Trigger warning: Animal death, cannibalism, and gore.
Bless Rachel Harrison for always showing us the folly of bad marriages and toxic friendships. I really did enjoy this book, but thought the ending was so unrealistic and very unsatisfying. I wish Harrison had gone as darker as she had with the ending of The Return. And I think that she didn’t delve enough into Sloane/Naomi’s messed up friendship. That said, I did enjoy this.
So Thirsty follows Sloane who is leaving to go out of town to celebrate her upcoming birthday with her long-time best friend Naomi. Sloane has reasons for not wanting to leave her husband alone at their home and reasons for wanting to go. We find out quickly that Sloane is not happy, but is stuck and seems to want Naomi to be the one to figure things out for her. Once Sloane arrives at the exclusive resort, she finds herself worried and scared that something is following or watching her. And when Naomi strikes up a friendship with a random dude at a bar, she’s worried that it’s going to be very similar to what has happened before with Naomi. Things take a turn though when and Sloane finds her life changed forever.
Sloane is very much trapped in her life. She’s dreading getting older because “death” and constantly worried about how old she looks. She wants to make a change, but she doesn’t know how. And she hopes that time with her best friend will help her. But of course Naomi has her own worries and plans. While reading you are going to want to smack Naomi. She’s not really someone I could even see Sloane staying friends with after there is the reveal into Sloane’s college aged-past. But most of the book I think starts to turn into a straight up horror fest, so you don’t get to dwell on the messed up friendship that much. I also wish that we had spent more time on the people that Sloane and Naomi meet. There is bare bones history given of people, but it just is skimmed. We just seem to run from murder scene to murder scene for a lot of the book.
The plot was interesting, but I have to say the flow of the book starts to get really jumbled after we get to a certain point and I won’t lie, I did feel my attention jump around a bit here and there once we get to about the 60 percent mark. I just wanted something to happen.
The setting of the book moves all over the place (we go from the Finger Lakes, to North Carolina, or South Carolina, I honestly can’t recall).
The ending though as I said I wish had gone a different direction. It just didn’t feel like it fit the right mood of the book we were given at the onset.
P.S. don’t read this while eating.