KISS SLAY REPLAY — Rachel Harrison’s time-loop wedding slasher mixes grief work with genre twists

# Premise and setup

# Inciting supernatural event At the wedding Willa dies along with her closest friends. Instead of a single tragic outcome, she wakes up back in her Jersey City bed the next morning and relives the wedding weekend. The cycle repeats: death at the wedding, reset to the morning before. Each iteration gives her another chance to change actions and outcomes.

# What the loops do narratively The time-loop structure performs three concrete functions:

• It supplies a slasher-horror setup (masked murderer, wedding venue) that can be replayed with variations.
• It creates space for problem-solving: Willa develops and tests new strategies to survive and to save her friends.
• It lets the protagonist confront emotional material related to the breakup, putting grief and resentment into direct contact with life-or-death stakes.

# How this fits with Harrison's previous work Rachel Harrison has previously reimagined horror tropes in novels such as So Thirsty (2024) and Such Sharp Teeth (2022), where classic monsters were reframed with contemporary and feminist inflections. Play Nice (2025) used haunted-house conventions to express emotional states that can be hard to articulate in everyday language. Kiss Slay Replay returns to a more conventional horror trope—time-loop plus slasher—but retains Harrison's interest in emotional interiority.

# Strengths the reviewer highlights Kirkus calls Harrison a "fresh voice in horror" and notes that she adds "nifty twists" to the time-loop premise. The initial setup—combining a breakup, an ex at a wedding, and a masked killer at an indie-rustic venue—creates immediate tension and genre expectation. The book is described as enjoyable and entertaining, with the loops enabling inventive problem-solving and character work.

# Criticisms the reviewer raises The repetition that is intrinsic to time-loop stories eventually feels redundant here. As the violent scenarios escalate, the reviewer finds the horrors inching toward silliness, which undermines emotional stakes. The overall assessment: not entirely fulfilling, but still pretty fun.

# Stakes and reader expectations Readers should expect a slasher-time-loop hybrid that balances gore and dark humor with attempts at emotional realism. If you value inventive mechanics and short-term entertainment, the book offers those. If you need sustained emotional payoff across repeated sequences, the loop framework may start to wear thin for you.

# Practical takeaway for potential readers Pick this up if you like horror that plays with structure and likes iterations of problem-solving under escalating, genre-specific threats. Skip or temper expectations if you want a single, sustained emotional arc without repeated scenes that progressively trade dread for outrageousness.

# Publication details noted by the reviewer Kirkus lists a pub date of Sept. 8, 2026, a page count of 336, and Berkley as the publisher.