R E V I E W

The Christmas Murder Game by Alexandra Benedict
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Start date: September 6, 2022
Finish date: September 10, 2022
Pub date: October 4, 2022

▫️locked door mystery 🗝
▫️word puzzles & anagrams 🧩
▫️lovable (and love-to-hate) characters🧍🏻‍♀️🧍🏻‍♂️
▫️family drama 🏡

Thank you Netgalley and Poisoned Pen Press for a digital copy of this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

What a neat book! I’m not really sure what I was expecting but this surprised me. It was exciting, clever, and very Agatha Christie style in my opinion. Not only did it include puzzles for the characters to solve, each “day” included a hidden anagram for the reader.

If you like locked-door mysteries, word puzzles, decades-old murder mysteries AND current murder mysteries, pick this one up this holiday season. Pub day is coming soon, October 4, 2022.

Lily is invited to spend 12 days of Christmas at Endgame house, her childhood home, and participate in the treasure hunt there. The winner will inherit the house. Lily wants nothing to do with this house because 20 years ago her mother committed suicide there. But she receives a letter from her late aunt where it says that Lily's mother may have actually been murdered and the treasure hunt will give Lily all the answers. So she very reluctantly decides to go. There she has to stay with her cousins and solve the puzzles, enjoying a Christmas holiday. Only people start to get killed and due to a massive snowstorm no one can leave and get help.
I love stories like these. The vibe, the mystery, just something about it. But this one didn't quite work for me. I think the writing style did not fit the book. I mean, people are dying but it doesn't evoke emotion or scary you. It also didn't help that I figured out who was behind it pretty much from the beginning and was just waiting for Lily to catch up.
The puzzles were not to my taste. I like clues, investigations, but here we have sonet riddles and anagrams. Not something u could follow along with.
Towards the end though is when things become sinister and the writing gets good, and just overall thrilling. I just wish the whole book was like that. But instead it was mostly boring with lots and lots of food descriptions.
Thank you to NetGalley for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

"Houses wear history like skin. And this one has layers of epidermis, built up into calluses."

This was such a fun Christmas locked room mystery. It has the same vibes of An English Murder by Cyril Hare - a perfect whodunnit to read with a steaming cup of tea.

After her aunt's death, Lilly receives a letter from her requesting that she join this year's family Christmas game at her aunt's manor house. She and her estranged cousins must stay together over the Christmas week and take part in a family tradition: the annual treasure hunt. The winner will receive the house. As they find clues and pick at old scabs, they realize that the clues seem to point not to the deeds to the manor house, but to the key to a twenty-year-old mystery: what really happened to Lily's mother? When a snow storm traps them inside the house, that's the least of their problems, as someone starts killing them off, one by one.

This book was a little slow to start, but it hooked me once the murders started happening. I loved the dynamics between the cousins - some I adored and some I hated with a fiery passion (and kinda wanted them to be killed off next ngl). The language that Alexandra Benedict uses in this book is beautiful. It felt like I was reading lyrics or staring at a painting. I also immensely enjoyed the descriptions of all the food. Do not read this book on an empty stomach!! I guessed the twist about halfway through, but I still enjoyed the book and would definitely recommend it to anyone looking for a cozy mystery!

Set in a rambling Yorkshire country house over the twelve days of Christmas with plenty of snow on the ground, this fun locked-room mystery is light and entertaining. The characters are varied, a few likeable and others despicable. Secrets abound and deception is so thick it could be sliced with a knife.

Lily's aunt Liliana dies and has one last request...her relatives must meet at Endgame House to play the game of their lives. There's a house at stake. The characters arrive with angst, distrust and skeletons in their closets. Lily's mother had died in the maze twenty one years earlier so she is not exactly eager to go. She does not wish to win the game as her memories are sad. But they all have their reasons for playing, dubious or sincere. As the bodies start piling up, so do suspicions. Aunt Liliana's clues are whimsical. The past becomes the present.

My favourite aspects of the book are the Yorkshire setting and the interactive anagrams. However, the characters are superficial and unconvincing. I do not mind detestable characters if done well but those in this book are obnoxious and the ending is predictable. My wish would be more red herrings. But as mentioned, it is a light Christmas read.

My sincere thank you to Poisoned Pen Press and NetGalley for the privilege of reading this quirky book.

First off I want to thank @netgalley, @poisonedpenpress & a.kbenedict for my free ARC copy in exchange for an honest review.

The beginning of the book is great, you start off with a blueprint of the manor, as well as a family tree which helps to keep characters straight. After there's 2 games you can play while reading the book, makes it even more entertaining. The setting for this one was great, very well detailed, easy to imagine. The writing was engaging, addictive, beautiful.

The author did a great job with the characters, making you hate and love some of them, as for the main character Lily you can't help but adore her. The amount of intelligence that she has, the games that the author made then go through, were so smart, really thought out. I would've never been as smart as Lily to figure everything out. There were some parts where I felt like it dragged and then others that went too fast, but in the end it all tied up great.

You will be wondering all through the book whodunit, just when I thought I'd figured it out, another twist hit me. Overall a great thrilling, Christmas mystery.

If you're a fan of murder mysteries, Christmas settings and games this one is for you !

I am a sucker for a Christmas book and when you add a mystery.. I definitely want to give it a read. I enjoyed the setting of gloomy mansion cut-off in the English countryside with a side of mayhem and mystery. . Without giving away too much, the lack of surprise or concern even that so many members of the family were homicidal seemed strange. While I did enjoy the story as a whole, I thought some of the characters did not ring true. The overall effect of a closed door mystery was successful and the added fun of playing the "game" was a real plus.

Reasons to Read
-A Christmas Game - Lilly’s Aunt Lillana holds a Christmas puzzle game at her huge house every year
I-nherit the house - but this year Lilliana dies right before so the biggest prize is the house itself
-Family Competition - so all the cousins arrive to fight it out to see who will win. This book had some truly extensive and complicated poems but don’t let that scare you off. The only real mystery you need to answer is who is responsible for for all the deadly deeds!

The Christmas Murder Game has a intriguing premise. A family has gathered to play a game. 12 clues, 12 keys, and the winner gets Endgame House itself. Mariana doesn't want Endgame House. It is where her mother died. But when her Aunt Liliana dies, Mariana must take part in the game in order to find out what really happened to her mother years earlier.

This is a locked room mystery, full of clues to be solved, and secrets to be revealed. I enjoyed trying to keep up with the clues. At times I found the story flat and predictable. It took a bit of time for the story to take off and I found the second half of the book picked up. I think that the book would have benefited from more time being given to developing the characters reactions to the killings.

Thank you Netgalley and Poisoned Pen Publishing. I received an arc in exchange for an honest review.

Lily doesn’t want to go back to Endgame House. There are too many bad memories that she doesn’t want to unlock. However, her aunt has other plans in mind, which includes Lily and all her cousins returning to the estate over one last Christmas and New Year’s holidays. To ensure their obedience, Aunt Lilliana has devised a Christmas Game that will be played, in person, over the two weeks they are all present. The winner comes away with the Endgame house, quite a prize as it has been used as a conference center for several decades.
Of course the title is The Christmas Murder Game and there is plenty of it.
I was not able to quickly be drawn into the story, even though it was a locked house murder story.
Eventually I realized even if my theory was incorrect, we would run out of possible victims (a la “And Then There Were None”)
Overall, the book was okay. Not one of the best Christmas books or mystery books I have read in a similar vein.
Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

I was very excited to read a Christmas-themed horror story since I’ve never read one with this type of twist before.
I found the story to be very predictable, but it was fast-paced and engaging. The characters, however, were very one-dimensional and I could never quite relate to any of them. I found the writing style to be very basic and overall felt quite flat. It felt unrealistic and not descriptive enough to fully depict the setting or plot.

I’d recommend this book to anyone looking for a fast-paced mystery, but I wouldn’t suggest it to anyone looking for something with exceptional writing.

If there’s one thing you should know about me it’s that I LOVE the movie Clue (and subsequently Knives Out). I watch it multiple times a year and I’ve collected all the Clue Funko Pops. (Since they’re based on the board game sadly there is no Mr. Body ala Tim Curry). Anyway, that means the description of this book is right up my alley & I rather enjoyed it!

A family member and current owner of Endgame House, a large mansion that has been passed down through the family has passed away, and to take claim as the new owner of Endgame House the invitees must solve clues and satay at the house everyday for the 12 days of Christmas. During the clue solving and time spent at the house, family members are slowly being murdered and no one can call or get out to notify the police.

The main character, Lilly, is excellent at solving the clues and figuring out the anagrams left on the sonnets, and you’re rooting for her the whole time despite her in the beginning not really caring to inherit Endgame House, she just wants answers to her mothers death that apparently was not a suicide as she thought.

The author also leaves anagram puzzles in every chapter for the twelve days of Christmas for the reader which is quite fun!

I really enjoyed this book, my only critique is that I found the guilty person(s) quite obvious and was not shocked when the killer was revealed, yet the ending was still really satisfying!

4 stars

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Thank you to NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press for the E-ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for this Arc!
This book had great atmosphere, and I loved the premise; it was very original. I will say, it was a little predictable and there were way to many metaphors and the language got a little too flowery for my liking but overall it was a fun holiday read.

I received this ARC From Netgalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This is a keeper for anyone who loves a great whodunit. I was pulled in right from the beginning to the very end. Benedict really had to you thinking through this story because there were three different sets of clues that she included within this story. First the clues to solve the “Christmas Murder Game” and win the inheritance, the second set of clues to find the Twelve Days of Christmas and finally titles of some of her favorite mysteries. I really enjoyed looking for all of the clues and trying to solve them but I really enjoyed her mystery story. Benedict got you involved and kept you interested throughout this story. Each of her characters added to the mystery and you started cheering for Lily to win the game. Lily who really only came to find out who murdered her mother when she was a young girl. Her Aunt Liliana wrote her a letter to tell her to solve the clues for the “Christmas Game” and they would tell her who murdered her mother. ted in a letter that she knew why and who killed Lily’s mother. So here she is trying to solve the “Christmas Murder Game” with her cousins when Cousin Ronnie’s wife is killed. Lily realizes that one of her cousins has to be the murderer and how far they will go to win the GAME. I did figure out who the murderer was but I was hoping it wasn’t true, so I was still surprised at the end when you realized who did what in this mystery.

4.5⭐️

Holy mindtrip! Wow. So it started with a few slow chapters. I know, I get it. The usual introduction stuff, except we don’t get a whole lot. Until the end of the book!

There were so many secrets and mysteries and half the time I had no idea what was going on (in a good way! Lol) I had my suspicions about who I thought the murderer was and turns out I was right! There were so many things I hadn’t guessed, though, and some questions I still have, so I may need to reread it again at some point haha. Also, the games the author sets up for the reader? Such a neat idea. I didn’t do it while reading a digital copy, but would definitely read again and play along with a physical copy!

I honestly don’t know what else to say without giving anything away. I would read it again, so maybe give it a try?

Thank you to Alexandra Benedict, Poisoned Pen Press, and NetGalley for a gifted copy in exchange for an honest review.

3.5/5

The first two thirds of this book just pulled me in...like the game of Clue, Agatha Christies "And Then There Were None" or Ellen Raskin's "The Westing Game".

But the length is considerably longer; leading to character building. Oddly enough, it didn't strike me as essential to the story. In fact it sometimes distracted from the mystery...and the fun of the mystery. I didn't particularly like the main character; as by the 2/3 point she was somewhat irritating...and I felt she was a bit stereotype-trope-y in the wrong way. (This stuff listed in spoilers at end of review- reading these will not really ruin the mystery part)

But the mystery and how it unfolded was fabulous, I loved all the side characters. The pacing could have just been faster, the book shortened and less main character drama...and my star rating would have gone up to 5 stars.

The map and games in the beginning were unnecessary. But the family tree was very useful. Some readers with love "games" that author instigates. But for me personally, I would have to re-read the story to play them truly without ruining the flow of the story. And I would have had to LOVE it to reread it. OR it would have needed to be shorter.

<spoiler>As mentioned above....
The main character got more irritating by the 2/3 point and the remainder of the book. She couldn't make decisions, she didn't know herself etc and so forth. Hadn't identified which type of people she wanted to be with. It seemed once the mystery was solved and people were "out of the way" so-to-speak...she magically found herself. Which was ridiculous. The mystery/characters had nothing to do with her decision making process related to being cis/bi/gay/hetero. Also she called her baby "Bean" CONSTANTLY. So much I wanted to bean her.

Also, I did state above that I felt the main character was a bit of a sterotype-trope. I think the goal was for her to identify and find herself etc. This was entirely separate, parallel storyline. And it never gained any momentum or genuine interest/intrigue/emotion. And I felt is hows those types of characters in a not-so-great light. Makes them look like ...well I can't find myself, so I'm gonna pregnant, then "find myself" ...while of course I was pregnant from someone else and I potentially screwed up their life. It never really said whether she used like donor sperm, but I don't see that as being an option. Because she had such poor self-idenification. I dislike these tropes of people finding themselves and using/abusing other people in the process. </spoiler>

Also - thanks to NetGalley for ARC of this book.

I was very excited to read this story! The premise is in the same vein as Inheritance Games, The Westing Game, Clue, and the sort. But this one takes place during Christmas! Yes! Give me a great holiday story that isn't romance! We have a main female character that is going back to her home estate, not to play the game, but to get answers. While the premise is there, the execution fell flat. There isn't any depth to the characters. They're all good characters, but the depth I would expect from a movie, not a full-length novel. The puzzles are all fun, but I found that the main character solved them really quickly without any struggle time and the reader is left just following along like the other characters, waiting for her to solve them. The reader is unable to solve them on their own along with the main character because the answers always involve some information that the reader isn't privy to until the character explains the answer. I think this story would make for a pretty entertaining movie, but not a novel.
Thank you, NetGalley for the advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

An enjoyable Christmastime mystery in which family members try to solve riddles at the annual family Christmas Games. The prize is ownership of the family home and our sleuth, Lily, has always done well at the Christmas Games. While she doesn't want to win the house, she does want to find out more about her mother's death.

This is a nice puzzler with a Christmas atmosphere. I didn't like many of the characters, though I liked this book well enough to pick up the upcoming Christmas mystery from this author.

This was a locked room mystery filled with twists and turns with a game that you had to win in order to achieve the goal. This was the first time I am reading a book written by this author.

Lily goes back to the Endgame mansion where many years ago, her mother, Mariana was reportedly committed suicide though Lily's aunt, Liliana through a crack of codes and poems tells it otherwise. The cousins of the Armitage family meet during the Christmas and their one goal is to win the game. In order to win the game, one must crack the secret meanings behind the poems and find the key. And whoever finds the key will become the owner of the Endgame Mansion.

I actually did like the plot and the premise of the story sounds promising and interesting. The clues and the meanings behind the poems written by the aunt sounds fascinating. The house itself is nestled in Yorkshire where there is severe snowstorm causing the others to be actually locked into the house. The writing was intriguing and interesting and I also do like the setting of the story. This book also a sort of Agatha Christie vibe in it as well. However, the lower rating is due to the fact that it was predictable which did spoilt the story in my opinion.

If you are into locked room mystery with an Agatha Christie vibe, then this book is one for you--worth three stars!

Many thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC. The review is based on my honest opinion only.

A delicious Christmas mystery set in a spooky isolated old house with a group of estranged cousins will certainly get us all in the mood for the holiday season. The Christmas Murder Game brings together the cousins of the Armitage family to play a game to see who will inherit the old mansion. Every day from Christmas day to the 6th of January, a clue will be revealed. The six cousins who are in the running to inherit must decipher the clues and be the first one to find one of 12 keys hidden around the house. Only one of these keys will unlock a secret door, and the cousin holding the lucky key will be the winner.

The cousins are: Lily, whose mother Mariana died in the house's outdoor maze when Lily was a child (suicide or murder?); Sara and Gray, who are the children of Mariana's sister Liliana, who took in Lily after the death of her mother; and siblings Ronnie, Tom and Rachel, whose parents were killed in a car accident when they were young. Aunt Liliana has recently died under possibly mysterious circumstances, but before her death she devised the Christmas inheritance game for the next generation. The six cousins are summoned to Endgame House to play the game, and the housekeeper/cook, Mrs. Castle, will be left with them. They must surrender their cell phones and the Wi-Fi is disabled to keep anyone from possibly cheating during the challenges (which is odd since all the challenges refer to the house or family history, so it's unclear how the Internet could help). When a snowstorm traps everyone in the house, blocks the roads with downed trees, and knocks out the single landline at the house, the participants are well and truly trapped. Of course, then the bodies start to pile up . . .

I enjoyed the story and the setting, but the main character, Lily, was a bit of a letdown. She really doesn't like the house, since she was living there when her mother died, and since the death occurred in the maze, she really, REALLY doesn't like the maze. We know this because at least once on every page, she tells us. Lily is a costume designer/dressmaker, and when she's not whining on about the maze, she's going on about her amazing corsets that she wears every day (despite being pregnant and starting to show) or rubbing her "tummy." She's always tired, or upset, and claims to have no interest in inheriting the house, although she races to solve every clue first so that everyone will know how clever she is. Annoying character aside, the story would make an interesting and atmospheric film!

anagrams, country-house, mystery, snow-season, contemporary, closed-circle-mystery, secrets, treasure-hunt, greed, family-drama, friction, murder, inheritance, riddles****

Who will be the next to die?
The plan is good, but there is just something missing in the execution and some of the characters seemed to lack depth. The word games were just my thing, however! The publisher's blurb is a fine hook.
I requested and received a free e-book copy from Poisoned Pen Press via NetGalley. Thank you