Twelve years ago, the six of us were young and carefree, getting ready to celebrate Christmas. We had the house to ourselves: no parents, nobody telling us to behave. We just had to look after Seffie, my friend Gabby’s little sister. We thought she was tucked up safely in her lilac pyjamas, sleeping through the music. We were wrong. The next morning, when we went to wake her, her bed was empty. She was never seen again. And no one ever found out why…
Twelve years later, I receive a call from Gabby, inviting me to spend Christmas at her remote Scottish lake house. None of us have spoken since the night that Seffie disappeared, and part of me knows I shouldn’t go.
But Gabby says we need to be together to help us move on. Yet as soon as I arrive, it becomes clear that she has another reason to bring us all together. She claims one of us knows what happened to her little sister. And, as a snowstorm traps us in the house, she’ll stop at nothing to get to the truth…
A glittering festive setting, a locked room mystery, a host of suspicious characters and a bombshell waiting to be dropped - The Christmas Party is an exciting thriller following six former friends years after something unspeakable tears them apart … but now they're back together for the holidays.
It's intense, anxious, with an isolated winter setting mixing a beautiful snowy backdrop and the terrifying feeling of being trapped all alone; a perfect recipe for nail biting anticipation.
Each character is a little shifty, messy and untrustworthy; they've got their own agendas and own theories about what happened to Gabby's sister that night - with the main narration coming from Sasha as she speculates, investigates and tries to work out the real reason they've all been brought together again as she uncovers secrets and tries to survive until boxing day. It moves quickly, jumping erratically between scenes and the timer always there to give us a strange sense of impending … something.
The singular perspective felt a little strange for such an ensemble-focused story, and there was definitely moments of very unnatural exposition-laden conversations, but this approach let us get intimately familiar with Sasha and try and come up with our own theories alongside hers. The cast kept the party going, offering little snippets of information through flashbacks to that party, or letting us in on secrets that not even the cast claim to know.
I loved the twists, the unravelling of a decade old mystery, but it ended so quickly I did get a little bit of whiplash and it left me feeling a little like I'd been left out in the cold and the door closed behind me. Think Pretty Little Liars with grown-up jobs and sub-zero temperatures, a fun thriller that makes a great evening read.
- The Christmas Party is available now via Bookotoure. I received a reviewers copy of this title.
- Contains potentially sensitive subjects including assault, sexual assault and harassment.
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