While heading home for Christmas, I decided to listen to an audio book. (I usually get one or two audio books in a year, but it’s really not my reading preference.) I settled on Ally Carter’s The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year (Avon 2024), and I’m so glad I did. What a delicious holiday candy book this was. And I mean delicious.
The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year is an enemies-to-lovers, cozy , locked room mystery that is a heck of a lot of fun. Imagine playing a real-life game of CLUE with a coworker you loathe at a gorgeous and mysterious mansion in the English countryside, and you get the idea. Now make the coworkers mystery and big thrill authors and the owner of the home the most famous author of their publishing imprint – Eleanor Ashley, the Duchess of Death. Near perfection.
Cozy mystery writer Maggie Chase is in a bit of slump. Recently divorced after she found out her husband and best friend were having a long-term affair, she’s not in the most festive of moods. Her editor convinces her to take an invite to spend the holidays with “her biggest fan.” She finds out too late her arch nemesis, author Ethan Wyatt, a thriller author with a huge social media presence and throngs of adoring female fans, is also invited. Ethan refuses to learn her name, calling her Marcie regardless of the fact they’re both published at the same company, and they’ve met numerous times. Maggie is not amused and dreading this holiday until she realizes the “fan” is none other than Eleanor Ashley. Surrounded by Eleanor’s family, all with questionable motives, Eleanor vanishes from a locked room. Is it part of the game or is she truly in danger?
What unfolds is a closed room mystery that throws Maggie and Ethan together in an attempt to solve the case of the missing Duchess of Death. It’s just fun and was the perfect read for me leading up to Christmas. It’s also the perfect read for folks who find friendships and lifelines in the books they read.
Things I didn’t like? The cover, when the male narrator uses his “Maggie” voice, and Maggie’s repeated proclamation that they hate each other. Things I liked? Everything else. It really is a fun read.
Read this book.
A Girl Named Tommi 