As the title might indicate, Harleigh Beck's Sweet Taste of Betrayal is all about conflict - not only between the characters on the printed page, but within this novella's readers, too. I certainly came away conflicted, and in the hours since finishing this slim story I'm still not entirely sure how to process everything.
Beck's latest starts off simply enough, and with a tried-and-true horror premise that you know damn well isn't going to end nicely for anybody involved. Eighteen-year-old Layla has rented a rundown cabin in the woods to celebrate her birthday with a group of friends. It's not long before they've broken out the suitcase of liquor and best-friend Maddy tells them about the cabin's supposed legend that she read online - every year, three masked men come to cabin to kill the teenagers visiting there! The friends laugh and rag on all the holes in this legend - like, do the killer's check the reservations to make sure horny teens are staying there on the anniversary - and Beck lets us in on the joke early on. Yes, it's a flimsy swiss-cheese-like premise, chockful of loose ends never to be resolved, just like the best urban legends. And, just like those terrific urban legends, it's all fluff right up until three masked men appear on the porch bearing knives.
After that, Beck leans hard into the erotic elements of Sweet Taste of Betrayal, presenting a horror novella that reads a bit like the lovechild of The Strangers and The Devil in Miss Jones. Fair warning, though, to heed the novella's content warnings, as Beck does not shy away from gang rape and some very highly dubious consent as many sexual acts are performed under the threat of death and/or at knife point. And that's about where my initial moments of internal conflict began sounding the alarm (even over my confusion as to why in the hell Layla invited her cheating ex-boyfriend along for the vacay).
Layla is subjected to a night of sexual assault, but it's not long before she begins to twist the acts into moments of sexual liberation and empowerment. Beck's scenarios play out as an extended rape fantasy, but as the story progresses you begin to understand her logic, as well as what Layla's about-face means for the plot, and the how's and why's behind the home invasion that's been orchestrated. It all adds up to some very dark, albeit very titillating, erotic horror, and Beck deftly balances the scales as Sweet Taste lies somewhere between being something to enjoy versus something to endure.
My sole complaint is that Beck relies a little too heavily on delivering one too many twists, and the book's big last-minute reveal relies one of my most passionately hated tropes. I won't spoil it here, but I do wish Beck had committed to the bit all the way through to the end, as I found myself a bit ticked off in the book's final moments.
Sweet Taste of Betrayal is a twisted, uncomfortable, thorny read, and one hell of a page turner for it. Beck delivers one shock after another, confronting readers with surprising revelations and mounting betrayals one chapter after another, and it kept me glued to my Kindle for a solid hour. This thing's a page-turner, and I refused to set it aside until I was finished! Although the ending didn't work for me and was, in fact, a betrayal in its own right (ha!), Beck certainly knows how to intrigue and confidently develop her ideas in challenging and complicated ways, cutting away at readers mores as keenly as her characters knife to death one another. This one's a dark, duplicitous read, and I'm eager to see what Beck comes up with next.