Title: The Yule Day Slaughter (Slasher Season #2)

Author: Craig DiLouie

Release Date: November 17th, 2026

*Huge thanks to Netgalley & the publisher for a digital ARC of this one!*

Just a few months earlier this year I ripped through the first book in this duology – The Summer Fun Massacre – and loved it, though I did note that I was slightly annoyed that Summer Fun was marketed more of being book one of two and that book one was going to end on such a massive cliffhanger.

Well, I didn’t have to wait long for that cliffhanger to be… uh… uncliffed?

The second book of the two is getting launched down our throats just in time for the snow to arrive, unless you live where Craig lives and the snow should be arriving by the Canadian Thanksgiving weekend!

‘The Yule Day Slaughter’ is a book you can’t go into without having read the first one. And because of that, if you’ve not read the first one, this review will be rife with spoilers from book one. Sorry! So, HALT. YE SHALL NOT PASS HERE (unless you’ve read the first one). And don’t worry, this review will be spoiler free for book two!

What I liked: SERIOUSLY. If you’ve not read book one, turn back now. Last warning!

The book picks up a three years after the events of the first. Tom’s taken the vacated role that Buddy Jackson had, now the new sheriff and Laura, the teenager who he saved from book one in the Hungry Hare massacre, is now a police officer, though she’s dealing with PTSD and not sure how to manage it. She fills the darkness with alcohol and strangers. Life’s found a balance. Until that balance is tipped. Winter is coming, festivities are planned and all seems well until the killings begin.

Tom at first doesn’t suspect it can be the Hare, though Laura knows its them. The ghoul’s returned, far sooner than the previous time between prior massacres.

Because a prominent family in town was slaughtered, all but one, Tom calls in The Texas Rangers to help and this adds another layer to the novel. One thing Craig’s deftly done is create a full, broken picture of Tom. He’s struggling to hold on and do what’s right for the town, even when inside he’s breaking. And when he makes an unlikely love connection, it makes things even harder for him to compile what must be done versus what he wants to do.

One thing I really loved about this novel is that it feels like DiLouie manages to fit 1000 pages of story into it. We get a lot of characters coming and going but none of them feel glossed over or simply there to die. Laura grows throughout the book, gaining strength and courage, even more than she had coming into this one, and really becomes her own person. Tom’s character is effectively beat down and him partnering with a key Texas Ranger worked really well to highlight his physical disintegration but also his mental focus on completely the job.

The ending was a lot of fun and the setting Craig chose for us readers was phenomenally cinematic. I think a lot of readers are going to be giddy when they get the final scenes and see what he’s done here.

What I didn’t like: I think the only thing that I struggled with – and this is probably because I’m getting older and I struggle to accurately figure out how old teenagers are – was the transformation of Laura from book one to book two. I had a vision of her being mid-teens last book, though she was older, so at the beginning I grappled with her transition to now being a police officer. Again, that’s on me.

Why you should buy this: Rarely does the second book in a two book series (Will there be a third? We’ll see!) elevate the events in the first book while also actively increasing the lore and smashing the readers expectations, but this one absolutely does that. DiLouie’s world within this book, and the first, felt real. Felt familiar. And he made us know these characters which aided in delivering emotional wallops when different folks died. This book was far more cinematic than I expected and its atmosphere and delivery reminded me a lot of Craig’s exceptional ‘One Of Us’ novel.

A folklore slasher with plenty of blood and heart, I suspect this book will become a holiday horror classic over the next decade or so. Until then, it should prominently feature on many bookstagram and booktok accounts as the leaves turn and the snow falls.