The Twelve Days of Murder by Andreina Cordani makes for a great holiday read when you’re looking for a story set at Christmas with a murder mystery to solve. At university, a group of friends created the Masquerade Murder Society. Their final Christmas Masquerade took place 12 years ago when one member of their group disappeared. The member’s disappearance has never been solved.

Present day, Scotland, the Masquerade Murder Society comes together for another Christmas-themed party. As they arrive, each member is assigned a character in the tradition of the Twelve Days of Christmas. They are provided a character’s back story, script, and costumes. As the masqueraders get settled into the rented house, memories of the past come rushing back and they each wonder what happened to their friend 12 years ago. The group seems to struggle with finding their comfort level with each other. And each is determined to keep their secrets hidden.

There are a lot of characters to keep track of for an audiobook, so it took some time to keep them straight. They are a group of extremely pretentious, spoiled characters who aren’t very likable until their facades begin to fall apart and their true selves start to become exposed. The momentum of the story picked up when the group awoke to find Lady Partridge hanging from a pear tree. A collective paranoia set in and the fringe of their friendships began to fray very quickly as they suspected each other in foul play.

The story goes back and forth between the present masquerade party, and the party 12 years earlier. The alternatives in time helped me understand the characters better in the present portion of the book. While listening to the audiobook, I kept thinking this would make for a great movie. According to Andreina’s X account, it turns out the rights have been acquired for a television show! I’m definitely keeping an eye out for that in the future!

I borrowed The Twelve Days of Murder from my local library with the Hoopla app. Narration by Ella Lynch was fantastic!

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