After growing up with her dysfunctional parents, Ophelia vowed she would never get married and end up miserable like them, but when her mother develops dementia, she starts to feel like dying alone isn’t such a good option. Then she meets Luke, a handsome man her mother would approve of, so she quickly agrees to marry him, but things get complicated during wedding planning at his parents creepy vineyard. Trying to manage her life and get her mother settled into a care home gets complicated, and soon Ophelia is unravelling as her impeding wedding plans derail her.

This is a debut novel from Mary Berman, who is a writer based in Philadelphia. Until Death is a first person narrative, where we are in the mind of our main character and are drawn into her thought process as it unravels over the course of the book. It’s a horror story that’s darkly comic, sometimes snarky and quippy, and that at times pokes a little fun at the wedding industry and it’s extravagances. It also has a little romance, too.

The horror elements of this book come from the desperate mind of Ophelia and something very wrong at the heart of the vineyard. It’s been planted on land that used to be a place she and her father sometimes drove to together, and the vines have been transplanted from Italy. From the start, there’s some odd things about the place. The vines themselves don’t behave normally and have a strange miasma around them, and there’s also a chapel at the centre of the place that’s been brought from the old country and rebuilt there, and is lined with strange, violent imagery. And, most sinister, the animals in the area behave very strangely too. (There’s some dark imagery involving animals in this book, you’ve been warned) The plants and vines of the place are almost a character in their own right in this story.

I really enjoyed this book. I found it really entertaining. Ophelia is pretty hopeless and in some ways her own worst enemy because she lives an unexamined life. Her parents marriage was abusive. Her father was physically abusive and her mother was controlling and manipulative. She loves both her parents, but her inability to break away from them and launch her own life is part of the reason why she isn’t thriving. She’s in the process of writing a book, which is her dream, but it’s about them, like so much in her life, and the finishing the ending and publishing it feels like a betrayal, so she can’t seem to make herself do it. A character like this could be really annoying to spend time with as a reader, but the author makes sure to make her a person who is not a victim and to also make her funny, quippy. I felt like she was very relatable, even while she was making decisions I never would or even while she was slowly coming apart. She’s a really well defined character.

This books is bonkers and a bit insane, at heart, in the best way. First of all, the vineyard and the vines, and they way they impact people, is so creepy and gross. It’s wonderfully visual horror material. Combined with the typically romantic and feminine notions of weddings, they’re a creeping and clinging, sticky juxtaposition. Secondly, we’re inside the mind of Ophelia, so we really get a sense that something is very rotten at the heart of things here, and we can see her unravelling mind and the way that things are playing out because we have a clearer head than she does. It’s really cleverly handled and I loved this part of the book so much. It’s almost dreamlike, the way she starts to drift away from reality and forget things.

In contrast, her best friend Hildy is a put together, bridezilla obsessing over her wedding to a man she really knows well and loves. It’s like Ophelia’s grounded opposite. Her light twin. In some ways, she’s also spiraling over her wedding, but it’s in such contrast to our MC. From that, we can see how Ophelia really falls under the spell of Luke, who seems so nice and so calm and helpful, so perfect, … actually way too perfect. The subtle shifts in their relationship are so nicely done. Much like the clinging vine, the changes and vice like hold are not noticed until too late.

I really liked this one. It’s a screwed up book about a screwed up mother-daughter relationship, and it all goes kind of mad, but it’s darkly funny, and brutal and entertaining. I found it hard to believe this was a debut novel. It’s clever, it’s funny, it’s dark, it’s got weddings and female friendships. Its insane and I loved it. Can’t wait for more from this author.

Read It If: you’ve ever had that best friend who went a bit nuts over her wedding. If you like a flawed and interesting female lead in your horror, this might be for you. I enjoyed it so much.

Thank you to HBG Canada for the ARC of this book for review.