Audiobook Review: Kiss Slay Replay by Rachel Harrison

I received a review copy from the publisher. This does not affect the contents of my review and all opinions are my own.

Kiss Slay Replay by Rachel Harrison

Mogsy’s Rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

Genre: Horror

Series: Stand Alone

Publisher: Penguin Audio (September 1, 2026)

Length: 10 hrs and 27 mins

Author Information: Website

Narrator: Charlotte Lobdell

I’ve been reading Rachel Harrison since her debut The Return first burst onto the scene, and I remember thinking even then that she was an author to watch. Many more books later, she’s continued to do what she does best: write what I’ve come to think of as chick lit horror—stories that center on the lives, relationships, anxieties, and everyday concerns of modern women while throwing some seriously horrifying situations at them. The theme has remained recognizable from book to book, but Harrison has managed to keep finding new ways to experiment with the genre, and Kiss Slay Replay is a pretty perfect example of that.

The story follows Willa Sullivan, who is attending the wedding of two of her best friends. Unfortunately, what should be a happy weekend is complicated by the presence of her ex-fiancé, bringing back all the memories of their messy breakup. Worse, she’s completely blindsided when she discovers he’s brought a date. Overwhelmed, Willa escapes into the woods near the wedding venue to catch her breath. Things start looking up when she stumbles upon Danny, the groom’s charming and single childhood best friend, and the two hit it off. But whatever might come of that is cut short when a masked killer suddenly begins attacking the wedding guests. Willa and Danny try to survive the night, protecting the people they care about, but when the violence quickly spirals out of control, they ultimately lose the fight. The last thing Willa remembers is dying before everything fades into darkness.

But then Willa wakes up in her own bed at home, and it’s the morning of the wedding all over again. At first, she assumes the previous night was just an incredibly vivid nightmare and is mostly relieved to be alive. But as the day unfolds, she arrives at the wedding venue and is hit with an increasingly unsettling sense of déjà vu. Familiar conversations and events play out almost exactly as she remembers them, making it harder and harder to believe it was all a dream. When the wedding once again descends into carnage and Willa wakes up back at the beginning of the day, she realizes she’s trapped in a time loop and doomed to repeat the same horrifying events over and over. Each attempt to change the outcome brings new dangers and variations on the nightmare, forcing Willa to figure out what’s happening, why she’s trapped, and how she can finally break the cycle.

Now, you might think a book built around the same day repeating over and over would get pretty tedious, but Harrison makes the concept work for much the same reason Groundhog Day works (and there’s even a scene that gives a nod to the movie). The repetition is the point, and the fun comes from seeing what changes each time Willa goes through the day, except instead of learning life lessons through increasingly awkward encounters, she’s getting brutally murdered in increasingly ridiculous ways. Harrison also has fun playing with different horror scenarios and tropes, so there’s always something new waiting around the corner.

That said, this still didn’t quite feel like Harrison at her best. The repetition does eventually start to wear a little thin, because there’s only so much mileage you can get out of variations on the same day, with the same people in the same places. Eventually, things start going off the rails as Willa tries to avoid the day altogether, which admittedly does help shake things up a bit. However, even as the different scenarios kept the story moving along, to some extent they also felt like they were there primarily to give Harrison another horror trope to play with rather than because they meaningfully advance the story. It’s entertaining, but after a while, I found myself more aware of the mechanics of the premise than the story itself.

I also wasn’t completely sold on the ending. After all the buildup and all the increasingly bizarre iterations of Willa’s nightmare, the resolution felt a little rushed, almost like Harrison had reached the point where she needed to wrap things up with just something, anything. Sure, in the end it got the job done, but didn’t have quite the impact I was hoping for, and compared to the creativity of the premise itself, the final explanation felt surprisingly straightforward.

Still, I had a good time. I also listened to the audiobook, which I think was a particularly good fit for this kind of story. Charlotte Lobdell’s narration brought plenty of personality to the characters, and her voice acting helped distinguish the different moods as the story cycled through the same events again and again. Shifts between the lighter, more comedic moments and the darker, more gruesome scenes were handled really well, which added to the overall entertainment factor. It was an enjoyable listen and definitely enhanced the experience for me.

While not my favorite of hers, Kiss Slay Replay is still very much a Rachel Harrison book, with the same combination of horror and humor I’ve come to expect from her work. More importantly, it’s a genuinely unique spin on the time-loop setup, and the author clearly had a lot of fun seeing just how many ways she could make one wedding go horribly, horribly wrong. And honestly, that comes through pretty clearly. This feels like a book that was a blast to write, which in turn makes it an entertaining book to read.