Secret Santa by Andrew Shaffer

2/5 stars

This book is marketed as The Office meets The Shining, and so, it was doomed from the start.

I’ve never seen The Office, so I can’t speak to that, but I have read The Shining, and this is nowhere near that level. I kept waiting and waiting for something to happen, but I was still waiting at the end of the book. Nothing seemed to happen, and the horror elements were so diluted that they were practically nonexistent.

Lussi was extremely unlikable. From the start, she bulldozed her way into an established publishing company and immediately made decisions that were not hers to make. It’s no wonder the employees didn’t like her; she came in and told them how things were going to be and that everything was changing when she really didn’t have the authorization. All of that should have come from Digby, not her. Unfortunately, she didn’t get much better.

The concept itself was really interesting as I’ve never heard of a Percht before. I love folklore, though, so I enjoyed learning about something new. However, I didn’t feel the execution of the story was where it needed to be. Sometimes, I felt like the book was never going to end. No matter how much I read, it just kept going and going and going.

This read more like an exposé on small-minded publishing companies in the 80s than a horror/comedy story.