time loop

Book Review: KISS SLAY REPLAY by Rachel Harrison

| Jessica Crawford

Kiss Slay Replay by Rachel Harrison is a 320 page standalone novel published by Berkley in 2026.

Genre

Horror

Description

Every wedding guest’s worst nightmare is on repeat in this wild and twisty new horror novel from the New York Times bestselling author of So Thirsty and Play Nice.

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.

Opening Line

Who knew that time could move so slowly?

My Thoughts

Gosh, Rachel Harrison’s writing just goes down so easy! I pretty much read this entire book in one sitting minus meal and bathroom breaks. And it was an absolute blast!

“…the only thing that will come from constantly looking back is an inability to move forward.”

The author manages to pack so much meaning into this story that’s dressed up in the trappings of horror. Willa is having a really difficult time after breaking up with her fiancé when she realized that their years-long relationship wasn’t working any more. But still she can’t help but ruminate, wondering if she made the right choice, if she was a coward, or selfish. Her friend Cass’s diagnosis is that she is in a hell of her own making, and her prescribed treatment is to watch true crime or horror movies to remind herself that “it could always be worse”.

My priorities are all wrong…My nervous system is on high alert, but it’s been this way long before today.
When everything feels life-or-death, it’s impossible to parse out the actual stakes.

Spending time with her best friends from college for a wedding should be a happy occasion, but Willa is freaked out by the fact that her ex will also be in attendance, with a plus one. She just barely makes it through the cocktail hour and the ceremony and exchange of vows, but before the reception can get started, the murders begin.

Things could always be worse!

And then they are. When Willa wakes up again that same morning and the day of the wedding plays out again, she realizes she is stuck in a grisly and horrifying time loop. What might break her out of the cycle of terror? Changing her patterns of behavior, practicing self-reflection, examining her life’s choices? Can she confront her problems head-on and steel herself to face an unknown future? Is it a matter of accepting that life is imperfect and messy and sad and lonely sometimes, and that’s okay? Or is all of that overthinking something much more straightforward (er, well, maybe more loopy than straight or forward)?

I fell in love and surrendered to its current, and it took me someplace else, and I opened my eyes one day not knowing where I was or who I was or how I got there. And it terrified me. It still terrifies me. Am I doomed to repeat the same patterns of behavior? Delude myself into thinking that love will save me, only to end up right back where I am now, staring into a void, waiting for it to say my name?

I appreciated the characters in this one, as well as the messages about life, love, and happiness. Looking at these through a horror lens made for a very entertaining romp. Harrison is a master at what she does!

Lastly, an example of the amusing interactions that occur amongst the friend group at the wedding before the carnage gets started, providing a bit of levity:

“Why does your foot look like tie-dye?”
My right foot is just a massive bruise from when I dropped my suitcase on it. I popped three Advil and it’s still killing me.
“Ugh!” I sit on the bed, kick my foot up. “Is it super noticeable?”
He shrugs. “No one will be looking at your feet. They’ll be looking at your face. Or your, you know. Assets.”
I laugh. “Thanks, Ev.”
“There could be some people looking at your feet, but you don’t need to concern yourself with those people. Unless you’re interested in a very niche income stream moving forward. Which, no judgment.”

Book Review: THE EVERLASTING by Alix E. Harrow

| Jessica Crawford
Image made using Canva’s generative AI

The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow is a 320 page standalone novel published by Tor Books in 2025 and based off of her short story, The Six Deaths of the Saint

Genre:

Fantasy

The Blurb:

From Alix E. Harrow, the New York Times bestselling author of Starling House, comes a moving and genre-defying quest about the lady-knight whose legend built a nation, and the cowardly historian sent back through time to make sure she plays her part–even if it breaks his heart.

Sir Una Everlasting was Dominion’s greatest hero: the orphaned girl who became a knight, who died for queen and country. Her legend lives on in songs and stories, in children’s books and recruiting posters―but her life as it truly happened has been forgotten.

Centuries later, Owen Mallory―failed soldier, struggling scholar―falls in love with the tale of Una Everlasting. Her story takes him to war, to the archives―and then into the past itself. Una and Owen are tangled together in time, bound to retell the same story over and over again, no matter what it costs.

But that story always ends the same way. If they want to rewrite Una’s legend―if they want to tell a different story–they’ll have to rewrite history itself.

Opening Line:

It begins where it ends: beneath the yew tree.

My Thoughts:

You had to die, and I had to watch you die, and then I had to wipe the blood from my hands and make sure it had been worth it.

Bestill, my heart!

The other two novels I’ve read by this author were fine, but not standouts for this reader. Her short stories, however, are absolutely fantastic – and The Six Deaths of the Saint remains one of the most impressive things I’ve ever read. So when I learned this novel was based off of (inspired by?) that, I was equal parts excited and nervous – the latter because it was already so perfect as it was!

I will say that I still love the short story version best, because the shorter format means the incredible storytelling packs more of a punch. But this book is also amazing! In fact, I’m already fairly certain it will be one of my top ten reads of the year.

“There are only two kinds of story worth telling: the ones that send children to sleep, and the ones that send men to war.”

I struggle knowing what to say about this book without being too spoilery, so I feel it’s safest to share what the author herself has written about it: told in alternating second person POV, Alix E. Harrow describes it as the tale of a big sad lady-knight stuck in a time loop and the anxious historian trying to save her, and says it’s about the endless cycle of authoritarian abuse which fabricates the past in order to justify the present, but made more fun by the inclusion of a romantic arc and some sword fights.

“You know that history is mostly happenstance…It is not a lesson, until we learn it. It is not a story, until we tell it. And every story serves someone.”

I LOVE LOVE LOVED this smart, emotional time loop story about the power of narratives and an epic romance. That being said, it’s obviously probably not the best book for readers who get frustrated with time loop stories. But if that doesn’t bother you, and you love getting your heart ripped out before being placed back inside your chest (possibly with the addition of a little something extra???), you should definitely give this book (and The Six Deaths of the Saint!) a read.

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Book Review: WRONG PLACE WRONG TIME by Gillian McAllister

| Jessica Crawford

After witnessing her teenage son kill a man she has never seen before, Jen finds herself further and further in the past each time she wakes up, and tries to understand what happened and why.

This time loop mystery not only keeps you guessing (well, I figured out the twists somewhere between pages 200 and 250, but it was still fun reading on to learn the “why” of things), it’s also a rather touching portrayal of how wonderful and difficult parenthood is.

Everything in parenthood feels so endless until it ceases.

They, mother and son, are a zipper, slowly separating as the years rush by.

The maternal habit of a lifetime, feeling guilty no matter which she chose.

Re-examining her relationships as she relives certain days from her past is just part of the investigating Jen performs while trying to understand what led to a stranger dead and her son in cuffs.

I do admit that several inconsistencies and oddities in the writing really got to me at times. Todd is described as pale in one scene, but then two days in the past he was tanned; he is said to have his father’s eyes and otherwise his features are all from his mother, but then later we read that he looks just like his father; a photograph of man with a shaved head is later described as a photograph of a man with light hair; the last time a certain day played out, we’re told both that Jen said something different to another character, but also that the last time it played out they never even saw each other. Jen’s husband has a tattoo of an inscribed date, the day he knew he loved her: “spring 2003” (that is a season, not a day); and a “quick, clean stab” resulted in three stab wounds. She assumed her son’s moodiness, secrecy, and weight loss were all just due to being a teenager; what could explain his recent bahavior: teenage rage, knife crime, gangs, or Antifa? I’m sorry, knife crime? That being included in that list just made me outright laugh.

Although it’s possible that some things I just misinterpreted due to differences in vernacular between British and American English (just as there was a lot of slang I wasn’t familiar with). They keep the office at 65 degrees, and whether that’s Celsius or Fahrenheit, either way seems too cold or much too hot. And she has a sofa in her kitchen at home, which Google tells me apparently is a thing, but just not a thing I can get on board with.

But despite these things, this was still a really engaging story, and I can recommend it without qualms to fans of thrillers and mysteries with a dash of sci-fi for flavor.

And for one last extremely relatable quote:

It’s useless to clean, she acknowledges, as she scrubs at the kitchen countertops and stacks the dishwasher. When she wakes up, yesterday, none of this will have been done, but isn’t that kind of always the way housework feels?

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