You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
pluvialpages 's review for:
The Christmas Murder Game
by Alexandra Benedict
I wanted to be more impressed with this than I was, but sadly, it ranks fairly mid- to low-grade for me. There was an absurd amount of metaphors and while I can appreciate British terminology versus American, sometimes it felt like the vocabulary caused a genuine loss of plot. I got lost way more than was enjoyable. I did like the aspect of hunting for my own anagrams within chapters, but it got to a point where I cared more about finding the answers than finishing the book. Eventually I was just reading to have the satisfaction of finding all the puzzles and just getting the book done; I didn’t particularly care about the ending.
Lily was a frustrating character from start to finish, which made this even harder to get through. Her inability to open her mouth even once to stand up for herself, masqueraded beneath a facade of being too grief stricken and emotionally stunted to know HOW, was simply not enough for me to look past her full on accepting abuse from her family members. After the fifth insult from Sara with nary a comeback, I lost any sympathy for this girl. Oh, and did you know Lily’s pregnant? Because just like Tom being a psychoanalyst, Lily’s pregnancy is mentioned at every. Possible. Opportunity.
I could care less about your “Bean,” honey, I just want to solve the mystery and figure out who’s murdering all your relatives. And when you finally do learn the end of the mystery and the “who” behind the “whodunit”, it’s both not surprising at all and weirdly glossed over? Like we’re not going to talk about the gross relationship and all this over some real estate? Like I get that property is expensive in today’s world, but give me a break. The end just really didn’t justify all the messy means.
Sadly, this one didn’t really do it for me, and while I’d consider giving the author another shot in the future, I can only hope she’ll cut the metaphors by more than half and give us a reprieve from the irritating wishy-washy character whose only redeeming quality is that she’s good at making clothes and not really much else.
Lily was a frustrating character from start to finish, which made this even harder to get through. Her inability to open her mouth even once to stand up for herself, masqueraded beneath a facade of being too grief stricken and emotionally stunted to know HOW, was simply not enough for me to look past her full on accepting abuse from her family members. After the fifth insult from Sara with nary a comeback, I lost any sympathy for this girl. Oh, and did you know Lily’s pregnant? Because just like Tom being a psychoanalyst, Lily’s pregnancy is mentioned at every. Possible. Opportunity.
I could care less about your “Bean,” honey, I just want to solve the mystery and figure out who’s murdering all your relatives. And when you finally do learn the end of the mystery and the “who” behind the “whodunit”, it’s both not surprising at all and weirdly glossed over? Like we’re not going to talk about the gross relationship and all this over some real estate? Like I get that property is expensive in today’s world, but give me a break. The end just really didn’t justify all the messy means.
Sadly, this one didn’t really do it for me, and while I’d consider giving the author another shot in the future, I can only hope she’ll cut the metaphors by more than half and give us a reprieve from the irritating wishy-washy character whose only redeeming quality is that she’s good at making clothes and not really much else.