Hail Santa! – John McNee

4.5 stars

Hail Santa! was an absolute bloodfest of a ride! I was hooked right from the start and couldn’t take my eyes off the pages.

While I did think parts of it were a little slow, the book definitely picked up and I flew through the last half of it. The cast of characters is so dynamic and diverse, I have a lot of mixed emotions about all of them that will have me trying to sort myself out for some time.

I think I feel the worst for Devon. While it can be argued that this whole thing is his fault, he’s just a kid that was facing massive changes to his town that he didn’t understand or want. He just wanted things to stay the same and, unfortunately for him, he set in motion events that would irrevocably change his town completely.

I’m also highly conflicted by Ling. I didn’t like her at first, too much corporate blah blah, but she really redeemed herself throughout the story. She grew the most for me as a character, and I liked that a lot. But she does something later in the book that has me extremely uncertain about how I feel about her overall. This really speaks to John’s ability to write complex characters though, as I’ve never felt more conflicted about a single character in all of the books that I read.

Far more bloody than I was anticipating, Hail Santa! has me questioning everything I know about Christmas spirit. I’ll be giving every Santa Claus object I see the fish eye from now on, and maybe avoiding any and all eggnog (despite it being my favourite holiday drink) for the foreseeable future!