Now that it is officially the Christmas season, I’d like to offer up a holiday read for you. If you are looking for a quick holiday mystery to read, let me offer up one to you. I stumbled on author Peter Swanson when “Eight Perfect Murders” came up as a suggestion on Goodreads. That led me to read a few of this other books (The Kind Worth Killing, The Kind Worth Saving, Nine Lives, etc…).

When I saw that he had a Christmas book, I added it to my “to read” list. It’s been on there since just after Christmas last year. Since all the decorations are up, I thought this would be a good book to read by the lights of the tree.

The book is a novella. It is something that I read in one sitting. It wasn’t as good as some of his other stuff, but there was still a big twist in there which helped boost my rating of the book.

Here is the Goodreads synopsis:

An American art student in London is invited to join a classmate for the holidays at Starvewood Hall, her family’s Cotswold manor house. But behind the holly and pine boughs, secrets are about to unravel, revealing this seemingly charming English village’s grim history.

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.

The book was a nice read while I waited for the one I had on hold. It wasn’t like some of his other books, but the twist caught me off guard. Once that happens, the rest of the story all falls into place.

I would have given the book 3.5 stars, but the twist brought it up to 4 stars for me.