I’ve heard quite a bit about her books, but Black Sheep by Rachel Harrison is the first one I’ve actually picked up and I don’t know what to think about this. I loved it – this felt like a solid 4.5 stars – and then we get that ending and it kinda ruined everything for me. But, before I let the milk sour, let’s talk about everything that went so right!
Main character Vesper is having A Time at her food service job. It’s your typical horrible work with your typical horrible customers and your typical horrible boss. She gets fired and things go from bad to worse when she gets home and sees a wedding invitation to come back home to the family compound as her cousin (who was more like a sister growing up) AND HER FIRST TRUE LOVE get married. Oh boy when I tell you I was HEATED for Vesper reading that. All I could think was yes, go, get that revenge. Screw them. Like, the NERVE of her cousin to go and usurp Vesper’s man and then invite her to the wedding. Obviously, going to the wedding to get revenge is a bad idea. Especially considering her family are religious zealots/cultists whom she had to escape from years prior (and she invited said first true love to leave with her but he didn’t. 😒)
Now, when I mentioned religious zealots/cultists, you’ve probably already conjured an idea. Maybe you’re thinking how very Children of God/People’s Temple. That’s definitely what I was thinking. And yet, it absolutely is not that which made for such a delectable little treat early on in the book. I loved how it turned my expectations against me and forced me to rethink motives and connections. Though, the deeper we get, the more we realize that it doesn’t matter who is worshipped, all extremists eventually ache for the same ending and will do whatever it takes to get there, regardless of who must be sacrificed to do so. It’s this religious theme that adds the horror. Understated at first as we hear just how enthralled and brainwashed everyone in the family is. Then, it smothers you as you see just how far they are willing to go to reach their ends. That dinner scene and the realization of what happened afterwards – trauma!
It’s really hard to write this review because I don’t want to spoil anything for anyone going into it. That said, Vesper’s story is just so sad. She grew up wanting to be loved, wanting her mother to love her and being unable to understand why she couldn’t. She grew up wanting to be enough for her dad to stay and blamed herself and her family when he couldn’t. It’s so hard to grow up never being enough and never knowing why. It carries through everything Vesper does. It feeds into that rage when her first true love goes to marry her cousin. Even when her family returns to reconcile with her, Vesper is plagued by that knowledge that she is not enough. And when her mother does something we the reader can interpret as kindness, Vesper can’t because it isn’t kind or loving. Vesper is simply such a strong character with deep set abandonment and attachment issues that it’s hard to fault her for her attitude, or her willingness to return.
Now, the ending, horrible. I hated it. There was a scene where I thought it would’ve been the perfect close to the story. Two sheep meet having survived the carnage they were raised for. It would’ve been so poetic to end it there. Instead, we get an extra scene that takes place sometime after the events of that weekend (was it just a weekend? I think it was…) It adds literally nothing to the story. There isn’t going to be a sequel. This isn’t a romance where an epilogue years down the line is needed to confirm the happily ever after. It shows a small moment of closure and an even smaller hint that things haven’t been resolved. We didn’t need that. We could understand all of that with the sheep ending. It literally just ruined so much for me, when everything else was so strong and punchy and visceral.
With the spooky October season here, I definitely recommend reading Black Sheep by Rachel Harrison. There is a horror here that begins in the normalcy of the circumstances and just how easy it would be to find yourself in that situation. That’s where the horror lay for me – not in the farcical final church scene, but in the acts of normalcy that can happen daily – the gaslighting, the lies of love, the manipulation, the wrath, the utter desperation to be loved and accepted. That’s what is horrifying.
