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Do You See What I See? by Peter Swanson. Rating: 4.25 stars.

Read from July 5th to 6th.

Before I get into the review, a quick thank you to both NetGalley and the publishers over at Harper Collins for allowing me access to this ARC in exchange for an honest review. In Do You See What I See? we follow Nicholas who is a writer recently dropped by his publisher. His agent sends him to spend the holidays at the Cape Cod mansion of her other client, Marco Tavares. Marco needs help finishing his follow up to his hit thriller. But when Nicholas visits, Christmas cheer is in short supply and every visitor seems to have a motive to kill their host. As Christmas approaches, a single boozy night ends in two corpses leaving Nicholas to wonder if the whole thing was a setup from the start. Do You See What I See? comes out on October 6th and is available for preorder now.

This has been the smashing success of this year's Christmas in July. If I didn't have to wake up early this morning for work, I would have finished this in one sitting. It was so compelling. Which is a bit weird given that we miss out on the most action packed moments of the whole situation. We never see the murder or confront the murderer. And yet somehow I was hooked. I think Nicholas as a narrator makes a lot of sense for the story and he adds a layer of suspicion to the narration following the murders. We spend pretty much the entire novel not knowing who the murderer is, but we are led to believe a certain character may have been the one to handle the knife. And while I don't love sort of ambiguous endings, this one made sense and gave the reader enough of a nod that they can reasonably say who the murderer probably was. I was actually laughing at the final page of the novel because of how the sort of reveal was done. I liked the settings we followed the characters into, but it did lack some of the Christmas charm I was expecting.

The main drawback for this one is the length. At least for me. I know it appeals to a lot of readers to have this quick little Christmas Mystery stories, but I found I had a lot of questions and I wanted more time with certain characters (or should we call them suspects?). I once complained that a 750 page book wasn't long enough for me so we're not surprised that I found a novella to be too short. It just needed to be said. I also wish we had gotten a little more festive in the Cape Cod mansion. The characters did drink eggnog and there was a Christmas tree. But none of the scenes really gave a festive vibe. I know it's a Mystery, but humor me here.

Season's Reapings by Sylvain Johnson. Rating: 2 stars.

Read from July 3rd to 5th.

Before I get into the review, a quick thank you to both NetGalley and the publishers over at Gallery Books for allowing me access to this ARC in exchange for an honest review. Season's Reapings is a dark Nutcracker retelling set in Montreal. In this book, a winter storm rages while a serial killer nicknamed "The Mouse King" haunts the streets. His signature is a live mouse in his victims' sealed mouths. A corrupt police officer whose niece fits the Mouse King's victim profile too well, races to solve the case and protect his family. Translated from the French for the first time, it rings in the holidays with a new kind of terror. Season's Reapings comes out on October 6th and is available for preorder now.

I really want to start out this review by saying that this one might be on me. As I was rereading the GoodReads synopsis, I noticed just how emphasized the gore, the grotesqueness, the blood soaked nature of it all are for this book. I do enjoy a good horror novel every now and again and I assumed this one would be super Christmassy so I was excited to read this one. But I'm realizing that this kind of horror just isn't for me. I do see other people commenting on the gore and saying that the ridiculousness of the murders made them laugh out loud. (Spoiler: Like when the old woman chokes on her husband's catheter.) It felt like the entire point of the novel was the gruesomeness and the gore. It's like the author specifically wrote these violence scenes and then built a story around it. I actually joked with my husband the other day that it feels like the author really wants to commit murders but realizes that they can't do that so instead they wrote out all the fantasies they had. I don't normally love the whole "If the author wrote it then they condone it" argument but it's the way the scenes are written. It's so over the top and absolutely disgusting. I was reading on my lunch break at work and literally couldn't finish my meal because I thought I was going to throw up. There is also animal related gore and death so that was always going to bring my rating down. I couldn't see how this was a retelling of the Nutcracker and I don't seem to be the only one feeling that way. Also, the only thing Christmassy about this book is the lights that are up on the buildings that the characters walk into. It's a book that takes place around Christmas.

There were some concepts in here that had so much potential. And I hate using potential as my positive for a book review because I know that there's always an audience for a book. Always. Just because I may not have liked something doesn't mean that there's no one out there who would like it. For me, the only real positive was the potential. I loved the idea of a serial killer who uses a snow storm to commit more murders without getting caught. I loved the idea that this cop who's sort of morally grey having to race against the clock to save his niece. Yet neither lived up to their potential for me.