Book Review - How To Slay At Christmas by Sarah Bonner - #HolidayReading Cruise

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Title: How To Slay At Christmas

Author: Sarah Bonner

Format reviewed: Ebook

Source: Netgalley

Publisher: Boldwood Books

Publication Date: 7th August 2025

Rating: 5 Stars

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? 👀

Sarah Bonner is fast becoming an auto read author of mine with these fabulous How To Slay Books, and when you set one at my favourite time of the year for fiction - Christmas, then I was always going to devour this, 

And Jessica Williams is my sort of serial killer. What an odd sentence ot write, but I hope you know what I mean. She is a massive fan of Christmas and has worked out the person who is least likely to be suspected of murder is Mrs Clause. 

And thus she spends her winters being Santa's wife in a different place each year. Only this time she starts to get to know the community better than normal, starts to make real friends (give or take having to hide her double life). and overall the body count is rising higher than she anticipated, 

And believe it or not, not all the bodies are down to our known murderer. And Jessica always has a great reason to put someone on the naughty list. 

I loved her, but this is just one aspect to this story, and all the other threads and plotlines help make this into the really impressive book that it is.

I'll would never have predicted the ending but totally loved that too. Just a brilliant book. 

Thank you to Boldwood Books and Netgalley for this copy which I have reviewed honestly and voluntarily.