Candy Cain Kills

 Holiday slasher about a family deciding to go to a remote cabin for a Christmas getaway after a rough couple of months as a way to reconnect. This book showed up on my StoryGraph feed, so I tagged it as a possible read for those winter months and it definitely did not disappoint.

The first chapter set the tone for the rest of the book and it just got better from there. I really loved the introductions to our characters and how we got a POV from every member of the family. All of the character relationships were so realistic. We saw from each perspective how the characters feel about the current family situation and how their actions can be viewed as selfish on the outside.
Also, there was disability and LGBT representation so a plus for that.

The main issues I had with this book came in the last part of it. I really loved all of the build-up to the slashing part but I feel like the ending suffered a bit from the length because the ending felt rushed. Several emotional moments fell flat for me at the end because I didn't have time to process them. But that is usually how I feel with novella-length stories so I was willing to give it a pas until that last scene. I really didn't like it. That said, I loved all of the reveals and twists. The slashing was also done in a way that I hadn't read so far in my limited slasher experience, so I really enjoyed reading this book.

If you are looking for a wintery read with Christmas themes pick this up. It really packs a punch in such a short amount of pages. I'm definitely gonna try something else from this author in the future.

I wanted to read this for the Christmas season, and lo and behold, I won an audible code giveaway from the author and Shortwave Publishing. The narration from Elisabeth Rodgers was very well done!

This is book two in the Killer VHS Series, but I believe they are standalone stories. It’s styled just like you’d think. It has everything you’d look for in a slasher film. Drama. Comedy. Surprises. Kills. I’d say Black Christmas sticks out as similar, but that’s likened to the Christmas atmosphere probably.

A Christmas from the past has shocking repercussions on one in the future. The same house, two different families, one hell of a Christmas stay. I enjoyed that the story linked back to the Christian side of Christmas, as that is somewhat absent at times, and it has the ability to be turned so super creepy when done right. This does it pretty flawlessly.

Another thing McAuley has achieved is taking something kind of silly, and making it creepy. Not to mention gruesome. The tagline, “Oh, what fun it is to die” is a perfect cheesy rip off the Christmas song, and drew me as a reader 100%, but it could very easily have fallen in the way that its B, C, and even D horror predecessors have gone. Don’t get me wrong, it most certainly is what it claims to be, I’m just saying the author has done so quite well.

Personally a 5/5*, I did not call the twist, therefore I was twisted.

A corny Christmas slay-ride! 😏 Does exactly what it says on the tin.

Some of my trusted GR follows rated this highly, so I was expecting to have a good time, and I wasn't disappointed.

There was surprisingly more character exploration than I was expecting, all the more impressive given how short it is. The pace made room for those moments while never letting things drag or get distracted from the action. The violence and gore were over-the-top in the best way; blood-thirsty and disgusting without getting too mired in descriptive details.

While some of the dialogue was a bit on the nose, if you can't be a bit on the nose in a throwback Christmas slasher, when can you?