Scan barcode
connorjdaley's review
challenging
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
4.0
I saw this on another bookstagram and grabbed a copy for my holiday reading.
20 years after the first body was found, a detective is gearing up for another year of the Yuletide Butcher, a serial killer that only strikes once a year on Christmas. It’s always a single body that’s found, but the MO is ever changing. The crimes only linked by the killer’s use of holly leaves.
This was an interesting novella because it gives the dual POVs of the killer and the detective that’s after him. The reader is enlightened, but the detective is not, so I thought that was pretty cool. I liked how as the detective finds more and more evidence, the other POV is becoming more deranged and ill tempered. Neither know it, but it plays well while reading it.
I definitely think there was enough here to make a full length novel, but there’s nothing wrong with novellas. Short, easy to read, and devilish.
Personally. 4/5*
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood, Child death, Death of parent, Infidelity, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Toxic relationship, Emotional abuse, Gore, Kidnapping, Physical abuse, Sexual content, Body horror, Death, and Violence
More...