bibliosizzle

THE SIZZLE 🔥

Rating: ★★★☆☆
Content: Some gore 🔪
Genre: Horror / Dark Comedy / Slasher
Vibe: Time-Loop • Wedding from hell • Messy Friendships
Series: Standalone

MY THOUGHTS (SPOILERS BELOW)

This book is technically horror, but the most horrific thing about it is having to relive the same insufferable inner monologue page after page.

On paper, Kiss, Slay, Replay sounds like exactly the kind of weird, darkly funny horror I should love. A wedding weekend gone horribly wrong? Gruesome deaths? A protagonist forced to confront her personal demons while trying to avoid actual death? Sign me up.

Rachel Harrison knows how to write horror that’s both entertaining and grounded in the messiness of human relationships. The deaths were fun, creative, and full of traditional horror-movie tropes. I loved the nods to classic slashers and the increasingly ridiculous ways things could go horribly wrong. Those moments were easily my favorite parts of the book.

Unfortunately, between those entertaining deaths, I had to spend an awful lot of time listening to a woman who desperately needed to get her shit together.

I’ll admit that time loops aren’t my favorite trope. Repetition can work when each new cycle reveals something important, raises the stakes, or forces meaningful character development. Here, though, the repetition only magnified everything I already found irritating about our protagonist.

We’ve all experienced heartbreak. We’ve all had to navigate the uncomfortable aftermath of a breakup, particularly when mutual friends are involved. There’s something genuinely interesting about exploring how friendships change when a long-term relationship ends and you’re suddenly forced to rediscover who you are outside of that partnership.

However, there’s a difference between being emotionally complicated and being absolutely exhausting.

Her constant internal monologue, self-absorption, and unnecessary melodrama made it increasingly difficult to sympathize with her. After the first reset, I was ready for her to start figuring things out. Instead, I found myself trapped in a seemingly endless cycle of the same complaints, anxieties, and relationship drama. At some point, I started agreeing with her friends. Actually, scratch that. I was just as frustrated with her as they were.

And that’s what made the friendships one of the more interesting aspects of the story. They felt genuine. The tensions, the shifting dynamics, the frustration of watching someone you care about make the same mistakes repeatedly—all of that rang true. These weren’t friendships that existed solely to serve the protagonist. They felt like relationships with history, baggage, and people who had their own lives and limits.

I just wish we’d gotten more of them.

There was an interesting story waiting to be told about the evolution of adult friendships, shifting loyalties, and the uncomfortable reality that sometimes we outgrow people. I would have loved to spend more time exploring those relationships rather than spending day after day imprisoned inside the same irritating point of view.

Thankfully, the horror elements provided some much-needed entertainment. The creative deaths and classic slasher tropes kept things fun, even when the emotional narrative was wearing thin. But ultimately, the repetition made the story feel longer than it needed to be, and the character development wasn’t compelling enough to justify all that time spent inside her head.

I didn’t love the ending. It was Bleh.

After everything this woman went through—all the gruesome deaths, the repeated days, the emotional spiraling—I expected something with a little more impact. Something surprising, satisfying, or at least memorable. Instead, it was just…boring.

For a book that had so much fun playing with horror conventions, the ending felt strangely flat. It didn’t deliver the payoff I wanted, and it certainly didn’t make me appreciate the journey any more.

Ultimately, Kiss, Slay, Replay wasn’t a bad book. I enjoyed the horror, appreciated the authenticity of the friendships, and still think Harrison is a talented writer. But an entertaining premise and some creative kills can only carry a story so far when you don’t particularly enjoy spending time with the person at its center.

Three stars for the fun deaths, the slasher nostalgia, and the genuinely interesting friendship dynamics. The other two stars died somewhere around the seventeenth internal monologue about her ex.

Sometimes the real horror isn’t dying over and over again. It’s having to listen to someone process the same breakup for eternity.

READ IT IF… 🔥

You love time-loop stories with a gruesome slasher twist.