wow if Annie is really annoying am I that annoying too when I rant about my struggles??😳😳 And will she ever stop with her ex?? I know that people get caught up on their exes and do exactly what Annie did all the time irl. But it was annoying and painful to read. And oh my GOd the drinking. Girl. I know that everyone has different relationships with alcohol but come on man. That is not healthy. It felt like I was watching a friend spiral and spiral and do really unhealthy things and all I could do is sit and watch. At one point she went and started drinking rum and I literally audibly out loud said “no oh my god don’t do that”. And then Sophie just enables Annie’s drinking problem!!! I have so many complaints about Sophie. Like seriously, Sophie is the crazy lady that approaches you at the grocery store and will not shut up when all you wanna do is buy groceries and leave. At first she seems nice but then suddenly after knowing her for 10 min, you know everything about her grandsons soundcloud career and her weird possibly contagious skin condition. I digress.. I felt like the author REALLY wanted the reader to be smitten with her. But I did not find her charming. Clearly lol. I don’t understand why Annie didn’t see all of these red flags about Sophie. If it were me my red flag radars would being going off left and right and I would already be trying to work out a safety plan so that I could avoid Sophie at all costs. And the fact that all of the townsfolk act weird around her isn’t something I would just brush off. I don’t get it. I know people ignore red flags all the time, I’m not exactly innocent of that myself. But ya gotta draw the line at some point.

Even though all of the things I found annoying about Annie are mostly realistic and people do that stuff and act like that all the time irl, it doesn’t make it any more tolerable. That shit is annoying in real life. I read to escape that shit, not to read about it more. If this book was marketed as a contemporary fiction piece set in a small town like it actually is, then fine, I wouldn’t be complaining so much. But it’s supposed to be a cozy spooky witchy fantasy/thriller. Which don’t even get me started on how this book is the farthest thing from a thriller I’ve ever read. I could see the author trying with the spooky stuff. But it didn’t work at all. It kinda felt like getting stuck on Space Mountain at Disneyland and all of the lights come on and suddenly the magic and thrill of it are gone because you see how it all works. Underwhelming as all hell. Except at least the engineering of rollercoasters is actually interesting. This is just as if the lights came on and all you could see was a flat track going in a small circle for like 20 minutes straight.

Who knows, maybe it does get better farther into the book. But I had other books I would rather read. perhaps I’ll revisit it and give it a try another time. But it’s unlikely. life is short, why should I read books that piss me off when there are so many incredible ones waiting to be read?½

Rachel Harrison is one of the best at keeping you on the edge of your seat. The story revolves around Vesper and her crazy family. Vesper's mother, Constance, who Vesper doesn't get along with at all, is a horror movie queen and a Satanist, and her father is often absent. In fact, the whole town is Satanic. They live in a small town called Hell's Gate. Vesper left the town when she turned 18 because she doesn't believe in Satan.

She comes back for a visit to attend the wedding of her ex-boyfriend to her best friend. Of course, she doesn't stay in the town very long because of the issues with her mother, so she heads back to New York City.

A week later, her father visits her in NY and brings her home for a special birthday party. What happens next is full of suspense and horror. You won't believe what you just read.

3.5 Stars

I"m frustrated that this book is now effecting my book suggestions. >.½

My favourite stories in this collection are "Bachelorette" and "Bad Dolls."

"Reply Hazy, Try Again" - 3 Stars
"Bachelorette" - 4 Stars
"Goblin" - 3 Stars
"Bad Dolls" - 5 Stars

This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.
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WHAT'S SUCH SHARP TEETH ABOUT?
The Publisher's website says:

Rory Morris isn’t thrilled to be moving back to her hometown, even if it is temporary. There are bad memories there. But her twin sister, Scarlett, is pregnant, estranged from the baby’s father, and needs support, so Rory returns to the place she thought she’d put in her rearview. After a night out at a bar where she runs into Ian, an old almost-flame, she hits a large animal with her car. And when she gets out to investigate, she’s attacked.

Rory survives, miraculously, but life begins to look and feel different. She’s unnaturally strong, with an aversion to silver—and suddenly the moon has her in its thrall. She’s changing into someone else—something else, maybe even a monster. But does that mean she’s putting those close to her in danger? Or is embracing the wildness inside of her the key to acceptance?

This darkly comedic love story is a brilliantly layered portrait of trauma, rage, and vulnerability.

HOW WAS THE NARRATION?
Sieh matched the energy and tone of the book—elevating some of the text with her performance.

SO, WHAT DID I THINK ABOUT SUCH SHARP TEETH?
If I took the time to make a pros and cons list...I think the pros would win but by a hair.

The way the book is set up—a high-powered businesswoman from "the City" coming back to her hometown, only to meet with her High School friend who's been carrying a torch for her since then. Things spark up between them and she's starting to consider leaving behind all the power and money for this humble guy from a small town. I couldn't help but think of every single Hallmark Movie parody I've seen/read when she talked about "the City." And most of the storyline surrounding them reminded me of those movies/parodies, too.

The pros, however...Harrison delivers some great werewolf fiction here. The initial bite, the transformations...just about everything that Rory does to investigate her new condition...and more is so well done, and in many ways is superior to every other werewolf novel I've read. It's some really solid and creepy work there, and I wish more of the book lived up to it.

In the end, it was good enough. It kept me engaged, the story moved well, and I can't say enough about the depiction of lycanthropes. I do recommend Such Sharp Teeth, but with a few caveats.

A good break-up book, with delicious food, sumptuous dresses, and a very cute spider.½

A quick horror about a girls trip gone wrong. im here for it.

This was fully what I would expect from Rachel Harrison. It was enjoyable and absolutely loved the twist about their family worshiping satan. I didn't see that coming at all. I was like, oh! At first, I was like, eh, another religious fanatic family - but this twist definitely hooked me. I will say it got a little crazy in the end with her father being the "devil" - however, I also saw that coming a mile away. But all the antics in the end, and the craziness of them all being sucked into some vortex or something. I got a little lost in there, but got the gist. But that's also typical Rachel Harrison, so it would probably be weird if the book didn't go a little sideways. Overall though, I really enjoyed it. And I liked the end how they turned the house into a tourist stop and she was sitting there among them to watch the show.

Strange Short Story Narrated Wonderfully

A madcap escaping a dead marriage and rebounding into marrying a Victorian spirit with charming mess of a protagonist.

Folx, we gotta know our worth. We are all worth so much more than a man-shaped lump who occasionally slaps our arse or a handsome dead wifeguy who charmingly wants us to death do us betroth.

Fun prose and a performance from Louisa Krause that really makes the words sing. It's just a bit too short and aimless to enjoy more than this. Definitely intrigued to read more of the author and see what else the narrator has worked on!

This was my first book by Rachel Harrison and it was so much fun to read! I don't want to give away too much because I highly recommend going into this blind like I did, but I will say it was dark, funny, and hard to put down! The main character, Vesper, is fantastically well-written, and the plot has plenty of twists.

I love how Rachel Harrison can take something and just flip it a different way, and then turn it inside out. Loved this book.

This was a cute story, like a rom com meets werewolf story. Overall, I enjoyed it. I didn't see it coming that Mia was the one who turned her, so that was fun. I thought for sure it was Ian. A good story for the Halloween time.½

Not sure what to think about this book. It kept me listening every night, but only one or two chapters a night.½

I didn't know what this was about initially, so I enjoyed being surprised at the religion she grew up with, and still felt plenty familiar with what she was going through up to a point...when this goes off the rails. I guessed who her dad was pretty early on, but this certainly commits to the bit. I don't know that I'd call this horror, at least not until the last chapter or two. I wasn't fully sold on why she went back with her dad towards the end either. But this is fun, gross, and totally related for those of us who some might call black sheep...

Omg everything about this book annoyed me.½

It took me the first quarter of the book to realise that Such Sharp Teeth wasn't going to be anything like the story I had thought I was going to read.

I'd anticipated a snarky, upbeat, witty tale of a successful twenty-something woman who has escaped her home town and made an independent life for herself in the big city reacting with wit and attitude to discovering that, as a result of being attacked on her one visit to her home town, her life has been blown up because she's become a werewolf. I thought there'd be trope-twisting and inside jokes about other Urban Fantasy stories and that our heroine would sail through it all, snapping out one-liners as she went. Maybe someone should write that book. It would be fun, light and forgettable.

The book that Rachel Harrison has written refuses to rehash old tropes. Instead, it uses Rory's transformation into a werewolf as a means to explore her life: who she's been, who she wants to be and who she's going to be able to be now that she changes into a wolf at every full moon. It's original and thoughtful and it feels real. Yes, there's a lot of humour in there. Humour is part of how Rory deals with the world, but the predominant emotion is rage at all the things in her life that are not fair, an aching desire to be loved for who she is and strong belief, based on years of experience, that that's not going to happen, except maybe with her twin sister, Scarlet, who loves her even when she doesn't like her very much.

For the most part, Rory has to deal with becoming a werewolf on her own. She slowly starts to work out what has happened to her and to understand some of the physical changes: her sense of smell, her improved hearing, her insatiable hunger for meat, her ability to heal and her superhuman strength. It takes her much longer to accept that all of this really has happened to her, that she can't cure it or change it, only find a way to live with it, live with being a monster. It takes her longer still to understand that, in many ways, she is still who she has always been, that her wolf may see red and wreak violence but that the rage that drives her has been there since her childhood. Eventually, she starts to focus not on what she's lost but on who she now wants to become.

I loved that Rory's transformation is mirrored by her twin sister's experience of being pregnant. Scarlet's life has also been blown up and forever changed by an unexpected event. She's lost control of her emotions and her body is changing and will never again be as it was and she has no idea whether she can cope with what comes next. Scarlet's rage at how pregnant women are treated, by the pressures that are put on them and the indignities that they are expected to accept without complaint gave me another view of what was happening to Rory and it made Rory's transformation much more human.

All the werewolf parts of this book work but they're not the parts of the book that most engaged me. Reading Such Sharp Teeth made me realise that most werewolf books read like the person who has been bitten has joined a cult. Their old identity is over and their new identity is centred entirely around the pack that they're now a part of. This doesn't happen to Rory. Rather than severing the links with her past, she finds herself building on them as she reconnects with her sister and her best friend and with Ian who, in High School, had an unrequited crush on her. One of the things that made me smile was that Rory was more stressed out by having to spend time with her mother than she was by having to come to terms with being a werewolf. Still, when I met her mother and learned their history, Rory's reaction made a lot of sense. Watching how Rory and Scarlet deal with their respective involuntary transformations and deal with their mother coming to stay, was one of the things that grounded this book and made me care about the people in it.

I also enjoyed Rory's relationship with Ian. This wasn't a RomCom trope. There was no InstaLove. This was the story of a man who had always been in love with a woman he was sure would always be beyond his reach and a woman who had always avoided relationships in favour of casual hookups and who now finds herself smitten by a man who makes her feel calm and anchored and loved. Yes, all the usual romance obstacles were there but they were overcome mostly by the people being themselves rather than by any plot twists.

Such Sharp Teeth got under my skin in ways that I hadn't expected. I believed in Rory and liked her. Beneath the caustic, too-cool-for-a-small-town facade was a woman who had been hurt, who lived with rage but who wanted, somehow, to arrive at happiness. I believed in the relationship between Rory and Scarlet. The dialogue between them and the way they treated one another was intimate without being sloppy or artificially comic. I liked that there were no shortcuts that could magically fix the relationship between the sisters and their mother but there was no way of removing the mutual love from it either.

I ended the book thinking about the nature of the transformation that Rory had been through. Becoming a werewolf didn't unleash her inner beast and turn her into a monster. Instead it gave her a way of dealing with her rage at how she had been treated. For the first time in her life, she felt safe. No one could hurt her. Like most women, she'd grown up accepting being in danger from men as a fact of life. She wasn't in danger any more. She was the danger now. The question in front of her was what was she going to do with that strength and whether or not could or would control her rage. When you have such sharp teeth, you need to think carefully about who you bite.

[3.75] Readers who have grappled with family dysfunction will likely relate to some aspects of Harrison’s latest book. Even though the plot is a tad predictable, and the writing is more snarky than spooky, “Black Sheep” is fast-paced and generally entertaining.

Desperate Housewives crossed with The Shining!
For a debut novel this is outstanding, a mix of thriller and horror that works perfectly.
I loved the book but the audiobook version of this is on another level. There is something about having this read to you, especially at night, tucked up in bed in the dark, it enhanced the creepiness tenfold.
I have now added Rachel Harrison to my list of authors to look out for because of her next books are this good then she will become queen of the thriller/horror genre she’s created!

I adored this book. It had a great balance of vibes, from light and funny to dark, gross body horror. It felt cosy, like a perfect spooky season read, with the most interesting undertones throughout the whole work.

Our protagonist, Rory, is the quintessential cool girl. She’s gorgeous, quick-witted and funny. She lives in New York, goes to fancy bars and parties, hooks up with strangers, and loves her life. And I honestly kind of loved her. I saw some criticisms that she swayed a little into Mary Sue territory, but I felt that a lot of her personality was a mask for the unresolved trauma she was dealing with. She’s aloof and witty to put a barrier between herself and people trying to get to know her.

The romantic subplot with Ian, an “almost-flame” from her past, was fine. It didn’t draw me in completely, but I had no issues with it.

Scarlett, Rory’s pregnant twin, is an equally cool, goth girlie, and I loved her. She is side-lined a little at the beginning of the book, where her role appears to be “default pregnant” but as the story progresses we see more of her character emerge. It was great to see a pregnant female character who initially struggled with the idea of motherhood. Compared with their friend Ashley, who appears to be every housewife stereotype dialled up to 11, it was refreshing to see someone who did not take to motherhood 100% straight away.

While the plot isn't overly complex, a lot of the best parts of this book come from Rory’s inner monologue, or interactions with her sister.

But what truly sets this book apart is its exploration of the female experience. The werewolf transformation serves as an allegory for pregnancy, showcasing the profound changes women undergo. But it’s also an exploration of feminine rage. Rory is incredibly angry about her childhood, she is bound to it, she doesn’t know how to exist without it. Her werewolf form becomes a manifestation of her anger, a way for her to cope with the feelings of weakness she has felt her entire life.

Such Sharp Teeth is a must-read for those who crave a spooky, thought-provoking tale with a strong dose of female empowerment.

Finally! A supernatural story that isn't ruined by forcing the narrative into a romance. I'm sick of choosing books about witches or magic and finding instead men with ripped chests and obscure coloured eyes who charm the knickers off the heroine but bore me silly. This is the book I've been searching for - chick lit, Hallmark Christmas movies and Stephen King, but in a good way!

After being relegated back to the friend zone by her best friend turned boyfriend, Annie Crane leaves New York on her thirtieth birthday and moves upstate to a new life and new job in Rowan, a small town with a secret. Main Street is like a scene from a Hallmark movie, with coffee shops, bakeries and a farmer's market, and everyone is friendly and welcoming. The only downside seems to be the spiders in her apartment. Annie is battling her own demons, however, feeling depressed and lonely. Until she meets the stunningly beautiful Sophie, the best friend she has always longed for, who takes the newcomer under her wing and invites Annie out to her mansion in the woods. But why is everyone else seemingly afraid of this enigmatic beauty with a kind heart?

I absolutely loved this story, from the characters to the setting - in fact, I wanted to be both Annie and Sophie! And the only man on the scene is Annie's ex, Sam, who is likeable enough but neither an Adonis or a romantic risk. I enjoyed Annie's new start in Rowan, shared her neuroses while teaching a class of obnoxious teens, but was glad that she was allowed to find herself rather than a man. I'm not sure about the message - all single women over 30 are witches? - but I was all for not having to endure another romance. Sophie is also a fabulous character, comfortable in who she is but understandably lonely. The darker scenes - mostly involving spiders and ghosts - were also well written and unnerving.

Funny, moving, comforting, spooky, relatable, Rachel Harrison has thrown every emotion into the cauldron bar lust, which is fine by me! Definitely recommended, and I might even buy a printed copy to read annually during spooky season!

I enjoyed this book. It went in a direction that I wasn't even expecting.

Rory goes back home to support her twin sister Scarlett who is having a baby. After a night out with an old friend Rory is attacked and bitten by a wolf like creature. Things are going to change for Rory now especially at the next full moon.

This is the first book for me by Rachel Harrison. This story reminded me of the Kelley Armstrong books which I have read in the past.

I found this book a quick fun read and nothing too taxing. There is the family element to it with the two sisters, a romance and werewolves. The story isn't scary so wouldn't recommend as a horror although there is a bit of gore.

A quick fun read and I would read another book by the author in the future.