Candy Cain Kills
2023
Ratings6
Average rating4.5
15
Ratings6
Average rating4.5
Oh what fun it is to DIE! When Austin's parents drag him and his little sister Fiona to a remote cottage for Christmas, he's less than thrilled about the forced bonding exercise. But after learning that their holiday getaway was the site of a horrific crime, this family on the rocks will have to fight for their lives against a legendary killer... because Candy Cain is slashing through the snow with a very long naughty list.
Reviews with the most likes.
this was such a fun little horror novella but it also had a lot of heart surprisingly which i loved.
This was fun! Just like a movie, it reminded me of Black Christmas. The kills were fun and the kills were brutal. The main characters were forgettable and there was a romance sprinkled in that was unnecessary.
Holiday slasher about a family deciding to go to a remote cabin for a Christmas getaway after a rough couple of months as a way to reconnect. This book showed up on my StoryGraph feed, so I tagged it as a possible read for those winter months and it definitely did not disappoint.
The first chapter set the tone for the rest of the book and it just got better from there. I really loved the introductions to our characters and how we got a POV from every member of the family. All of the character relationships were so realistic. We saw from each perspective how the characters feel about the current family situation and how their actions can be viewed as selfish on the outside.
Also, there was disability and LGBT representation so a plus for that.
The main issues I had with this book came in the last part of it. I really loved all of the build-up to the slashing part but I feel like the ending suffered a bit from the length because the ending felt rushed. Several emotional moments fell flat for me at the end because I didn't have time to process them. But that is usually how I feel with novella-length stories so I was willing to give it a pas until that last scene. I really didn't like it. That said, I loved all of the reveals and twists. The slashing was also done in a way that I hadn't read so far in my limited slasher experience, so I really enjoyed reading this book.
If you are looking for a wintery read with Christmas themes pick this up. It really packs a punch in such a short amount of pages. I'm definitely gonna try something else from this author in the future.
I wanted to read this for the Christmas season, and lo and behold, I won an audible code giveaway from the author and Shortwave Publishing. The narration from Elisabeth Rodgers was very well done!
This is book two in the Killer VHS Series, but I believe they are standalone stories. It’s styled just like you’d think. It has everything you’d look for in a slasher film. Drama. Comedy. Surprises. Kills. I’d say Black Christmas sticks out as similar, but that’s likened to the Christmas atmosphere probably.
A Christmas from the past has shocking repercussions on one in the future. The same house, two different families, one hell of a Christmas stay. I enjoyed that the story linked back to the Christian side of Christmas, as that is somewhat absent at times, and it has the ability to be turned so super creepy when done right. This does it pretty flawlessly.
Another thing McAuley has achieved is taking something kind of silly, and making it creepy. Not to mention gruesome. The tagline, “Oh, what fun it is to die” is a perfect cheesy rip off the Christmas song, and drew me as a reader 100%, but it could very easily have fallen in the way that its B, C, and even D horror predecessors have gone. Don’t get me wrong, it most certainly is what it claims to be, I’m just saying the author has done so quite well.
Personally a 5/5*, I did not call the twist, therefore I was twisted.
