It’s the picture-perfect wedding weekend: The venue is dreamy, the weather is beautiful, love is in the air—and Willa Sullivan is having a bad time. She’s excited to celebrate her best friends’ finally having the big wedding they’ve always wanted, but this is the first time she’s seen her ex-fiancé in months, and he brought a date. Everything feels off, like she stumbled into an alternate universe. But things start to look up when Willa meets Danny, the groom’s charming and single childhood best friend. When they sneak off together, their rendezvous is interrupted by a masked killer terrorizing the reception. Willa and Danny fight to save the ones they love and survive the night, but the killer is unrelenting. A final girl Willa is not.
Or is she? She wakes up and it’s the morning of the wedding. She just had the most intense nightmare of her life. Only as the day unfolds, there are some uncanny coincidences that make her question whether it was really a dream, déjà vu, or something more sinister. After a horrifying turn of events, Willa comes to understand that she’s stuck in a loop of carnage and terror that she must learn how to escape or else suffer a fate worse than death—being an eternal wedding guest.
Kiss Slay Replay by Rachel Harrison is an inventive horror that takes the genre and spins it on its head with a time loop element. Not only is the beginning catchy with Willa being a character many women can empathize with, a woman who is starting over but the writing also slowly ratchets up the tension and the stakes even with a daily reset.
I love the themes of struggling with adulthood and change. I find Willa struggling with her break up realistic and her having to face her fears in order to figure out how to escape the time loop is intriguing. I also like the way that unexpected individuals help her and how she has to resolve lingering issues before she can figure out how to end the terror.
If you like inventive horror, with a horror montage, I loved Kiss Slay Replay by Rachel Harrison. If you like the other books by Rachel Harrison, I know you’ll love this newest book and the creative way she creates a unique horror story. I loved the characters, especially Willa and love the way the story is resolved. This one is one of my favorites already.
Rating: 5 out of 5 movies
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