She’s making a list, she’s checking it twice…
Jessica Williams loves Christmas: the food, the drink, the fairy lights, the opportunities to take out all the miserable people who ruin the festive season for others. And what better cover for her murderous intentions than taking a job as Mrs Claus at the Ellsbury Christmas Market grotto? After all, who would possibly think Mrs Claus could stab a man through the eye with a Phillips-head screwdriver?
Fearne Dixon hates Christmas. As the long-suffering wife of the Ellsbury Christmas Market’s manager, she’s sick to the back teeth of it and it’s still only November. But then the bodies start piling up, an old rival arrives back in her life, and Fearne reaches breaking point.
When the lives of the two women collide, who will end up on the Naughty List?

IN A NUTSHELL
‘How To Slay At Christmas‘ was one of my best Christmas reads this year. I got the dark humour and vengeful violence that I’d expected, but I got a lot more than a bloody procession of bad men being killed. To my surprise, there was a lot here about friendship, and second chances, and finding a way to be yourself. Oddly, for a book with such a high body count, ‘How To Slay At Christmas‘ managed to generate some of the forgiveness and hope of Christmas.

I like books about women serial killers who let out their rage on obnoxious men, but they need to be more than a necklace of clever or brutal kills. The situation needs to feel real, the killer has to be someone I can connect with, and the plot needs to have momentum and tension. A book about a woman serial killer that has ‘Christmas’ in the title also needs either to delve into the dark side of the festive season or find a way to make a serial killer story hopeful and redemptive, or at least joyful and triumphant. ‘How To Slay At Christmas‘ delighted me by delivering all of these things. 

The plot was clever and surprising. It had three strands: one following Jessica, the self-declared serial killer who loves Christmas and who takes a job as Mrs Claus in a different town each year so she can slaughter the people (mostly men) who make it to her naughty list; one following Fern, a novelist, wife and mother who has grown to dread Cnristmas, when she works as the unpaid and unknowledged administrator helping her husband, with whom she is increasingly disullusioned, run the local Christmas Market; and one from an anonymous voice who is researching Jessica’s past and uncovering a trail of unsolved murders. 

Having the focus on two women rather than one broadened the story and made their emerging friendship central to the novel. We get to see each of them through the eyes of the other. Jessica is the calm one, carefully planning her murders while being nice to everyone and indulging in random acts of altruism. Fern is the one trying to swallow her rage and disappointment and pretend that everything is fine and her marriage isn’t dying. Jessica’s strand drives the darkly satisfying urge to murder exploitative, aggressive men. Fern’s strands give the sharo-edged humour of a woman who sees just how much her blustering, often-angry husband takes her for granted. 

One of the things that made the story work was that, despite the bloodshed, the violence, and the secrets, I liked and empathised with both women. Their relationship gave the story a hopeful Christmas spirit.

The plot is complicated, full of surprises, and, at times, quite tense. The observational humour around how men behave and how small town Christmas Markets work, kept the story grounded.

The ending was more Hallmark Christmas Movie than Hammer Horror Film, but I enjoyed it. 

I listened to the audiobook version of ‘How To Slay At Christmas‘, which had two narrators, one for Jessica and one for Fern, which made the story much easier to follow. Click on the YouTube link below to hear a sample.