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The Christmas Murder Game involves a brutal family reunion. Cousins lie and scheme to give themselves an upper hand as they compete for the deed of Endgame House. Meanwhile, Lily wants to uncover the truth about her mother’s supposed suicide decades before. And her deceased Aunt Liliana has promised her the answers can be found only if she plays the game. 

I was quite intrigued by the premise of this novel. Estate settings involving murder and deceit are a favorite of mine. I thoroughly enjoyed the snowy atmosphere and sprawling Endgame House, and it was fun to watch the clues be analyzed and solved.

I had a difficult time pinning down this mystery’s tone and subgenre. Certain elements were reminiscent of Golden Age detective fiction and then a comment about Netflix would remind me abruptly that we were in modern times. Benedict also includes thriller/horror aspects in her writing – the possibility that Tom might knock on the door just seconds too late to join the game or Isabelle fearing for Lily’s life if she were pregnant and the other Cousins knew (thriller vibes), the warnings from Mrs. Castle about Endgame house wearing the “skins” of past families’ traumas/ghosts (horror vibes) – which added great tension but left me feeling confused and unsure how much further we would dip into those genres. 

Many of the characters are unlikable, and typically I don’t care if none are unlikable. However, there were some I felt we were meant to like – such as Aunt Liliana – but her cruel comments toward her daughter, Sara, felt unjust even if Sara was a brat at times. While I liked and rooted for Lily, our story’s heroine, her timidity and desire to be a wallflower frustrated me, and its repeated mentioning started to ring false for me. This was especially so when things started to become quite serious with her finding the coat her mother had wore the day she died, stained with blood, or the fact someone intentionally locked her in the ice house. And neither event seemed to alarm her sufficiently. Instead of alerting the others of the ice house incident, or strategically keeping it quiet, Lily’s friend Tom offers to say he was the one who was locked in to “protect” Lily from the spotlight when that is the last thing we should be worrying about.

In the end, I elected to DNF this book at 36%. While there were many aspects of this narrative that I didn’t enjoy, I do believe that I would willingly try something by this author again because she is clearly very creative, if not always realistic.

Thank you so much to Poisoned Pen Press and #Netgalley for gifting me an ARC of The Christmas Murder Game by Alexandra Benedict in exchange for this honest review!