Lucky Girl: How I Became a Horror Writer

With this intimate, uneven Christmas horror novella, Rickert (The Shipbuilder) introduces a quartet of lonely strangers who meet at a diner during the holidays and agree to share a Christmas meal where they will tell each other ghost stories and exchange gifts. Playing the role of de facto host is Ro, a novelist whose experiences with holiday horror are all-too-real after a close call with home invasion and murder in her teens. When one of Ro’s new companions gives her the gift of a small bell, long considered a means to summon the dreaded Krampus, she finds herself struggling to separate myth and campfire tale from a reality that threatens to become deadlier than any scary story. Rickert maintains a sense of wintery claustrophobia throughout and puts a twisty mystery at the story’s heart, but a sense of cold remove from the violence and horror robs the tale of any substantial scares. Horrific events are always relayed after the fact, and many readers will feel cheated to receive retroactive explanations rather than being allowed to experience the frights firsthand. The climax does its best to tie together the story’s many threads, but doesn’t quite manage to wrap everything up into a satisfying conclusion. This delivers on atmosphere but not much else. (Sept.)