The Christmas Murder Game by Alexandra Benedict (2022)
Laura’s Rating: 2/5 Stars
This book caught my eye on a recent trip to the bookstore and I was excited to read a festive thriller during the holiday season.
The Analysis:
Lily Armitage goes back to her family’s estate, known as Endgame House, for a Christmas game. Lily had planned never to return to the house where her mother had died years earlier, but her aunt writes her a letter pleading with her to come. This year, over the 12 days of Christmas, Lily and her estranged cousins will compete to solve 12 clues and win a prize: the deed to Endgame house. This is a coveted inheritance, but is it worth dying for?
The book had similar concepts and setup to The Westing Game or Knives Out, with a mysterious house and a mystery to solve involving an inheritance. Unfortunately, the book did not even come close to reaching the quality of either story. It should have been the perfect “locked room” mystery and early on, it reminded me of An Unwanted Guest or The Hunting Party. The problem is that I can only compare the book to other books and movies because it lacked anything to make it stand out as its own unique story. The characters were incredibly one dimensional. I didn’t care about the main character and at times found her a bit pathetic. The side characters were underdeveloped and didn’t bring much to the plot.
It felt like the author had a bunch of ideas on themes that could run throughout the book: riddles, poetry, anagrams, music, fashion, and even David Bowie references. But rather than properly executing one or two of these threads, the author attempted to include all of them, making the story feel a bit scattered and unfocused. Every idea felt half-baked and never came to fruition. The ending of the book felt very abrupt and I literally had to check that I hadn’t missed another chapter. Unfortunately, The Christmas Murder Game had all of the potential, but only a fraction of the execution.
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