Candy Cain Kills

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.