Other than her collection of short stories and an Audible original that I won’t sign up to pay for, I have now read everything that Rachel Harrison has published! (That is until her new book drops in September 2025)
Alright – The Return is actually Harrison’s debut novel and it is just fabulous. The first book I read of hers was Black Sheep which I went into absolutely blind and was purely delighted by the dark humour, so I assumed more of the same from this one.
We have four women whom have been friends since Freshmen year at college. Elise (our main character), Julie, Mae and Molly. They are best friends who used to do everything together and now as adults are still very close, even though a lot of their relationship is built on ignoring deeper level stuff and keeping it pretty surface either out of fear of being othered or not wanting to have to actually address some deeply emotional issues.
Women’s relationships are always an interesting concept in a book. Girls can turn on each other so quickly and I think it’s a great commentary on the way that women have been raised in a patriarchal society to judge and gang up on each other in a toxic way… but I digress.
Julie goes missing and after her funeral, she returns. However, she is not the same Julie that walked out of her house to go hike Acadia National Park. Sure she looks the same, she sounds the same, but something is wrong with her teeth, and is that rotting garbage smell a bad perfume choice?
Elise knows that something is wrong but she was the only one that refused to believe that Julie was dead. Mae and Molly keep mentioning that something needs to be said but Elise doesn’t want to upset her best friend after she just got her back, but finally does decide to confront Jules and of course everything goes about as bad as you can imagine.
I loved this book as I love all of Rachel Harrison’s books. I have a dark sense of humour (that I use to cope with trauma) and I find her books to be wonderfully creepy and fun. If you’re the kind of person that sometimes makes a joke that makes other people uncomfortable, then come sit by me and you can borrow my copy of The Return.
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