Thank you Netgalley for the ARC of this book. This was a heck of a ride! The story was not for the faint of heart! Terrible people doing terrible things but I loved it! Highly recommend

Filled with twists I didnt see coming, this is not a fell good book. Let me tell you. Full of unsavoury characters and told by multiple POV's. I couldnt put this book down.

Maria Frankland's Last Christmas is a tense psychological thriller ... kicking off with a couple visiting family for Christmas (always tense!). Add in depression and too much alcohol and you've a recipe for disaster. And a disaster it is ... with a terrific twist at the end.

I deeply inhaled everything about this book. It's a festive drama filled domestic thriller and it's one of those books I am planning to read more than once because it is so good.

Neil and Sasha are struggling with problems in their marriage; infertility, depression and Neil’s reliance in alcohol to deal with these issues. When Sasha’s parents ask them and her sisters, with their partners, to spend Christmas with them they cannot refuse. It will be the last one for Sasha’s terminally ill father.
Bickering breaks out almost immediately and Neil and his brothers in law fall out, a row which leads to a death, an attempted murder and so much more.
Well written and interesting, this was a good read with lots of bit part characters, some of which I felt I wanted to know more about but they didn’t feature as much.
Recommended to those who enjoy a family drama, set in the festive season where everything seems more tense and heightened.
Thanks to Netgalley, the author and the publisher for the opportunity to read this book in return for an honest review.

Hands down for the perfect Holiday thriller. When families get together for the holidays, sometimes hatred, lies and devious behavior tag along too!

When three sisters and their families go home to spend one last Christmas with their terminally ill father, another unexpected surprise happens and will forever change all of their lives.

This book sucked me in pretty quickly and kept me questioning every single character. It was a brilliant read, perfect amount of twists, likable and unlikeable characters, sadness, remorse and relatable family dynamic issues.

This one is a must read!

Wow....what an incredible read! This has to be one of the best domestic thrillers I have ever read. I enjoyed the well written and somewhat relatable characters, the plot, and the twists....oh the twists! I have to say, I did not see some of that coming! This was a rollercoaster of a read right from the first page and left me wanting at least a hundred pages more.

#LastChristmas wow what did I just read. What a dysfunctional family but I enjoyed every bit of the lie, cheating and murder.

Sacha and her husband Neil are celebrating Christmas at Sachas parents new home. Sacha and Neil are having fertility problems which has put a strain on their marriage. Her father is terminally ill and this will be his last Christmas. Neil is struggling with depressing and drinking. He and his brother in law have a squabble which ends in mother in law telling them to take a walk and make up! The problem is only 1 will make it back home alive.

I love my family thrillers to be festive so this hit all the marks for me! Who killed her husband?? All the twists and turns enticed me. I could not stop reading.

Trigger warning regarding depression, bully, suicide related discussions, topics should have been raised somewhere in the summary - If I had known that, I would not have started with this one. I was looking for a Christmas Winter vibe nice suspenseful thriller, not a "dragging-down" book. I did not like it at all. It earned by me 2 star for the 1/3 of the book, that was constructed very nice and brought me into Christmas atmosphere: Sasha and his husband are preparing for traveling to Sasha`s family for Christmas, since this will be the last Christmas with Sasha`s father, who is terminally ill.
As the bookcover states already the husband of Sasha will die on Christmas Eve and several other miseries hit the main character Sasha, up to a point that it is just unbearable. The twists were forceful and did not make much sense.

I choose this book as most seasonal offerings are usually cute romances, which although I love the odd one to give me that warm fuzzy feeling, they are mostly just the same story! This however, is not like that at all! Quite a dysfunctional family with so much baggage ready to explode into the hothouse of festive celebrations. Lots of twists alongside the disagreements. Certainly a different festive read.

3.5 stars rounded up

Let me start by saying I have never not finished reading a book which is lucky for this one because it got off to a rocky start and there were a lot of ups and downs for me, it didn’t immediately draw me in and was very repetitive but I’m glad that I stuck with it. It’s centred around a very dysfunctional family at Christmas time. It took until part 2 of the book for me to start getting into it and for there to be any real action but after that there were a couple of twists that I did not see coming. This was an easy read which is more of a domestic thriller than a psychological thriller but overall I ended up enjoying the story.

I really enjoyed this book. It was a very good page turner. Unexpected turns though, thought I'd figured it all out, but I was so wrong

I wanted to read this because I hadn’t read a holiday thriller before. It sounded like an interesting story with lots of family drama. Last Christmas was a quick read, however I wish there was a more thriller aspect to the story instead of all the family drama.

I was drawn to the story. I couldn't figure the plot till the very end. I had to stop what I was doing to read the last few chapters. Its that good.

Wow what a cracking read, started this last night and read well in to the early hours, if I didn’t have to be up for work it would have been a read all in one go. I had a few inklings along the way that turned out to be right and some so wrong. All I will say is wow Rebecca is such a vile character lol, her jealousy and insecurities and need for being centre of attention just made her one of those characters. Fantastically written, great storyline and a bloody brilliant read.

Thank you to Netgalley for this one! a really great read with many twists! perfect Christmas thriller!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for allowing me to read an advanced copy of this book.

Despite the depressing nature of this story, particularly being set at Christmas, I found myself wanting to read on and find out what had happened. You need to be aware of trigger warnings going in (depression, suicide, terminal illness, stalking, among others). This is one screwed up family but it made for riveting reading.

While most Christmas books I’ve read are cutesy romance books, this one took things in a different direction. While it took me a little bit to get invested, once Part 2 started, I was hooked. The premise of a depressed individual also being the least-liked in-law among relatives being the one that died made the case of his death very compelling. Did he jump or fall… or was he pushed? And if he was pushed, by whom? The three parts coming from three different points of view also lent to the storytelling. I loved that we started inside Neil’s brain, but then moved to Sacha followed by Christy. The differences in the way each narrated showed that they were all battling their own insecurities and flaws. Everyone had something to hide, and the differences in narration meant that I suspected different people of committing crimes throughout the book. While it wasn’t overly difficult to figure everything out, it was still a very enjoyable read. I was very satisfied with the way everything turned out.

A Christmas thriller that started off dramatically, and a story that is likely to make you look anew at your own family. No matter how bad things get, they’re not this bad.
We open with a couple in crisis. A husband struggling with depression and a spiralling drink problem, and a wife desperate for a baby but unable to conceive. Heading for the in-laws for Christmas it is not a happy time.
The Christmas starts badly with each of the relatives making comments. From their interactions it’s not surprising to see things escalate. Before we know it, there’s a missing person and the police involved.
Once we get the initial story underway it quickly becomes a family drama. At this point it definitely lost some of its edge, and although things rattle along at a fair pace it is a story that rather stretches credibility.
Thanks to NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to read and review this before publication.