A young woman is guilted by the final request of her deceased aunt into returning to her childhood home for one more round of Christmas Games. In the past, the Armitage children would solve puzzles during the 12 Days of Christmas in order to find their presents. But after the apparent suicide of her mother, Lily Armitage hasn't participated in the event in years. With the promise of revealing that her mom's death was in fact murder, Lily agrees to play the games one last time with her now adult cousins. The winner of the games gets the family mansion, which has been turned into a lucrative hotel. Lily just wants answers. However, someone is willing to kill off the competition for the home with no regard to helping Lily prove her mother did not commit suicide. Lily very well may have to win the game to not just get the answers she seeks, but to survive the holidays.
This very British holiday murder mystery that promises a number of games, some of which are interactive. One mission is for readers to find passages of the book turned into anagrams of the gifts from The Twelve Days of Christmas. I misunderstood the rules of that game thinking that the phrase 'A partridge in a pear tree' was hidden in Chapter One. So I spent way too much time analyzing every unusual looking sentence. It was getting really tedious going back and forth trying to determine if I was right or not. Once I found out that there wasn't a single line of the song in each chapter, I settled down and just enjoyed the book for the complex thriller it was.
This book is full of characters I liked- most of which died. This book also has a character that I absolutely despised. You'll have to read the book for yourself to determine if they lived or not. I kept going back and forth as to who the murderer was. At one point I thought it might be Lily doing the killing because her thoughts often would be expressed out loud in the next paragraph by one of the other characters. That train of thought got me thinking that maybe the whole thing is in Lily's mind. Alas, I must say, that sort of thinking is a red herring.
To have a family member die and everybody keeps playing the games seemed a bit far fetched for me. The Armitage family get snowed in on the day of the first murder and of course, the phones go out and personal electronics and WiFi has been forbidden to prevent cheating in the Christmas Games. So I can understand why none of the characters make any attempts to go get the authorities as the nearest town is a long ways away. But I refuse to believe that a family, even as callous as the Armitages, would keep playing frivolous party games as the bodies begin to stack up. Promise of inheriting an expensive home or not.
As much as I had difficulty with that aspect of the book, I kept on reading. I wanted to know more about these family mysteries that kept piling up. I'm pretty sure not all of them are ever fully uncovered. There's talk of one cousin who did something really bad to make them the black sheep of the family. But it's never fully explored. Another cousin has important things to tell Lily. Only they kick the bucket before saying what they know. Actually, I think this happened twice.
Until I read this book, I didn't know that there was such a demand for Christmas set murder mysteries. However, it turns out that there are a bunch of such books. As I like a good mystery, I very much might consider making a holiday themed mystery novel a new annual Christmas tradition. (Actually, I read a Sherlock novel last year, so I guess I have already started such a tradition.) As much as this book had some implausible elements to it, this work by Alexandra Benedict did get my attention and it kept it throughout its whole 288 page length. Definitely a guilty pleasure sort of thing full of mind benders, deceits and a healthy dose of anglophilia. A passing knowledge of music theory helps. Though as I'm not very good at reading music or playing instruments, I was at a bit of a disadvantage there.
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Great read and buy ☺️
I really enjoyed the book was exactly what I though it was gonna be. And had a great time with the crossword
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Top reviews from other countries
Ms. S. J. Hood
An entertaining Christmas mystery full of cryptic clues
Reviewed in Australia on October 23, 2022Amazon Customer
good story but so much sadness
Reviewed in Canada on January 31, 2024