Lisa Unger

A very deceptive title - no heavenly, mistletoe, sugar plum sweetness of Christmas here. But this is a very well executed murder mystery that requires thought and at times a suspension of belief. Dealing with things that don’t want to be remembered,” the aftermath of trauma, of victimhood” of the actual reality and whether it can be revisited while maintaining your sanity. Lisa Unger is a pro at this. She easily explains how life, much like fiction, can be “dense, complicated, slow, show more meandering…” and she wraps all that into this story. Even the transparency and not so surprising reveals were fairly satisfying when everything is wrapped up in a tidy Christmas package.

Thank you Penzler Publishers, Mysterious Press andNetGalley for a copy. show less

"Sometimes a stranger was the safest place in your life."

oooh this was a wonderful, twisted and dark story. The first 100 pages are a bit of an overwhelming blur. You are introduced to a pretty full cast but you are also popping around POV as everyone is introduced. Then it shifts and you are racing for answers.

It's hard to say who is the villain in this story. Sure, there are a few you could easily point to, but a few others are beautifully vague and gray, and I love that! And I love that show more our main character, the lovely wife Selena, is the POV to really show us how grey and undefined the bad and good guys are. I love that she struggled to see the bad, point the finger. But she was bold and interesting character and I love her perspective on life, love and marriage. This book asked a lot of really interesting questions and I loved it. I haven't read anything else by this author, but I definitely will now. show less

In this book we meet university student, Lana Granger, who seems to be working hard to put her traumatic past behind her. Her father is in prison, convicted of killing her mother. Lana remembers some of the details of that night but knows that she's blocked out others. At her counselor's suggestion she takes on a part time job looking after Luke, a local boy with some behavioral issues who has been expelled from several schools.

From the beginning of the book, we know Lana is lying about show more things. She even admits it numerous times throughout her narrative. When her best friend, Beck, disappears she lies about everything connected with the events leading up to the disappearance. Despite the evidence pointing at Lana's direction, I was sympathetic towards Lana. At this point I was desperate to believe she was not involved. Interspersed with Lana's story are diary entries from an unknown woman that add extra layers to this incredible psychological thriller.

This book was cleverly written and the author kept up the suspense by slowly revealing clues along the way. I listened to the audio narrated by Gretchen Mol and Candace Thaxton and it is one of the best audios I've ever experienced. It's an adrenaline filled story which never lets up. I never wanted it to end, even though I wanted to know how it ended. It's too early in the year to predict what my favorite books will be, but I can't imagine this won't be among them. show less

IN A NUTSHELL
'Christmas Presents' is a powerful novella-length thriller about the damage a serial killer does to a small town. It's clever, original, tautly-crafted, surprising, and propulsive. It uses dual timelines with great precision to maximise both the tension of the story and empathy with the victims and survivors.

I picked up 'Christmas Presents' after enjoying Lisa Unger's clever short story 'The Kill Clause' (2025), which was also set at Christmas. I enjoyed 'Christmas Presents' show more even more. It was a rich reading experience that had much more depth to it than I'd expected of what seemed to be a serial killer thriller.

What I liked most about it was that the focus was on the women, not on the killer. The story felt grounded in the community of the small town. The plot twists added to the tension, but didn't feel like magic tricks. Family, friendship, and second chances were as central to the story as the darkness unleashed by the killer.

The prologue to 'Christmas Presents' surprised me. I didn't expect a Christmas thriller to start in a topless bar. In some ways, it sets the tone for the novel. It's told from the point of view of the young woman dancing on the stage, looking out over the collection of men watching her gyrate around a pole. She comes across as intelligent and transactional. The men come across as ranging from sad to predatory.

Chapters 1 and 2 were closer to what I'd expected. The focus moved to a young woman running a bookshop in a small town and a true crime podcaster who wants to interview her about past trauma. There were lots of hints about dark things in the collective past of a small group of friends. The True Crime podcast guy was positioned as being almost as predatory as the serial killer whose case he wanted to return to.

Yet, after those two chapters, the prologue kept nagging at me. I wanted to know how it fit with the rest of the story. I didn't know whether it was happening in the past, present, or future, or how or if the two young women were connected, but I really wanted to find out which, I guess, was the response the prologue was designed to trigger.

The story was told from three perspectives: the young dancer, the young bookstore owner, and the true crime podcaster. The podcaster’s sections were all in the present day. The bookstore owner’s sections were in the present day but were supplemented by her memories of the traumatic night on which she was nearly killed by a serial killer and the events leading up to that night. For much of the story, I wasn't sure when the dancer's sections were happening in relation to the timeline of the other two.

This may sound complicated, but it wasn't confusing. It was engaging and skillfully done. The shifts in point of view seemed to me to be deliberately disruptive, forcing me to look at events from different perspectives. The backstory and the present day were woven together to strengthen characterisation and deepen my engagement with the fates of the young women.

I admired how Lisa Unger slowly raised my level of unease as I started to understand that the people in this pretty, snow-covered small town were living in the shadow of a violent past that had left unanswered questions haunting them like ghosts. The phrase 'The past is alive' was a theme that dominated the book.

The story uses familiar genre tropes as the dough and engaging, realistic, slightly broken characters as the yeast. The result was a story that pulled no punches in showing the damage done by the serial killer, but which focused on survival, forgiveness, second chances, and the bravery of the young women.

I'll be back for more Lisa Unger. I have her 2006 novel 'The Red Hunter' on my shelves, and I'll be pulling it to the top of my TBR pile soon. show less