Editorial note: I received a copy of Julebord: The Holiday Party in exchange for a review. All opinions are my own.
Julebord: The Holiday Party by David Øybo is an atmospheric and engaging literary suspense story that starts with a murder mystery, but emerges into a vivid character study. It’s quite the unique and memorable novel.
If you’re looking for a crime holiday novel, this is absolutely the right selection for you. While it does take place over many years and seasons, the heartbeat of the story surrounds the traditional Julebord event.
The author David Øybo explains that Julebord takes place in December as a way to celebrate an evening with colleagues, and is rooted in the working culture of organizations and employers in Norway.
He writes: “What happens at the Julebord stays at the Julebord. Forever. Just like Vegas. But it’s freezing cold and pitch-dark outside.”
This also provides an ideal setting for a murder mystery as well.
What’s the Story About
Should chief investigator James Wiley Redding of the Norwegian Police suspect that any of the doctors working in the small rural hospital of Godshus, located where a fjord meets the North Sea, might be linked to the gruesome discovery made on a December morning after their annual Julebord (holiday party)?
Much more whodunit than a diversified nordic noir novel, Julebord: The Holiday Party is laced with what life is like to work in a small rural hospital, where things and humans occasionally get dirty. Not merely a piece of – at times – a bit upmarket crime fiction, the story brings to the realization that in today’s small global village we are linked to each other in some way – whether we want to be or not and cannot hide from the events that affect us all.
Inspired by Julio Cortázar’s Rayuela (Hopscotch) for the experimental aspect allowing the reader to choose their own reading path, D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover for explicitness, and social/political criticism of the current world, Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express for the plot of the mystery element and Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s movie Babel for the interconnectedness of the multiple protagonists, Julebord: The Holiday Party takes place between August 26th, 1960 and December 23rd, 2019 and is the first published stand-alone volume of the Correlations Trilogy.
Storytelling Style
Author David Øybo took a unique and distinct approach to how his novel unfolds. Somewhat reminiscent of those ‘choose your own adventure’ stories many of us enjoyed as children, Julebord: The Holiday Party offers readers a choice on how to read the novel.
- For the eBook version, the reader can select SWIPE, which tells the story in sequential order. Or the reader can choose the hopscotching—TAP, which bounces back and forth between the six doctors’ lives using hyperlinks.
- For the print version, reading sequentially is called TURN. However, instead of electronic hyperlinks, page indicators at the end of the chapters lead readers to the next destination in the printed book, where the hopscotch version is named FLICK.
I read the eBook version and considered both options for probably longer than I needed to, but I found it such a fascinating approach, I had to think about which one would serve me better as a reader. Eventually, I decided I had to try the ‘TAP’ hyperlinks option as I’ve never had this ability to do so in an adult novel.
While it took a couple beats for me to adjust to this approach, I ended up being quite fond of this storytelling tool. To me, the characters and their connections were much more enriched. While you can’t go wrong either way, I personally found the ‘TAP’ option to be quite engaging and I didn’t want to put down this read. I had to know what would happen next.
I found it made the characters and their choices much more layered as well.
The Characters
While we know one of the main characters ends up dead after Julebord, we don’t know how it happened, who was potentially involved and why. And those questions linger throughout the story.
But to understand how they all got to a point where they could be guilty, we had to know each of the six doctors through many years, events, and also traumatic occurrences as well.
Each of these major life events helped shape the doctors and played a role in what was to come. I find this emerging trend of literary suspense to be a highly engrossing and rewarding experience for the reader.
For me, I want to know characters on a deeper level, flaws and all. I don’t need a quick summary with lots of action—let me learn about the characters. So, I love character studies.
I found it quite interesting with this group of doctors that many (although not all) are selfish, cruel, cunning, but are fantastic at their work. It really strives to go against the stereotype that doctors have to be flawless at all times. Or perhaps that is the price of constant perfection at work.
Verdict
Go ahead and plan on selecting Julebord: The Holiday Party for your holiday book club read in 2025. But truly, you can read this book any time of the year as well.
There’s quite a bit of themes in this novel that makes this book absolutely ripe for book club discussions: greed, anger, personal traumas, power, and more.
The storytelling style brings a fresh and exciting approach, and the reader is rewarded with an enriching character study. Plus, the setting in remote Norway is vivid, and transformative. This story will stay with me for a long time.
For book clubs, check out my discussion questions here.
