How to Slay on Holiday by Sarah Bonner
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Sarah Bonner’s How to Slay on Holiday is a deliciously subversive beach read that toys expertly with the conventions of the domestic thriller. Set against the sun-bleached vistas of Mykonos, this novel delivers a sharply observed, darkly comic tale of deceit, dysfunction and carefully concealed malice.
At its core is Chloe, a woman with murder on her mind and a picture-perfect holiday to mask her intentions. As she sets out to eliminate her husband, the narrative gradually morphs into a tangled web of secrets, lies and spiralling consequences.
Bonner, whose debut Her Perfect Twin established her as a writer to watch, here proves herself adept at blending jet-black humour with psychological suspense. Told through alternating perspectives—including Chloe, her sister-in-law Tori, and the villa’s concierge Grace—the structure offers a chorus of unreliable narrators, each harbouring their own secrets. This multiplicity of viewpoints creates a propulsive narrative, one that continually wrongfoots the reader without ever losing sight of its characters’ emotional truths.
Bonner’s prose is crisp and confident, laced with dry wit and biting social commentary. Her depiction of a family holiday unravelling under the strain of long-held resentments and unspoken betrayals feels unnervingly familiar, even as the stakes spiral towards farce and violence. There are shades of The White Lotus here—the glossy setting, the simmering class tensions, the comic cruelty—but Bonner’s voice remains distinctly her own.
The Greek setting is more than a scenic backdrop; it serves as a quietly ironic contrast to the darkness at the heart of the novel. Mykonos, with its sun-drenched villas and Insta-perfect vistas, becomes a stage for the performance of happiness—one Chloe is determined to script to her advantage.
What elevates How to Slay on Holiday beyond its genre peers is Bonner’s ability to balance tone so deftly. Just as the plot threatens to tip into melodrama, she reins it in with a moment of sly humour or poignancy. The result is a thriller that is at once pacy, playful and unsettling.
A sharply drawn, morally ambiguous novel that manages to be both escapist and acerbic, How to Slay on Holiday is a reminder that the most dangerous thing on a luxury break might not be a broken pool filter—but the people you choose to travel with to ‘paradise’.
