A review by charlotteroach
Secret Santa, by Andrew Shaffer

slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0

 Secret Santa finds Lussi Meyer fumble her way into a senior publishing role at an old-fashioned publishing house, where she is gifted a creepy doll in the company’s secret Santa gift exchange. Things start going downhill, and she believes the doll to be responsible for this. 

 

Billed as horror comedy, it’s not frightening, and the humour is just… fine, crammed full of one liners as opposed to actual comedy, which takes away any sincerity that the author is trying to convey in the climax or through conflicts. It feels closer to satire, or a parody of a low grossing horror B-movie. 

 
The entire plot was pretty drawn out, and there were more talks about life in the publishing industry than the actual story, which was boring and didn’t add anything. As well as this, the characters had no discernible voices, all of them offering nothing much but sarcastic one liners every now and then. The only way I could differentiate between Lussi and Fabien was through the Audible narrator’s terrible British accent for the latter. 

 
I enjoyed the first quarter of the book, before realising that nothing was happening, and there was next to no tension or intrigue despite consistent mentions of things ‘feeling weird’ or ‘being creepy’. I didn’t care about the outcome, and by the end, I just wanted it to be over so that I could start something new. The epilogue was also eye-rollingly condescending – I see what they were trying to do, but it rubbed me the wrong way. 

 
2⭐️, at a push.