Nobody has a “normal” family, but Vesper Wright’s is truly…something else. Vesper left home at eighteen and never looked back—mostly because she was told that leaving the staunchly religious community she grew up in meant she couldn’t return. But then an envelope arrives on her doorstep.
Inside is an invitation to the wedding of Vesper’s beloved cousin Rosie. It’s to be hosted at the family farm. Have they made an exception to the rule? It wouldn’t be the first time Vesper’s been given special treatment. Is the invite a sweet gesture? An olive branch? A trap? Doesn’t matter. Something inside her insists she go to the wedding. Even if it means returning to the toxic environment she escaped. Even if it means reuniting with her mother, Constance, a former horror film star and forever ice queen.
When Vesper’s homecoming exhumes a terrifying secret, she’s forced to reckon with her family’s beliefs and her own crisis of faith in this deliciously sinister novel that explores the way family ties can bind us as we struggle to find our place in the world.
There’s some bigger horror authors with new books coming out soon, and for some reason that gives me this panicky feeling about wanting to catch up on some of their backlist stuff I missed before the new book comes out.
My brain is just weird like that, I guess.
The two authors that immediately jump out at me in this micro-category of my own creation are Paul Tremblay and Rachel Harrison.
So, BLACK SHEEP! This one and SO THIRSTY are the only two I own that I haven’t read, and I was feeling like something culty.
There’s a certain element of comfort I’m beginning to find in Rachel Harrison’s books. She has a really distinctive voice to her writing, and there’s a familiarity amongst her protagonists. It’s like they’re different from one another, of course. But I could imagine them all in the same friend group, maybe?
Vesper Wright left home at eighteen, and has been on her own since. When we meet her, she’s waiting tables at a mediocre restaurant called Shortee’s (think Ultimate Potato Skins, giant sugary margaritas, and the servers in matching green polo shirts), and sort of sleepwalking through life. She doesn’t have many friends. She occasionally hangs out with one of her coworkers, but the two seem to barely like one another.
Vesper is just getting by, treading water, and keeping her walls up high. Because she left a very fucked up situation behind when she left the family farm: her family, including her scream queen mother, Constance Wright, are all part of a religious cult.
Vesper has fleeting memories of her father, but he wasn’t a big part of her life. And her mother, when she wasn’t away filming horror movies (which was most of the time), was extremely cold & distant.
But Vesper also has deeply fond memories of growing up, mostly to do with her cousin/best friend Rosie, and Brody, the only boy that Vesper had ever loved.
Which is why the sudden and mysterious invitation to Rosie & Brody’s wedding lands on Vesper’s doorstep like 500-megaton bomb.
They say you can never go home again, but that’s precisely what Vesper does.
And wow, shit gets messy.
Unpacking super messy family dynamics is what I think Rachel Harrison does best, and that skill is on full display in BLACK SHEEP. It was fascinating to watch how effortlessly Vesper slips back into life on the family farm. How easy it would be for her to sort of cave in & decide to move back home, and reintegrate. But she had her reasons for leaving and then some. And some dark & dangerous truths about her life are going to come out, and it gets fucking wild.
I had a blast with this one. Rachel Harrison writes with a ton of humor, generally speaking. But there was a moment relatively early in this book that honestly had me giggling hysterically. I won’t say what it was, but if you’ve read the book, you might know what I’m referring to.
Separate from the blend of humor and horror that Harrison brings to her work, I think what I love most is just the relatable, human messiness of her protagonists. There are really no conventional “metrics” by which Vesper has her shit together, and that’s super ok and relatable, because her life has been rough. She’s working on it. On herself. On being ok with who she is, despite the chaos of her life.
BLACK SHEEP was great! Anticipation is so high for Harrison’s upcoming time loop slasher, KISS SLAY REPLAY, which comes out in early September! I’ll definitely have time to squeeze in one (or maybe two) of her backlist books, and I think SO THIRSTY will be my next. Rachel Harrison deserves all the buzz & accolades, she’s one of the most distinctive voices in horror!
Grimdark Dad 