For the first 30 - 40 pages, I didn’t care for Benedict’s writing style. It felt like she was trying to write a literary fiction version of an Agatha Christie mystery and it felt clunky. I’m not sure if her writing settled a bit or I was just accustomed to it, but I wasn’t bothered after that. 

None of the characters are particularly likable, except perhaps Mrs. Castle. Most of them have moments, but not enough to make them fully likable. 

I wasn’t surprised by who did it, but I was a bit surprised by how things wrapped. It was a bit quick and sudden, like most procedural shows. 

All that said, for a Christmas cozy mystery like something from Christie, I enjoyed this more than I thought I would when I first started the book.