Synopsis
“She thought it was their first Christmas together, it turned out to be her last…”
When Emma joins her new boyfriend Michael for a ‘Friendmas’ in the Alps, she’s quickly thrust into an exclusive world of privilege, partying, and politics. Emma can’t ski and is out of place among the close-knit group, but she’s determined to win them over.
Without the usual headache of extended family members, Brussels sprouts, and unwanted gifts, the group turn back the clock and unwind with wild abandon. As a storm gathers outside, the friends begin to re-trace their past, prodding at memories and feelings that have long been buried.
When the house wakes on Christmas morning, they find one of their party dead. No one is allowed to leave. As the snow piles up, the evidence of the night before begins to disappear and with it goes the ability to distinguish friend from foe.
As the group turn on her, Emma must find a way out before the killer finds her.
From the million-copy bestseller Claire McGowan, and performed by Hayley Atwell, comes a white-knuckled thriller that asks how far people are prepared to go to keep their stories hidden.
Review
Grabbed this audible original for a little holiday listening. Narration by Hayley Atwell was certainly a solid selling point too.
Emma joins her boyfriend and his best friends on a Christmas break ski trip. Truth be told, she was hoping the request to go away meant just her and Michael, but this is a full-on Friendmas. Her boyfriend is a politician, and all of his friends are, in one way or another, wealthy. A private chateau in the Alps sounds like a hell of a trip, too bad her boyfriend’s best friends are all snobs. Backhanded and outright hostile comments and insults are hurled even on the first day of the trip. But then the night a snowstorm blows in, virtually trapping them, one of the women—who has a NOT-so-distant past with Michael—winds up dead in the hot tub outside, either drowned or strangled.
When Emma’s necklace is found outside with a few hairs of the deceased stuck in its clasp, the friends spare no time at all turning on the person they know the least. The author does a good job of handling how alienated you’d feel if this were to happen. There is a class difference (as well as some gross comments), there is a life filled with secrets and inside jokes she’s missed, and worse, she realizes she doesn’t actually know any of them enough to rule them out as killers—Michael sadly included. It also dips into how far money can take you in terms of covering up tragedies AND murders.
The characters are rich business owners, influencers and even a film director. Even though some of them came from nothing, they show a serious lack of understanding and Emma remarks upon the waste of the wealthy more than once. A cleaning staff, that also prepares the food and shops, is told not to speak to the people and Emma is even told to ignore them. They only drink champagne worth hundreds of dollars a bottle and make snide remarks when it’s gone. They show a clear disregard for anyone they consider lesser, and this does a fantastic job of introducing a group of people that you could easily see blaming a murder, even when it was one of their friends, on someone they view as other.
Emma’s trapped on the mountain and all she knows for certain is that there is a murderer among them. As she said yes to the trip more for her boyfriend’s sake than any idea of actual fun, she’s the least skilled skier, and the only chance of escape is down the snowed-out mountain. Still she has to try. The ending came as a bit of a surprise. Not just in the typical thriller twist-ending sense, but also in the choice the author made. I won’t say more and spoil it, but I think the additional twist at the end, the sort of “I can trust no one but myself” change is what saved it. I don’t mind the more open ending too, as I can imagine what I wanted to happen just fine.
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