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For me, the story started with the author’s agent notes that alluded to this as a possible true story. Hmmm�..the mystery begins. Even in the early chapters, when Daisy is introduced and provides a boatload of info on her and her family, she too alludes to the upcoming family reunion/Nana’s birthday will be the last time they are all together. Okaaayyy, that’s pretty ominous; pretty much letting the reader know that the killing will commence soon. It’s also revealed that Daisy has a secret. We aren’t told what it is, but it is pretty well known, especially since Nana wrote a book about it and the book was a best seller and sold millions.

Much of the first half of the story is an introduction of the characters: Daisy and her family consisting of her Nana, her parents, her two older sisters and her niece along with a local man named, Connor. Connor was a childhood companion for the Darker sisters and a constant addition to many Darker family events. The story flips back and forth from 2004 and the late 70’s and 80’s.

Feeney also reveals the complicated relationships between the family members, the member’s strengths and weaknesses along with a few videos of their grudges and resentments with a few murders thrown in. At one point (around the 25-30% mark), I’m thinking that this story reminds me of an updated, more refined game of Clue: Nana in the kitchen with a blunt force object, Frank in the music room with poison, etc� A few chapters later, the MC and narrator, Daisy, voices the same comparison. These are not spoilers since they happened pretty early in the story.

The second half of the story, various family members begin to disappear, usually, before or after a VHS tape is discovered that always contains some secret video of some Darker family event where many of the Darker family grudges began that eventually festered into the resentments that exist between the family members. Somewhere around the 55-60% mark, I began to form some suspicions on what was really going on. However, it was pretty far-fetched so, I didn’t really put much stock in it.

The end was scary and intense for the few Darker family members left with a completely bizarre and crazy, left-field twist that I NEVER saw coming. The final reveal was so much more far-fetched than my own suspicions. Most of the story was a solid 4star rating, but that ending!!! If I could give it 4.5stars, I would, so I'm going to round up

I was looking for a murder mystery with a holiday theme (preferably Christmas theme). While this did have a holiday theme, it was a Halloween theme. I’ve said this before and, I believe it bears repeating, this is an elaborate, real-live, game of Clue with an extremely dysfunctional family. It was a very entertaining story.