Title: The Christmas Murder Game
Author: Alexandra Benedict
Genre: Holiday, Mystery, Thriller
Format: Audio
Pages: 345
Length: 9h 5m
Narrator: Ana Clements
Reason Read: Book Club
Rating:

My Thoughts

I thought the concept of THE CHRISTMAS MURDER GAME sounded fun and suspenseful. While I was never bored, I just didn’t think the execution was done very well and the writing was awkward. I feel like Benedict tried way too hard. The “sonnets” were very clunky and the anagrams were weird. Fortunately, listening to the audiobook helped hide the weird spellings. I also thought the use of “obvs” and “pud” (pudding) in the narrative, not dialogue, was really strange.

As far as the story goes, I knew who the main antagonist was pretty early on. It was fairly obvious, or obvs *rolls eyes*. I didn’t mind Lily but I thought some of her choices were a little suspect. Every other character was either annoying, selfish, or not developed very well. The circumstances that had to happen so the story could take place weren’t very realistic either.

This is a nit-picky thing that took me out of the story. It could be because I’m from the US and speak American English. Anyway, one of the characters is pregnant and this character and their cousins said that the cousins would be the baby’s aunt or uncle. Aunts and uncles are parents’ siblings not cousins. They’d be a cousin too–first cousin once removed, actually.