Publisher – Tor

Published – Out Now

Price – £2.85 Kindle eBook £10.99 paperback

Ro, a struggling writer, knows all too well the pain and solitude that holiday festivities can awaken. When she meets four people at the local diner--all of them strangers and as lonely as Ro is--she invites them to an impromptu Christmas dinner. And when that party seems in danger of an early end, she suggests they each tell a ghost story. One that's seasonally appropriate.

But Ro will come to learn that the horrors hidden in a Christmas tale--or one's past--can never be tamed once unleashed.

Ghost stories and Christmas seem an odd combination, but I think it’s the closeness to the shortest day (Northern Hemisphere I know!) and also New year; that allows people to use this almost as a second Halloween season. The world is cold; feels stretched and our thoughts turn to the past, shadows and the end of life. We need the warmth of a family gathering but we are conscious what may be lurking outside. Dickens, James and many more writers use this time of year as a way to tell haunting tales and M Rickert has one to tell us with Lucky Girl, How I Became a Horror Writer: A Krampus Story which is an enjoyable tale that should entertain you as you recover from a little overindulgence.

Ro a young student writer meets a strange assortment of people at her favourite diner just as it is about to close for the last time. Stuffy Adrienne, aloof Grayson and the immediately going to be a couple that is Lena and Keith form a bond with Ron and the quintet decide to have a dinner. They tell ghost stories and Grayson explains the Krampus myth and his connection to it. They decide to do this again a year from now. Though never the closest of friends they do indeed try to stay in touch but eventually do not meet again until middle age when a new tragedy strikes. The remaining members of the group decide to meet up one last time but stories from their past are about to re-surface.

This is an enjoyable story where Rickert is clearly having fun creating a nest of tales within a novella. The classic ghost story told to a group that may not be a tale; A person with a tragic backstory that needs a resolution and then later on a tale of finding out who your friends really are. All connected via Ro’s narration which subtly changes from a slightly spiky frustrated writer in their younger days to a more cynical but still carries a sense of humour successful horror author in the latter half. Rickert is great at creating quick character sketches and scenes of tension and a little tragedy or mystery. I very much got swept along into trying to work out all the connections between characters and what may be really going on.

The drawback is that at novella length there isn’t really that much time to create too much mystery and the obvious answers indeed tend to be the answers to the mystery. You’re waiting for a greater reveal or for some more character motivations to be explained and there isn’t any to be found. There is not enough room for the story to really grow and in reality we find out that these people aren’t friends who know each other that well at all which I think makes the dynamics feel a little flat and artificial. Its use of Krampus is in the end for me more set dressing than the heart of the tale too which feels a little bit of a cheat. In the end perhaps it is trying to do too many things at one and unusually a novel rather than novella may have worked better.

This is an amusing tale that I think you would enjoy on a holiday evening while you recover from the festivity. It is fun; knows what it is doing; holds a few scares but ultimately holds no surprises. I just think it also is not a tale we’ll want to replay every Christmas in the future and for me therefore only partly successful and not quite gelling as a true classic tale