Kiss Slay Replay by Rachel Harrison: Time Loops, Bubblegum Horror, and Getting Murdered at a Wedding
What if Groundhog Day took place at a wedding, every reset introduced a completely different horror movie, and your repeated murder somehow became the thing that finally got you over your ex?
That is essentially the experience of reading Kiss Slay Replay by Rachel Harrison.
This week, Elyse and Katy are talking time loops, masked killers, supernatural ravens, zombies, aliens, questionable wedding accommodations, and the unexpected discovery of a genre we did not know we needed: bubblegum horror.
And, perhaps most importantly, Katy has learned that when you like an author, you can simply...read more of their books.
Revolutionary.
Before We Get Into the Book...
Elyse has a theory.
Somewhere in a parallel universe, another version of her invented time travel and is currently trying to communicate with her through an increasingly specific collection of media.
First there was Travelers. Then Exit Party. Then Fringe. Now Kiss Slay Replay. And next we're reading Broken Rival by Tessa Bailey, which also involves time travel.
Coincidence?
Katy says yes.
Elyse says Parallel Universe Elyse may be trying to warn us all about something.
Meanwhile, Katy has made her own major discovery: if you read a book by an author and really like it, you can simply go read their entire backlist instead of constantly chasing the next new release.
Which is exactly what happened here.
Because Kiss Slay Replay may have officially turned Katy into a Rachel Harrison reader.
Spoiler-Free: What Is Kiss Slay Replay About?
Willa Sullivan is headed to her best friend's picture-perfect wedding in the Hudson Valley, and emotionally, she is already hanging on by a thread.
She recently called off her own wedding to Ravi, her partner of eight years. Now Ravi is attending this wedding too.
With a date.
Excellent.
Willa already feels like everyone around her has moved forward while she's somehow been left behind. Her friends are coupled up. She's living alone in Jersey City. She's second-guessing the breakup. Even her cat seems to prefer Ravi.
Then she meets Danny, the groom's wealthy, attractive childhood friend, and thinks maybe a hot little wedding fling is exactly what she needs.
Unfortunately, a masked killer shows up and murders everyone.
Including Willa.
Then she wakes up Friday morning.
Again.
And again.
And again.
Except every time the day resets, Willa isn't necessarily trapped in the same horror movie.
She's trapped in an entirely new one.
So...How Scary Is It?
This was a major concern for Elyse, Genre'd's resident person who would prefer not to be frightened.
And we have good news.
Someone online described Kiss Slay Replay as bubblegum horror, and honestly? That's exactly it.
There are legitimately gruesome and creepy moments, particularly in the first loop, but this isn't relentlessly terrifying psychological horror.
It's funny. It's self-aware. It's occasionally ridiculous.
At one point Willa is facing a horrifying masked slasher.
At another point she's basically getting murdered by a janky knockoff Godzilla.
It's a range.
If you like thrillers but usually avoid horror because you assume it's going to be too scary, this might actually be a very good entry point.
The Vibes
Groundhog Day meets a slasher movie meets a wedding weekend from hell.
But with a very current, pop-culture-heavy sensibility.
There are phones. Social media. True crime references. Horror movie references. Friends behaving exactly how your friends would probably behave if supernatural ravens suddenly started eating people at a wedding.
And underneath all of that is a surprisingly grounded story about being in your thirties and realizing the life you thought you wanted might not actually be the life you want.
The Characters
Willa
Our anxious, recently single heroine.
Willa called off her wedding only three weeks before it was supposed to happen, moved back to the Northeast, and is now trying to figure out what exactly comes next.
She knows her relationship with Ravi wasn't right, but that doesn't mean she's stopped questioning whether she made a terrible mistake.
And the wedding does absolutely nothing to help.
Everyone around her seems settled. She's been given the tiny single-person room in the shared cabin. Her ex brought another woman.
Willa is spiraling.
Which is important because this book isn't really about Willa figuring out how to survive a horror movie.
It's about Willa figuring out how to trust herself again.
Ravi
Willa's ex-fiancé.
He's angry because from his perspective, the breakup came out of nowhere.
But the more we learn about their relationship, the clearer it becomes that Willa had legitimate reasons for leaving.
They wanted different things, especially when it came to marriage, children, and what their future would look like.
Willa's problem isn't necessarily that she wants Ravi back.
It's that she doesn't trust herself enough to believe she was right to leave.
Cassie
One of Willa's best friends and the embodiment of what we can only describe as vape-in-the-bra energy.
She's married, has kids, and is treating this wedding weekend as a rare opportunity to vape while her husband gets extremely high.
We support her.
Danny
The groom's wealthy childhood friend.
Hot. Charming. A little mysterious.
Exactly Katy's type.
Unfortunately.
Willa meets him while escaping the awkwardness of the wedding and immediately sees the potential for a very convenient rebound.
But this book does something much more interesting with Danny than we expected.
More on that after the spoiler alarm.
🚨 SPOILER ALARM 🚨
Everything below this point contains major spoilers for Kiss Slay Replay.
Go read the book, get murdered by Godzilla a few times, and then come back.
Every Loop Is a Different Horror Movie
One of the smartest decisions in the book is that Willa doesn't simply relive the exact same massacre.
The horror changes.
We get:
A masked slasher
Supernatural ravens
Zombies
An alien invasion
Murderous sprites
Godzilla, basically
And eventually, Death itself
The first slasher sequence is legitimately disturbing, especially when the killer starts collecting his victims' eyes.
But once we realized every loop was going to be a completely different horror scenario?
We were in.
It keeps the time-loop structure from feeling like Willa is simply repeating the same sequence over and over.
And some of the loops are genuinely hilarious.
Particularly when Willa realizes she's about to be killed by freaking Godzilla and is basically just annoyed about it.
Why Is Willa Stuck in the Time Loop?
The answer comes from the last person Willa expects to help her: Ravi's date.
Throughout the book, there's something slightly strange about her. Eventually we learn why.
She attended the venue back when it was a summer camp and got stuck in the same wormhole-driven time loop herself.
She was obsessed with boys at the time, so her loops revolved around kissing them.
Another person who experienced the phenomenon was obsessed with superheroes, so his loops involved repeatedly saving the world.
Willa?
Her friends told her to watch horror movies and true crime to distract herself from the breakup.
So naturally, her brain has decided to kill her repeatedly.
Seems fair.
But Ravi's date also knows something important.
There is a way out.
Willa has to go back through the wormhole.
The Real Point of the Time Loop
The wormhole may explain the physics. Emotionally, though, Willa can't escape until she deals with the thing she's been avoiding.
As the book puts it:
The only way out is through.
Willa has spent the entire aftermath of her breakup replaying the decision.
Was leaving Ravi a mistake?
Should she have stayed?
What if she never finds someone else?
What if everyone else moves forward and she doesn't?
The time loop turns all of that emotional replaying into something literal.
She has to live the same day over and over until she finally understands that she didn't make the wrong decision.
She ended a relationship that wasn't right for her.
And being alone afterward doesn't make that choice wrong.
Danny Is Not the Hero
This was one of our favorite choices in the book.
Because we absolutely expected Danny to become the romantic hero.
Maybe he'd remember something from another loop.
Maybe he'd help Willa solve the mystery.
Maybe they'd escape together.
Nope.
Danny is basically just a hot guy at a wedding.
And that's the point.
Willa initially invests so much importance in whether Danny wants her because she's terrified of rejection and desperate for some indication that she's still desirable after ending her engagement.
Then she gets rejected.
In a time loop.
While knowing she's probably going to die shortly anyway.
Brutal.
Eventually she flips the entire dynamic and manages to out-fuckboy the fuckboy.
When Danny starts dangling his "I'll take you to Japan for sushi" line again, Willa essentially tells him she's not that interested.
Suddenly he's much more intrigued.
Funny how that works.
But by the end, it doesn't really matter whether Danny becomes something serious.
Maybe they'll hook up.
Maybe they'll date.
Maybe they'll never see each other again.
Willa is finally okay with not knowing.
Because Danny was never the point.
Willa Had to Save Herself
This is where Kiss Slay Replay surprised us.
It could have very easily become a romance. Instead, the emotional payoff is Willa realizing that she doesn't need Ravi, Danny, or anyone else to validate the choices she's made.
She chose to leave a relationship that wasn't working. She was right. Her friends still love her. Her life isn't over because she's single in her thirties. And when she finally breaks the loop, she does it herself.
There is no romantic hero coming to save her. She is the hero.
The Theme We Actually Loved
For all the monsters, wormholes, and ridiculous deaths, Kiss Slay Replay is really a book about what happens when you make a difficult choice and then don't trust yourself enough to live with it.
Willa keeps replaying her breakup long before she ever enters the literal time loop. The loop just forces her to finally confront what she's been avoiding. Sometimes there isn't a secret answer. Sometimes a relationship can contain love and still be wrong. Sometimes ending something hurts even when ending it was the right decision.
And sometimes starting over at 31 isn't failure.
It's just starting over.
Our Ratings
Elyse: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️½
The only thing keeping this from five stars was the fact that, for approximately five minutes while driving alone in the dark, Elyse was genuinely scared.
And she did not appreciate that. Otherwise? Huge success.
Katy: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Katy briefly considered taking off half a star because the time-loop structure started feeling slightly repetitive.
Then she remembered that she freaking loved the book.
So five stars it is.
More importantly, this book may have completely changed her perception of horror. She's already reading Cackle. The Rachel Harrison backlist era has begun.
Final Thoughts
Kiss Slay Replay gave us something we weren't really expecting: a horror novel for people who aren't totally convinced they're horror readers.
It's tense without being relentlessly terrifying.
Funny without undercutting its emotional moments.
And beneath the supernatural ravens, aliens, zombies, wormholes, and bargain-bin Godzilla is a genuinely relatable story about what it feels like to start over when everyone around you seems to have their life figured out.
Also, we finally figured out the comp.
This whole genre is giving Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Scary, but funny.
Supernatural, but grounded in very human problems.
Big monsters on the outside. Big feelings underneath.
Apparently this is what we've been looking for all along.
Fast Facts
Book: Kiss Slay Replay
Author: Rachel Harrison
Genre: Horror comedy / supernatural horror
Our newly adopted subgenre: Bubblegum horror
POV: Willa
Setting: Hudson Valley wedding weekend
Major tropes/themes: Time loop, starting over in your thirties, self-discovery, choosing yourself, wedding weekend from hell
It's giving: Groundhog Day, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, pop fiction with a body count
Scare level: Horror for people who might normally say, “Absolutely not, that's too scary.”
What We're Reading Next
Next up: Broken Rival by Tessa Bailey.
We've read Tessa Bailey romance before, but this time she's taking us into a dystopian story involving time travel.
And, unfortunately for Katy, brother lovers. Her least favorite trope. Except when The Vampire Diaries does it, apparently.
We'll discuss.
Join the Conversation
Would you survive Willa's time loop?
More importantly, which one are you choosing if you HAVE to get murdered repeatedly: supernatural ravens, zombies, aliens, murderous sprites, or Godzilla?
And have we officially discovered a new Genre'd category with bubblegum horror?
Come tell us.
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Listen & Follow
Listen to the full Kiss Slay Replay episode wherever you get your podcasts.
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Read widely. Judge freely.
FAQ: Kiss Slay Replay by Rachel Harrison
What is Kiss Slay Replay about?
Kiss Slay Replay follows Willa Sullivan, who attends her best friend's wedding shortly after ending her own engagement. After a masked killer attacks the reception and murders her, Willa wakes up at the beginning of the same day. Each time the day repeats, she finds herself facing a different horror scenario and must figure out why she's trapped in the loop and how to escape.
Is Kiss Slay Replay scary?
It has genuine horror and gore, but we found it much more accessible than traditional psychological or extreme horror. The humor, absurdity, and changing horror scenarios keep it from feeling relentlessly frightening. “Bubblegum horror” feels like a particularly good description.
Is Kiss Slay Replay a romance?
Not really. There is a romantic subplot involving Danny, but the book is much more focused on Willa's personal growth after ending her engagement. The fact that the romance doesn't become the solution is actually one of the things we liked most.
What are the main themes in Kiss Slay Replay?
The book explores starting over, trusting your own decisions, fear of rejection, friendship, being single in your thirties, and learning to move forward after a major life change.
Is Kiss Slay Replay good for readers who don't normally read horror?
We think so. If you enjoy thrillers, dark comedy, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or supernatural stories but are hesitant about full-on horror, this could be a great place to start. Just know there are still some gruesome scenes, especially during the first horror loop.
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