I'm afraid this one ended up being a DNF for me, I attempted to read it a couple of times but just couldn't stay invested in the story. I did enjoy some of the authors humour though.

This author slays me every time! Each book is different, while still having the same unsettling vibes. What I love most about this one, it’s a friendship story!!!!

Two besties, completely different in every way, but who love one another so completely!! Gah, I LOVEDDDD IT!

One night changes Sloane’s life so irrevocably that nothing will ever be the same. Dreading her birthday, her husband surprises her with a birthday getaway… with her bestie, not him. Equally anticipating and dreading this getaway, she hopes to make the most of it. She doesn’t get to spend much time with Naomi so she hopes for a weekend of luxury and relaxation.

She should have expected her wild child best friend to make so plans, she wasn’t expecting her to make plans with a strange group of people neither of them know.

The night goes from bad to worse and Sloane and Naomi race away having been forever changed. This books tests their friendship in multiple ways, bringing old fights to the surface, making them fully face things they never wanted to face.

And it was SO GOOD.

What I love most about Rachel Harrison's books is that she knows how to create awesome female leads. I'm a very character driven reader anyway but I thought Naomi and Sloane were brilliant.

I loved the gang of Vampires. They were weird, mysterious and just very cool. I fancied Henry abit too!!!

I liked how Naomi and Sloane were polar opposites and I think the emotional roller-coaster of navigating friendships was well captured.

Overall, this was a really fun, dark entertaining paranormal thriller. A fast paced page turner that i devoured in 24 hours!

Would highly recommend.

Loved this! Rachel writes such incredible stories and they are ones I never want to end! I loved the characters and the mood of this - once I’d started I couldn’t put it down.

Well, that two for two. I started this year with Black Sheep, and I’ve been nervous about reading anything else by Harrison. I’m glad I chose this as my next one. Brilliant.

Sloane Parker lives a pretty mundane existence. She’s chosen the safe option, a comfortable life - settling to avoid rocking the boat. Her husband surprises her with a weekend away for the birthday she’s dreading - another reminder her life is slipping away. Not with him though, but her best friend Naomi.

Naomi is Sloane’s polar opposite, she’s impulsive and lives in the moment. Not happy with just enough - she wants to truly live.

What starts off as a regular spa weekend quickly spirals into something else. Something neither one could ever imagine. A hedonistic party with strangers changes their lives forever. There’s no going back and now the pair must figure out what the future holds, assuming they have one.

It’s a hard book to review without giving the plot away. Although after writing this I did notice a pretty big spoiler on the cover, so maybe I’ve been too cautious!

Sloane and Naomi are brilliantly written characters - trying to navigate through the unknown as well as their fiery relationship. The others are intriguing and add so much to the story.

It’s dark and gruesome in parts - the humour creates a perfect balance. The pacing is spot on and I read it in two sittings. Hungry (or thirsty) for more!

It’s another book I’d definitely recommend and I can’t wait to start working through Harrison’s back catalogue - I’ve Such Sharp Teeth and Bad Dolls lined up.

A huge thanks to Rachel Harrison, Titan Books, and NetGalley for the advanced copy of this book for review consideration.  All opinions are my own.

Many thanks to NetGalley for my E-arc of this novel!

If in theory Rachel Harrison + vampires sounds like a juicy cocktail brimming with drama, romance, and of course, blood, then I am here to confirm that the theory very much lives up to the billing, and more. So Thirsty takes our main character Sloane from the calm, shallow waters of her mundane day to day life and thrusts her into the dangerous, choppy waters of the unknown. Sloane has long been going through the motions in her steady, loveless marriage, but this is all flipped on its head after a birthday night out with her outgoing best friend Naomi. So Thirsty is a novel of upheaval, self-discovery and personal growth, and this is matched by the story’s break-neck pace. Just as Sloane struggles to adapt to her rapidly altering life-state, so too do we struggle to match speed. Harrison’s latest is an intense little bundle of heart and heartbreak that critically examines the complexities of friendship and self-identity through the microscope of what it truly means to live and be happy.

For a story that widely discusses the importance of independence and finding joy and acceptance in your day to day life, it is difficult to imagine a more fitting medium to examine these ideas through than the vampire. Our bloodthirsty friends are renowned for living their lives at their own speed and at the whim of their own desires, desires that they are not afraid to quench at a moment’s notice. The story centres around Sloane and Naomi, and Naomi’s desire to help Sloane ‘live’ more. The vampiric lifestyle offers a fantastic foil for this dynamic, emphasising both Sloane’s personal troubles and the rift in her friendship with the more outgoing Naomi.

Indeed, the friendship between Sloane and Naomi was the real highlight of this novel for me. In these two, Harrison presents two women who love each other through thick and thin, no matter their differences. Childhood friendships are unique in their ability to survive and adapt through personal growth and any challenge that life inevitably throws at you. Long lasting friendships are special in this way, and I thought that Harrison did a great job at examining the rich tapestry of their friendship – both the good and the bad – and the ramifications of this on these new frightening developments in their lives. These are two women who ultimately just want the other to be the best version of themselves, and although this creates multiple uncomfortable moments and several difficult conversations, the intentions of both are always pure and love felt.

So Thirsty is a journey in not just quenching your thirst and fulfilling your basic human needs, but also in indulgence – finding satisfaction in your day-to-day life and freeing yourself of its guilt-riddled shackles. Reading this, it dawned on me how silly it is that coming-of-age stories only represent the mammoth leap between childhood and adulthood, blissful innocence and jaded knowledge. We as humans are always learning, always evolving, and our age should never be a restriction on that. So Thirsty offers an honest look into the mundane terrors of adulthood and loveless relationships, before crystallising into something beautiful in its simple yet important message: live life at your own speed, but savour every last drop.

Thank you to Netgalley for providing me an E-ARC copy in exchange for an honest review. I enjoyed this book! This is the first book I have read from Harrison but I know it won't be the last. I enjoyed this take on vampires, where some of the legend was involved but with some new twists. I think this book did very well at showing the gore of being a vampire. Of course there aren't just two bite marks on the neck, the neck has skin ripped out! Makes perfect sense to me. I also appreciated the comedy aspects that mixed in with the horror. It made the read more entertaining rather than full out disturbing. I would recommend this to others!

So thirsty by Rachel Harrison.
I loved the cover. This had a bit of a slow start but after a bit I did start to enjoy it. I did like Sloane and Naomi. Read in a few days. I liked the writing style. I wasn't sure about Tatiana, Elisa, Henry or Ilie. Didn't really like them. I wasn't sure about the ending.


Blurb.
Sloane Parker is dreading her birthday. She doesn’t need a reminder she’s getting older, or that she’s feeling indifferent about her own life. Her husband surprises her with a birthday-weekend getaway—not with him, but with Sloane’s longtime best friend, troublemaker extraordinaire Naomi. Sloane anticipates a weekend of wine tastings and cozy robes and strategic avoidance of issues she’d rather not confront, like her husband’s repeated infidelity.

But when they arrive at their rental cottage, it becomes clear Naomi has something else in mind. She wants Sloane to stop letting things happen to her, for Sloane to really live. So Naomi orchestrates a wild night out with a group of mysterious strangers, only for it to take a horrifying turn that changes Sloane’s and Naomi’s lives literally forever. The friends are forced to come to terms with some pretty eternal consequences in this bloody, seductive novel about how it’s never too late to find satisfaction, even though it might taste different than expected.

#sothirsty @rachelharrison #netgalley #titanbooks #generalfiction #horror

I read an eARC of this book on NetGalley so thank you to the author and publisher.

Another fantastic book from this author! I was pretty excited about the premise of this one and it didn’t disappoint.

What’s interesting about this one is the radical change the main character goes through, she is so used to being a people pleaser, to self-sacrificing for others. And the people around her are pretty selfish. They barely even consider her as a person even the ones who supposedly love her. Her best friend with whom most of the book takes place is even really selfish. The book takes place when the two of them go away for the main character (Sloane) birthday. Sloane automatically leaves the luxurious master bedroom for her friend and takes the box room even though it’s her birthday and her friend doesn’t think anything of it. Her selfish actions lead to terrifying consequences for Sloane to the point that she is forced to confront the way she’s let people walk all over her and why. I found this really resonated with me and was explored in such a subtle but powerful way.

I was glad to see Sloane taking more ownership of her life and cutting out the more toxic elements, even though the way it happens was quite dramatic. This book wasn’t super scary overall but there were a couple of really unnerving moments!

A really clever, well-written and entertaining novel! Very enjoyable.

Rachel Harrison and her blistering authorial voice take on vampires in her latest novel. Previously we’ve had witches, werewolves, and Satanists and now Harris delivers a vampire novel where we look more at what it means to be human than we do a bloodsucker.

Sloane has been gifted a weekend away to a small-town resort with her bestie, Naomi, from her husband. Free-wheeling Naomi returns from a tour of Europe managing her boyfriend’s band and attempts to free her old friend from her risk averse ways starting with flirting with a guy at the local bar they attend ending in an invite to the house party to end all house parties.

For anyone who is already familiar with Harrison’s work the setup and the pay off is not dissimilar to a lot of her novels, but here we have another strong character voice, this time filled with anxiety and a simmering depression. Even though our MC is a 36-year-old woman with a cheating husband, I felt extremely seen by this book in terms of worrying about aging and the desire to make your life smaller than it should be. The vampirism element of the story only exacerbates these elements as Sloane struggles to shake the shackles of the life she’s lived in human form.

Where it lacks the suspense of Cackle or the pinball narrative of Such Sharp Teeth, it is a contemplative novel layered in vampiric action. While the genre kicks are fun, the true horror lies in the humanity of the story and the ways in which people diminish themselves as a reaction to trauma no matter how consequential it may be.

Vampires are back baby! And in true Harrison form this tale is filled with feminist themes, complicated relationships and some truly horrific scenes.

When Sloane's husband buys her a weekend away for her birthday with her best friend, she imagines a weekend of drinking, cozy robes and avoiding the issues she doesn't want to talk about. But in true Naomi fashion, she has other plans in mind. Determined to bring Sloane out of her shell, convince her to live instead of simply wading through it, they find themselves at a wild party full of debauchery... and so much more. Things quickly spiral out of control and the pair's lives are changed forever, because forever is what they have, if they learn how to control their urges. But there is one, little problem... they're both so thirsty.

Sloane and Naomi read more like sisters than friends, they have that knowledge of each other, how to build each other up but also how to truly hurt one another, that can only come with years of knowing each other intimately. Sloane, who had a pretty wild entrance to adulthood, decided that the slower, more steady life of a married woman was what she wanted. Now she looks in the mirror and see's her old self slowly wasting away. Whereas Naomi wants to live life to it's fullest, travelling around Europe with her long time boyfriend and his band. The pair couldn't be more different from one another, Sloane the sensible, practical type and Naomi the wild, jump in head first type, but once that fateful night occurs, they find themselves changing in more ways than one. Their lives might be crashing down around them, but they also have a potentially brilliant future ahead, if they can just control their thirst.

It's definitely a unique foray in the Vampire genre, but I expected nothing less from Harrison. Her stories always centre around her female characters, their lives and how these experiences change them. She really delves into these relationships, showing the up's and downs, Sloane and Naomi certainly have their fair share of those, but also how much you would risk to save someone you love. How much would you be willing to change yourself, to become something other, if it meant saving the life of your best friend. It's dark and heartbreaking in parts, but it's also filled with Harrison's trademark wit, and I couldn't help but find myself laughing at certain parts, even the most horrific ones.

Harrison certainly knows how to build her tension. When I tell you I was just waiting in anticipation for the first part of the book, knowing what was to come and desperate for it to happen. It's creepy in the best way, and she brilliantly get's that eerie tension before they turn to become true horror after the event, once they realise what has happened to them. The turning itself is glorious and gory, but that's not where the horror stops, because after they are turned they have to choose how to live their lives with this ever encroaching hunger they can't seem to sate, meaning the horror turns from something external to become themselves. They become the monsters, the thing to be afraid of, the thing that can kill, and Harrison does a fantastic job at showing how they deal with this. The initial freak out, then trying to deal with the event, and the eventual acceptance of themselves as monsters.

Another modern-day horror hit for Harrison. Her satirical and witty writing style never fails to lighten even the most horrific scenes, and she certainly doesn't skimp on those. I really enjoyed her take on Vampires, merging the slightly stereotypical with her own, supernatural spin, making them beautifully horrying, the kind of people who you feel yourself drawn to even when your preservation senses are screaming danger. It's sexy and truly horrific in equal measure and I'm so excited to find out what she is planning next.

I really enjoy Rachel Harrison’s books but this one wasn’t my favourite. There is still a lot to love, but I will start off with some of my issues first. There will be some spoilers for the start of the book.

Consequences. Despite a number of very high profile violent incidents occurring over the timeframe of this novel, the main characters never come face to face with any real consequence. Any time something bad happens it’s just sort of never addressed beyond the fact that it’s in the past now.

Sloane and Henry. They have a sort of insta love relationship despite the fact that he Edward Cullen style watched her sleep and was directly responsible for her and her best friend’s death. This does actually get brought up in the book and Sloane shrugs it off.

These issues felt pretty glaring to me and I expected a very different ending from the very convenient one that we got. That being said, Rachel Harrison writes the female experience with utter perfection as always. Sloane’s relationship with Joel, and her general dissatisfaction in life, despite expecting something different in her thirties felt very real. Sloane regularly refers to herself as an ‘older woman.’ The idea of a thirty six year old woman being an ‘older woman’ is genuinely insane to me but I believe that was the point.

The fraught relationship between Sloane and Naomi was wonderful. There were so many times it could have turned cliche or predictable but this never happened. They were funny and relatable characters and everyone else felt like a caricature in comparison.

In conclusion I did enjoy So Thirsty, but it was my least favourite of Rachel Harrison’s feminist horrors. I would still recommend it to anyone who enjoys vampire horror. Or a good ‘women’s wrongs’ type of novel.

Vampire stories can often be dark and brooding, but So Thirsty brings the fun to the fanged subgenre. Best friends Sloane and Naomi are on a weekend getaway when things take a vampiric turn—totally uprooting both of their lives. Much of the book focuses on their fierce but flawed friendship, but things do get bloody and there’s also some romance.

I flew through this book thanks to Harrison’s easily digestible and often funny writing style. I personally wanted more descriptive moments of horror and more details about the vampires (their backstories, how they evade being found out, etc.). But for anyone wanting a fast-paced and lightly horrifying vampire tale, this one fits the bill!

I received an ARC of this book thanks to NetGalley and Titan Books in exchange for an honest review.

Harrison is a fairly new author to me and one whose work I am immensely enjoying. Black Sheep was one of my favourite books of the year. I thought The Return was a little lacking but I loved the themes and writing. So Thirsty is kind of a revisit to The Return, albeit with a different lens and focus.

So Thirsty is the story of two friends, Sloane and Naomi. Sloane is the calm, meeker of the two who is currently in a somewhat unhappy marriage. Naomi has always been wild and never thinks about the consequences of something before she does it. Whilst on a trip for Sloane's birthday, Naomi insists they go party with some strangers in an isolated house which triggers a chain of events leading to them both getting turned into vampires.

I did really enjoy both the writing and general atmosphere of this book. It continues the 'toxic friendship' line of thought from The Return, though I felt this could have been more strongly tied into the vampire aspect. Maybe the author wanted to avoid the obvious but it makes sense to link metaphorical bloodsucking with literal, no? Everything was still a little bit vague, a little bit abstract. Even by the end of the novel, I couldn't tell how Sloane really felt about Naomi or vice versa. I wanted a deeper exploration of the nuances of the friendship, of how a situation like that really affects people emotionally.

Having said that, this book is still well worth the read. I feel like Harrison is so close to releasing my favourite ever horror book about toxic female friendship. So Thirsty isn't quite that, but it is an interesting and strong vampire horror novel and those in themselves are rarities in my opinion. If you've not read anything by her before, I'd recommend Black Sheep over this but if you've enjoyed her other works, this is perfect to pick up

Overall Rating: 4/5 stars

Another great, fun read by Harrison.

This time we visit the world of the vampire in true Rachel Harrison style. This novel is full of humour sass, female friendship and complicated romantic relationships - all with a bit of added blood. This is a propulsive read as are all of its predecessors and I would certainly recommend. If you like Grady Hendrix you will love Rachel Harrison and this is as good a place to start as any.

So Thirsty is a novel about a woman whose dull suburban life is thoroughly thrown away when she becomes a vampire along with her best friend. Sloane didn't want a surprise trip for her birthday, but when her cheating husband says she's off to a remote luxury retreat with her best friend Naomi, she figures maybe she could do with it. When Naomi arranges them a night with mysterious strangers at an exclusive party in an attempt to get Sloane to live a little, they don't know that they are about to be changed forever.

Having read some of Harrison's previous novels, I was excited for this one and what her take on vampires was going to be. So Thirsty has her usual casual, fun style and story in which a female protagonist has to adapt to supernatural goings on, with the main narrative about Sloane and Naomi becoming vampires and Sloane finding herself again after settling down for something that didn't quite work for her. There's perhaps not as much as plot as you might expect, as it is mostly driven by character dynamics, but then again, quite a lot of vampire fiction is mostly based around vibes and newcomers adapting to being vampires rather than anything else particularly happening. If the book hadn't had an epilogue I would have definitely expected there was a sequel, as the ending is quite sudden after the relatively slow pace of the earlier part of the book.

So Thirsty is a novel exploring lasting female friendship and what happens as you get older, but also a novel about vampires who like sex and fun parties, and about how the combination of these might help someone stuck in a rut to find new excitement. It's silly and fun (and would make a great vampire film), with a lot of good things packed in (I love the dream mall idea) and some great vampire moments, but I think I wanted more of it, more gore and sex and exploration of vampires living a wild "life" as an alternate for Sloane and Naomi.

Really enjoyed this book. I love a vampire story and I love Rachel Harrison’s writing!
I just wish it was longer!

This is my first Rachel Harrison book and I was thoroughly delighted. Vampires are my buzz words these days- so anything and I mean anything vampiric and I am so into it. So Thirsty felt like a paranormal thriller to me, once you get into it- it feels like there is a lot going on and you are on the edge of your seat, asking yourself what will happen next.
If you are a fan of horror I would recommend, I'd say its more on the mild side of the horror scale (hence the paranormal thriller thing) but still overall a fun read.

So excited for this one after reading her other books.
This one was very much a roller coaster for me. To start with I wasn't sure of how I felt about the characters and where the story was going. Then once things became dramatic and was introduced to Henry, I was sucked it. Until the end which wasn't my favourite, but I completely forgot all about the dream mall and I thoroughly enjoyed that coming back around.

This book, as you can guess from the title, is about vampires. I can't even help it, I love a good vampire book. Harrison has such a way with her words that she can write about vampires, that have been written about to death, and still get me sunken into the story. Special thanks for creating Henry. I think he's my new favourite book boyfriend. I'm completely in love and would like him to take me for a shower. Brilliant characters and storyline as always. Love Harrisons writing

Going into this I knew nothing except vampires. I'm unsure if this worked against me in the end or not.
I had no idea where this book was going the whole time. I'm not sure if I was ever truly intrigued to find out.
The writing thankfully was fast paced enough that at no point did this feel like it was dragging. But at the same time I wasn't wowed.