25 Days by Per Jacobsen on November 1, 2024
Genres: Fiction / Horror, Fiction / Thrillers / Suspense
Pages: 360
Format: eBook
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“25 days, 25 chapters. This December, the countdown to Christmas will chill you to the bone.”
Hoping to bring his family closer together, Adam Gray arranges a vacation in a remote cabin on a snowy mountain. Things take a dark turn, however, when someone starts leaving gifts in the Christmas stocking mounted on the barn door. Each morning brings something new, and with every passing day, the contents become more terrifying. Soon, the family makes a spine-chilling they’ve been dragged into a deranged game of Secret Santa, and if they want to survive, they will have to fight.
This such a unique story idea!! I loved that you could read it like an advent calendar. That’s about all that I really liked about this though sadly. I’m so sad because this had such potential at first! I was getting hooked and was anxious to see they whys on why everything was happening. The family was honestly so stupid and the whole thing made zero sense. Literally no explanation at all at the end. No identity, no motive, no anything for why things happened. Things just felt increasingly far-fetched as the book went on. The tension was good in places, but for the most part I didn’t feel very invested in the family’s story. None of them felt like real people to me, and the unrealistic elements sapped a lot of my emotional investment. I got to the point where I truly dreaded picking it up daily and wished it was over. I only kept the advent schtick going because I had gotten this far, so I might as well keep it up.
I rated this three stars. The story was boring and predictable and offered no tension whatsoever. The ending was very unsatisfactory, and the writing read like it was written by a junior high schooler. I feel bad tearing this to shreds but the writing was just… not good.