I typically quite enjoy Peter Swanson books, but I found “The Christmas Guest” to have been a bit confusing and underwhelming. For some reason, I couldn’t get into this brief story and this holiday mystery just didn’t work for me. 2 stars ⭐️. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the advanced copy for review.

I've only read one book by Peter Swanson, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. This novella is an excellent reminder that I need to jump back into his books. This is definitely not your typical Christmas story. It's more akin to a Gothic mystery that happens to be set around Christmas. In 1989, an American college student is studying in London for a year. When she's invited to the country home of an acquaintance she's surprised and delighted. But still she wonders - why was she invited? And the answer is the crux of the story. Told partially in the form of a diary, it's short, interesting and beautifully atmospheric. And there were a couple of nice "say what???" moments.
Thanks to Netgalley and William Morrow for providing a copy for an unbiased review.

American native Ashley Smith is studying art in London. With no plans for Christmas, she is going to spend the school break alone. But when her classmate Emma Chapman invites her to spend it with her family in the London countryside, Ashley is beyond excited. The Chapman's home is magical to Ashley; adorned in Christmas decor, it is the perfectly cozy holiday she has been dreaming of. And Ashley is quite taken by Emma’s twin brother, Adam. But there is a darker side to Adam, as he is being investigated by the local police. And a stranger lurks in the woods by the Chapman’s property. Telling her innermost thoughts to her diary alone, Ashley begins to wonder what else is at play in the picturesque home.

I love Peter Swanson’s books (“The Kind Worth Killing” is one of my all time favorite thrillers), so I was beyond excited to see he wrote a Christmas novella. Told in dual timelines, the story seemed pretty straight forward - until it wasn't. I had to re-read a section because I thought I was misunderstanding, but no, it was just that clever! From the beginning, I got the sense that there was a secret here but couldn’t quite put my finger on what it could be. Combined with the creepy atmosphere of the dark countryside, Swanson expertly weaved a holiday thriller.

Thanks to Netgalley, William Morrow and Peter Swanson for the ARC! This review will be shared to my instagram blog (@books_by_the_bottle) shortly :)

I’m a huge fan of Peter Swanson and, while I’ve never had an interest in Christmas books, I decided to make an exception for this one. Swanson’s books are always so intricately crafted with twists that often have me on the edge of my seat. The intriguing mystery kept me hooked and as a novella, it was the perfect length. This may not be your typical Christmas story, but it is a great holiday read for any thriller fan.

The story starts with Ashley as a 50 year old who doesn't celebrate Christmas with her friends. Then it flashes back to 1989 - through diary entries, we see Ashley as an American student abroad who is invited to a remote English estate for Christmas to visit with her friend Emma's family. Ashley perceives the experience as magical as she starts to fall in love with Emma's brother Adam. As it gets closer to Christmas, it starts to become more of a Gothic mystery. After a crazy twist, the story is back in the present with Ashley divulging a lot of what made that holiday memorable....
Very dark read but well executed!
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for my honest review.

Ashley wasn’t even sure the elegant Emma Chapman liked her, but an invitation to join her over the holidays at her families estate seemed like a charming way to solidify friendship. After arriving, more questions start to arise and Ashley might have to question if this village is charming and quiet or dangerous and foreboding.

This was an interesting novella that keeps attention gripped through the reader questioning if something sinister will occur, who can be trusted, and what to believe. Tension building was done well and twists were executed effectively. The ending threw me a bit.

Clocking in just shy of 100 pages, this novella feels like the right book to curl up with by the fire and devour in one sitting. It's a moody, creepy story filled with atmosphere and twists that keep you guessing. American student Ashley, studying in London, accepts an invite to the Christmas holiday at her kind-of friend Emma's family house in the country. There are odd relatives, a charming brother, weird parents, pubs and dark woods. Warm drinks. Secrets.

We are haunted, along with Ashley, by the side glances from strangers, bumps in the night, wondering what she'll encounter. She herself starts thinking she's in a gothic mystery when what she really yearns to be in is a swoon worthy romance with Emma's dashing brother.

The Christmas Guest is a clever tale, a chilling tale, a great way to spend a rainy afternoon. My thanks to NetGalley and William Morrow for the ARC. The Christmas Guest was published in October 2023.

The Christmas Guest by Peter Swanson was an atmospheric novella that I found highly enjoyable. The narrative structure and the twists sold this for me. The story is told partially through diary entries. (In the audio, you can hear the pages turn. I really liked it.) It is one of those books where you think you know what is happening, but then you find out you know nothing, at least for some of the twists.

As with many short stories and novellas, the characters are a bit one-dimensional, but the atmosphere more than makes up for it. I could picture the Cotswolds and the slowly moving fog surrounding me while the killer watched from afar.

The Christmas Guest is a quick little story, perfect for fans of creepy mysteries and right in time for the season!

Thank you to William Morrow for an advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

If you don't like romance and want to get in the warm-fuzzy mood...look no further than "The Christmas Guest"

Seriously, add this to your holiday tbr list! This is the perfect lil read to get you in the spirit but has that killin' you love the most. (I know how you are...don't you lie to yourself...you know a dead body makes the story exciting)

This is a Peter Swanson special. You get your mystery. You get your jaw-dropping twists. You get your sinister and deviant characters. All wrapped in a holiday bow.

We don't get enough festive thrillers. I bow down to Swanson for upping the game with this novella. It had my head spinning. The ending was not what I expected. I loved it.

I highly recommend pairing the audiobook with this book. I thought that it was extremely well done. The past and present points of view are excellently translated. As our main character is reading diary entries (no spoilers) the audio is like listening to an old telephone call and they added the sound effect of the pages of the journal turning as they read through. It totally added to the experience. I absolutely adore when narrations are complete with sound effects and creative ways to translate voices. It helps me get transported into the story.

Get your hot cocoa. Get your ear buds. Get your kindle. Get your cozy blankey. Let the master of twists get you into the holiday mood.

Thank you William Marrow for the advanced reader copy of Peter Swanson's latest. This novella is out now! Get your festive lil fingies on it now!

After a last minute invite, Ashley Smith decides to go to her classmate’s house for Christmas rather than spending it alone. She finds the house so charming, especially her friend Emma’s older brother, Adam. But Adam’s under investigation for murder. Will this be the romance she’s been dreaming of or has Ashley entered into a gothic tale?

I often struggle with novellas because I typically want more, but I think this was the perfect length for this story. After reading why Swanson wrote it this way it totally worked for me. I enjoyed the story and the quaint setting of an English village. The Christmas Guest is atmospheric and filled with suspense. Swanson kept me on my toes and had my jaw dropping.

The writing style was perfect for this story. I liked that thirty years after that Christmas, we get to relive it through Ashley’s diary entries. I was shocked by the big twist and impressed that in 96 pages, Swanson could totally surprise me. The characters were well developed, and I found myself invested in this story.

Thank you William Morrow and NetGalley for a digital ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Can we please get more Christmas-time mysteries? The Christmas Guest is the perfect blend of Christmas coziness and that ominous feeling in the pit of your stomach when everything seems just a little too perfect.

Present day, Ashley Smith has just wrapped up her Christmas traditions when she comes across the diary she kept thirty years prior when she was a student studying abroad in London. With no family and no plans to return to the States for the holidays, Ashley is invited by her classmate Emma Chapman to join her family’s festivities in the Cotswolds. In attendance are Emma’s parents, her cousins, and her handsome twin brother Adam, who just so happens to be the key person of interest in the brutal slaying of a village girl. Throughout Ashley’s diary entries over the holiday, she questions if she is really in a Christmas romance or if it’s a cold, gothic thriller that only has one possible ending.

The Christmas Guest was a fun novella that had me hooked from the beginning and immediately craving more Christmas thrillers, preferably ones like this one that are easily read in one sitting. While the characters were not necessarily likeable, I did feel like Ashley was one dimensional and we had to rely on present day Ashley to fill in crucial character information that should have been present throughout.

Curl up with a cup of hot chocolate and devour The Christmas Guest today.

Review is also available on Barnes and Noble and Amazon. Book will also be featured on my Instagram @thepagepro3ct in the month of November,

The Christmas Guest was a real treat! It was a fast paced and easy read with a good amount of suspense and foreboding. I enjoyed seeing how to diary entries ended up in real time. For a novella, the characters were developed and interesting.

Two days ago it was Halloween, tomorrow it will be Christmas.

What better way to get into the holiday spirit than with Peter Swanson and a little murder/mystery?

The Christmas Guest

If Peter Swanson wrote the phone book, I would read it. Now, give me Peter Swanson and a seasonal book and you just about made my year.

I obsess over Christmas!!! You know that crazy little lady humming Christmas Carols in July? That's me. Im half elf. As a kid, I aspired to be one of Santa's elves, I mean, I was half way there as I spent most of my younger years around 4 feet tall.

So, when I saw the cover of The Christmas Guest pop up, I knew I had to have this one.

Yikes, bikes! Does this book deliver?!?!?!

Short, sweet and to the point. There is no lull, you are instantly thrown right into the storyline. I loved the dual timelines, the eery ghost story and the mystery that unfolds right before your eyes. This book is perfect for those of us who love reading our preferred genre during such a spirited time.

Check out this teaser :

Ashley Smith, an American art student in London for her junior year, was planning on spending Christmas alone, but a last-minute invitation from fellow student Emma Chapman brings her to Starvewood Hall, country residence of the Chapman family. The Cotswold manor house, festooned in pine boughs and crammed with guests for Christmas week, is a dream come true for Ashley. She is mesmerized by the cozy, firelit house, the large family, and the charming village of Clevemoor, but also by Adam Chapman, Emma’s aloof and handsome brother.

But Adam is being investigated by the local police over the recent brutal slaying of a girl from the village, and there is a mysterious stranger who haunts the woodland path between Starvewood Hall and the local pub. Ashley begins to wonder what kind of story she is actually inhabiting. Is she in a grand romance? A gothic tale? Or has she wandered into something far more sinister and terrifying than she’d ever imagined?

Over thirty years later the events of that horrific week are revisited, along with a diary from that time. What began in a small English village in 1989 reaches its ghostly conclusion in modern-day New York, many Christmas seasons later.

I usually enjoy Peter Swanson’s novels, but this novella just didn’t work for me. I didn’t care for the storytelling technique (diary entries) and the characters all seemed flat. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for giving me the opportunities to read an advanced reader’s copy in exchange for an honest review.

The Christmas guest is a novella perfect for Halloween, even though it is a Christmas mystery. It is a fast-paced read and interesting narrative structure. The novella opens up with a diary of an American student invited to stay with her friends family for Christmas in London. Ashley, the student, is drawn to Adam, the twin of her friend Emma instantly.. however, what she doesn’t plan is to get drawn into the families secrets and becomes an unknowing pawn in Adam and Emma’s twisted games. The second part of the book is adult Emma looking back at that period and facing the demons in the present. The novella has a touch of a ghost story within it as well, adding an element that will make it a perfect read for the fall. Peter Swanson is a master story teller. While this book does feel like it retreads some of his earlier ones, it is a fun, fast-paced, twisted holiday that will please his fans and fans of mysteries in general.

Thanks to the publisher for providing the arc via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This was a fun, short Christmas murder mystery in the vein of classic British holiday tales. There were many Christmas tropes and a few twists (some that caught me by surprise) in this slender novel. Swanson aptly described the perfect moment to read this novella in the epilogue "For the Christmas Guest, I imagined someone on Christmas Eve, the dinner dishes cleaned, one last eggnog in hand, a comfy chair, and a dying fire." So if you have a few moments to yourself this holiday season, I recommend you get cozy and delve into this little tale of terror.

This starts out as a classic Christmas story when an American student is invited to a wealthy fellow student's stately home for the Christmas holidays. Not only does she think she has made a new friend, but she finds her friend's brother mesmerizing. But all, of course, is not as it appears, and the cozy Christmas tale turns cold and dark.
It was supposedly written for non-fans of Christmas, and certainly fits the bill. Well, it's not really anti-Christmas, just anti-warm and fuzzy. It's extremely well-written, both characters and plotting, and even expecting the darkness, you still won't quite see the twists coming. Very much a novella, but length was just right for the story. Very well done. Highly recommended.

A solid holiday thriller novella!

This is a frame story in which the main character finds an old diary from decades ago and thinks back to the holiday season she spent with a college friend in the Cotswolds.

Though veteran thriller readers will probably guess the final reveal, this had a lot of fun holiday vibes and an atmospheric British setting.

A fun read as you prepare for (or recover from) the holidays.

When Ashley, a lonely American college student studying in England gets an invite to join posh Englander Emma for Christmas at her family's estate, Ashley can't believe her luck. Her excitement starts to fade some when she sees the condition of the manor house and the unwelcoming attitudes of Emma's parents. However Ashley finds herself developing an attraction to Emma's brother Adam making her quickly forget the things that seem off about her England Christmas getaway. With a twist that is reflective of the author's previous work, this is a short mystery that makes you want to second guess accepting Christmas invitations this season. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced copy of the book for an honest review.

The Christmas Guest is a short novel told in two parts that center on the happenings at an English country manor over the Christmas holiday in 1989. It’s acknowledged from the beginning that there is a murder, but even the murder victim remains a mystery to the reader for much of the story. There are some interesting narrative choices going on in this novel, particularly that most of the story is told via diary entries written in 1989 but being read in present day. I am afraid of saying much else and spoiling the twist!

Overall, I really enjoyed it! I found the narration engaging and easy to read. The bleak, wintry Cotswolds made for an atmospheric and memorable setting. I did start to struggle suspending my disbelief toward the end in the second part. And I couldn’t quite read it all in one sitting, as the author intended per the note at the end. It was my first Peter Swanson book, though, and I’d happily read more of his work!

Review posted on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5460658224