Every wedding guest’s worst nightmare is on repeat in this wild and twisty new horror novel from the New York Times bestselling author of So Thirsty and Play Nice.

It’s the picture-perfect wedding The venue is dreamy, the weather is beautiful, love is in the air—and Willa Sullivan is having a bad time. She’s excited to celebrate her best friends finally having the big wedding they’ve always wanted, but this is the first time she’s seen her ex-fiancé in months, and he brought a date. Everything feels off, like she stumbled into an alternate universe. But things start to look up when Willa meets Danny, the groom’s charming and single childhood best friend. When they sneak off together, their rendezvous is interrupted by a masked killer terrorizing the reception. Willa and Danny fight to save the ones they love and survive the night, but the killer is unrelenting. A final girl, Willa is not.

Or is she? She wakes up and it’s the morning of the wedding. She just had the most intense nightmare of her life. Only as the day unfolds, there are some uncanny coincidences that make her question whether it was really a dream, déjà vu, or something more sinister. After a horrifying turn of events, Willa comes to understand that she’s stuck in a loop of carnage and terror that she must learn how to escape or else suffer a fate worse than death—being an eternal wedding guest.

I received an advance copy of this book courtesy of the publisher. All thoughts are my own.

Rachel Harrison’s books just keep getting better, and she seriously keeps finding new ways to one up herself. I’ve read everything she’s written, and I devoured Play Nice last year, thinking at the time it was the best thing she’d ever put out. This one just took that title away.

Willa arrives at her best friend’s wedding expecting a beautiful, romantic day, but instead she’s blindsided by seeing her ex fiancé and his date there. Then she meets Danny, the groom’s best friend, and the two of them sneak away together during the reception. That’s when a masked killer shows up and starts slashing their way through the wedding party. Willa and Danny fight to survive and protect the people they love, but the killer is tenacious and ends up killing them as well. Just when she thinks her life is over, she wakes up. It’s the morning of the wedding again, and she assumes she just had the most intense nightmare of her life, until small, uncanny details throughout the day start convincing her it might have been something more than a dream. Eventually it becomes clear she’s actually trapped in a loop of horror movie-level terror, and she has to figure out how to break free before she’s stuck reliving this wedding (and being slaughtered every night) for eternity.

I’ve read plenty of books that use the time-loop trope (usually in the romance space) and I generally enjoy them, but they tend to loop just a few too many times to the point that it gets annoying. That is not the case here at all. Harrison is so clever with how she handles each loop that I actually could have kept reading through a few more of them without getting tired of it. It never once felt repetitive or dragged out, which is genuinely impressive given how tricky this device usually is to sustain.

I also loved the tone and the pacing was perfect. This book is bloody, a little campy, and just consistently fun from start to finish. It never takes itself too seriously, but it also doesn’t sacrifice real tension or genuine horror in the process. The characters carried the whole thing for me, and with each loop I found myself hoping Willa would find her inner final girl and finally make it out of the loop alive.

I did a tandem read on this one, and Charlotte Lobdell’s narration was spot on. She captured Willa’s voice so well that it genuinely felt like listening to someone recount their own real life story rather than a performance.

I loved the characters, I loved the story, and I already can’t wait for the actual release so I can buy a finished copy for my shelves. Highly recommended, especially if you love a bloody, campy horror comedy with a time loop that actually knows how to use the trope in a way that doesn’t wear itself out.