My Five Word TL:DR Review : The Ultimate in Dysfunctional Families

I loved Black Sheep.  It was perfectly gripping, well written, shocking, horrifying and absolutely refreshingly unique.

As this story begins we make the acquaintance of Vesper.  I liked her immediately, she’s working a shift waitressing and putting up with, frankly, a lot more hassle than she should have to.  The result is she finds herself out of luck and out of a job.  Returning home that evening she finds a fancy invitation, to return to the home that she left six (or maybe it was more like 7) years ago, to the wedding of her best friend to her boyfriend and former love of her life.

Vesper can’t quite decide at first whether to return or not. She’s spent the past six years looking after herself and proving to herself that she can do so.  To go back to the fold, well, firstly it’s forbidden, if you leave you won’t be accepted back, and Vesper isn’t sure she wants to be back on the radar, so to speak.  But, at the same time, well, a little part of her can’t believe that nobody tried to find her sooner and let’s be honest, she’s a teeny bit curious to see how her former boyfriend and best friend get along, are they really in love – I mean, you don’t take a killer dress to a wedding unless you want to see if you can cause ripples.  All that being said, Vesper receives a surprisingly warm homecoming, well apart from her mother.

I’m not going to elaborate on the plot, for starters, there’s a very unexpected twist here that is revealed in the first quarter/third of the book and I don’t want to spoil that because it’s so good, also, there are a number of reviews already available that make a great job of laying out the foundations.

So, what I loved.

I love Rachel Harrison’s writing, the pacing here is perfect and on top of that and the amazing imagination at play I seriously don’t know how she makes it look so easy to write a novel that is surprisingly horror packed but at the same time brings humour and realistic dialogue full of banter.  In fact these almost contradictions continue to the central character.  Vesper is, well, mean on occasion, she can be quite brutally honest and she has shown a firm independence in stepping away from everyone and everything she knew and totally denying that way of life, and yet, at the same time she still seeks acceptance and love from those people.

I loved the plot.  It’s so refreshing.  The twist is brilliant and I certainly didn’t see it coming at all – which I adore.  At the end of the day, of course I like it when I second guess something, it makes me feel like my brain is doing it’s best to jump to educated (or, ahem, not) conclusions, but, I hold my hands up that I actually prefer it when I’m proved wrong.  I love a good surprise.

Now, the characters. Well, I mentioned I really liked Vesper.  She’s a character with layers.  She’s hard faced and vulnerable, a bit chaotic and really in need of love and acceptance.  At the same time she’s strong, stubborn and independent.  The characters surrounding her are also really easy to imagine.  Her mother, a cold woman, beautiful and successful (previously a horror movie actress), she was absent for much of Vesper’s upbringing, and what an unusual upbringing, in a very small, close knit community, brought up in a house that is a shrine to horror.  Vesper’s dad has also been absent for much of her life, disappearing mysteriously and although she would love to search him out her mother remains stoically close lipped about him.

The other thing that really stood out to me with this is just how good this could be if adapted to the big screen.  It has a cinematic quality to it, I was envisaging the entire book in my head in vivid detail, from the characters, the almost Addam’s Family-style house to the action scenes.

So, to recap, horror, humour, twists and turns, a great MC, superbly written and totally compelling.

I received a copy through Netgalley, courtesy of the publisher, for which my thanks.  The above is my own opinion.

My rating 5 of 5 stars