What a brilliant read this was.
A good old murder mystery.
An awful family being picked off one by one, who on earth is the murderer?
I continually changed my mind.
The ending was a real WOW moment.
My thanks to netgalley and the publisher for my copy.
One not to be missed.

HOLY SMOKES! What the heck did I just read? This book is every level of crazy in all the right ways! What I loved about this book? Everything it was fantastic! There were many laugh out loud moments throughout!

I want to take this book and scream from the rooftops and make everyone I know read a copy. This book was enthralling, fast-paced and twisty. I read this one into the night, if you want a hair-raising thriller, then look no further.

This book sank its teeth into me and would not let go until I was done. It was one of the most thrilling books I have ever read! A MASSIVE 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 stars!

I thoroughly enjoyed reading 12 Ways to Kill Your Family at Christmas by Natasha Bache.

Olivia (Liv) travels with her husband Miles and her two teenage children Callum and Martha from London to spend the Christmas period with her in-laws in Weiss Manor, a large country house in rural Shropshire. This will be their last Christmas for some time with the in-laws and extended family before they emigrate to Australia.

The Weiss family is incredibly wealthy, and the family are quite awful toward Liv, her children and even Miles - all of whom they feel haven’t succeeded in life. It’s no surprise that they dread spending time with the Weiss Family. Their plan is to keep their heads down and just get through the ordeal.

Their plan however goes out the window when family members start dying. Are they accidents? Was it just old age? As the body count rises, it’s no longer can the deaths be explained away or is something more sinister going on. To top it all off, they get snowed in and emergency services can’t reach them.

It’s a pacy fun festive whodunnit. The story unfolds from the perspective of Olivia (Liv) and also from the unnamed murderer. I loved Liv’s ‘voice’ and her inner thoughts. I’ve had to endure some truly horribly Christmas events at in-laws and I could relate! I was confident I’d guessed the murderer, but when that family member wound up dead I returned to the drawing board. I didn’t guess the murderer and was suitably stunned at the reveal. It’s an absolute page-turner and I can’t wait to read more books by Natasha Bache.

Huge thanks to NetGalley and the publishers, HarperCollins UK, One More Chapter, for making this e-ARC

This was so good I read it in less than a day! A festive, cosy murder mystery with real Agatha Christie vibes, a definte must read for all cozy murder mystery lovers. The story is incredibly well written, the characters have the perfect amount of depth and personality, it really was an enjoyable read.

📚I was able to read an advanced copy of title thanks to NetGalley, Natasha Bache and HarperCollins UK, One More Chapter 📚
📚All reviews and opinions are entirely my own📚

This book is one of the biggest surprises of the year for me. A book I didn’t know about before I was offered this review copy but that has now made its way to my favourites list. The comparison with “Knives Out” is so spot on. I loved that movie and I love this book for almost the same reasons. The tone is similar and it also focuses a lot on the family drama. It’s hilarious too, which I really needed after reading so many dark thrillers lately. Really, the perfect book read at the perfect time. It can be a great Christmas read too, given that’s when the story takes place.

As I said, the book features that soap opera-ish family drama, which I adore. I grew up watching telenovelas and I love messy characters who show no remorse. Those are the most entertaining to read about. Most of their unhinged comments were highlighted on my e-reader.
From the very beginning, we know ten family members will die and that became a game for me. I wrote down the names of all the people staying in the house to keep track of who died. Saying things like “3 down, 7 to go” with a smile on my face, which is something only fans of this genre can understand. I was actually more interested in finding out who the next victim would be than knowing who the murderer was. But that mystery was also good because everyone had a motive to do it. Or two. Or several. Every single character. I didn’t guess who the mastermind (or masterminds) behind the killing spree was, because I never do, but I claimed everyone was a suspect at some point. Still, the person whom I thought was guilty first and who was my biggest suspect for the longest time was innocent. And that’s how mysteries are written. We have to doubt everyone’s actions because what do they hide? Everyone hid things. So messy, so good. And I don’t love guessing the mystery or the twists anyway. It’s more fun when I’m surprised by even the smallest details of the story.

Same as with “Knives Out”, there is classism in this story. The Weisses are a rich family that cares more about the family name than the people in the family. Reputation over people and that bites them in their not so classy behinds. And so they make sure to let Olivia, our first person POV, know what they think about her working-class background. It’s obviously not nice to read some of the things they say but it’s the context of who they are as people. They are also homophobic but using some expressions I had never heard about so points for originality? They really made it easy not to feel bad about them being killed…
Through Olivia, we get some meta commentary about the book industry too, which I enjoyed. I don’t know if it’s fully meta and the author also had to deal with trolls writing hate comments about her books but we all know these people exist so…I’m happy with any kind of content that shames people like that. One can write negative reviews while still being respectful. The fact that it played a big part in the story too made it also useful to develop the plot. Very smart use of that little storyline.
Through two characters, we also get some commentary about how social media will take a tragedy and just turn something awful into something viral. How that’s not treated like it’s real people suffering but just as something to chat about on TikTok. As a fan of social commentary, I approve of these additions.

The way the story is told just makes the reader feel so invested in what’s happening. I found it so easy to imagine these scenes in my head and I didn’t want the movie that was playing in my head to end. I’m currently imagining what happens after and how the surviving characters go on with their lives.
But also…this book is so funny. I laughed out loud multiple times and I really needed that. The humour worked for me 100% but that’s obviously subjective so not everyone has to like the jokes. Some are a bit darker but in a very British way and that’s my kind of humour. The darkest joke was the one that made me laugh the hardest, to be honest.

In stories like this one, sometimes the characters feel a bit cartoonish. Like they are very stereotypical and it makes sense and it works. If it’s well done, obviously. With this book, we did have the stereotypical characters one would expect for this type of book but…they also felt like real people. So not cartoonish. And that made them way more interesting to follow.

I want to say more positives and spend longer gushing about the book but I’ll have plenty of time to do that in the future. I’m already pestering my friends so they read it and will do the same again once the book is out. What a great surprise this book was!