Published November 2024 via Little Fox Publishing
★★★
A quickie holiday thriller: Isla isn't eager to spend Christmas with her sister, not after Everything That Happened, but she tentatively accepts Clara's olive branch anyway. But when the power goes out and the blood starts to flow, she regrets her decision...
This is fun, but I think the novella length is working against it. It's clear almost from the moment Isla walks in the door that things are not quite right—and while the reader should know this, because the book is marketed as a thriller, I wished I'd had a bit longer before Isla (and thus I as a reader) saw some of the things that weren't right in the house. Hide that from me, not the backstory. Again in part because of the length, the villain is clear early on—I did wonder whether the hints being dropped were red herrings, but things ended up being pretty straightforward (and not a little bit over the top). And Isla is...not the brightest bulb in the box. How is her reaction to everything "I should make cocoa" rather than "I should call emergency services with my perfectly functional cell phone"?
(Oh: and would someone please tell me what kind of untrained fool of a police dispatcher would break into the villain's monologue to warn said villain that the conversation is being recorded?)
Still fun, and a very quick read, but not something to keep me up at night.
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