Review: Dying for Christmas by Tammy Cohen

Book: Dying for Christmas
Author: Tammy Cohen
Published: November 22, 2016
Publisher: Pegasus Books
Number of Pages: 400
Format: ebook (.mobi)
Source: Received from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Rating: 2 Stars
Tags: Adult, Scary, ARC, NetGalley, 2 Stars

Goodreads/Amazon

Synopsis: Out Christmas shopping one December afternoon, Jessica Gould meets the charming Dominic Lacey and impulsively agrees to go home with him for a drink. What follows is a Twelve Days of Christmas from hell as Lacey holds Jessica captive, forcing her to wear his missing wife’s gowns and eat lavish holiday meals. Each day he gifts her with one item from his twisted past—his dead sister’s favorite toy, disturbing family photos, a box of teeth. As the days pass and the “gifts” become darker and darker, Jessica realizes that Lacey has a plan for her, and he never intends to let her go.


But Jessica has a secret of her own … a secret that may just mean she has a chance to make it out alive.  

-MY REVIEW-

"It occurred to me suddenly that I might die there in that flat, not through an act of violence, but through a hundred tiny acts of neglect. Not through the things that were done, but the things that weren't."

This is a weird book, and I don't mean weird like there were pigs flying over London. I mean that it is just plain weird. From the writing to the story line, this book is weird and funky in a good way. It just didn't work for me and my YA obsessed brain.

In this book we follow Jessica, who was just captured by Dominic Lacy, and Kim, a police officer trying to get up in the ranks of her job. Jessica goes missing on Christmas Eve, and Kim is called in to help find her. Throughout the book their stories intertwine, and I guess that it was cool?

Honestly, none of the characters really grabbed my attention. I just didn't care about them. Except Dominic. He was my favorite. He wasn't bland like the rest of them, he was colorful and beautiful. I wish that I could have just pulled him out of the book and protected him because OH SWEET DARLING HE JUST NEEDED A HUG AND A PIECE OF CHEESECAKE (and maybe a trip to a psych hospital but we'll just keep that between us).   

The first half of this book was great. The parts with Dominic were wonderful! It's the second half that I hated. The first half is filled with mystery and suspense (and Dominic), and the second half just didn't live up to the first half. The second I read the first sentence in the second part I knew that everything was going down hill, and I was right. There were so many conspiracy theories and so much nonsense that I had trouble wrapping my head around everything. The surprises and twists were uneventful and not surprising, and this left me feeling bad about the whole book in general.

So overall, this was an okay book. While I really enjoyed the first half, the second half fell way flat for me, and I wish that it would have been cut of from the book. Along with the characters not being the greatest, events that took place in this book left me with no faith in humanity. This isn't your normal Christmas book, so if you enjoy reading about what can go wrong when you talk to strangers, then you might like this book.