The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year

Do you like the enemies-to-lovers trope? Do you like locked-room cozy mysteries? Does a snowed-in scenario at an English countryside estate sound good? Does a story inspired by the famous disappearance of Agatha Christie intrigue you? Do you like a wounded FMC who has to learn to let her guard down and trust the sarcastic, yet eminently lovable MMC?

Welcome to Ally Carter’s newest book The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year, where you’ll get a solid cozy mystery and a charming rom-com all rolled into one!

Mystery author Maggie Chase hates Ethan Wyatt, a fellow author at their publishing imprint. He’s good-looking, popular with literally everyone and the guy can NEVER get her name right. Marcie? Margaret Grace? Margaret Olivia? Margaret Lavinia? (For the record, it’s Margaret Elizabeth). What she doesn’t understand is that Ethan knows EXACTLY who she is and has since the very first moment he saw her in that elevator years ago!

When Maggie and Ethan are unexpectedly invited for Christmas to the vast estate of Eleanor Ashley, the grand dame of their fictional mystery-writing world, Maggie thinks she may have died and gone to heaven! Her euphoria is short-lived when the eighty-one-year-old, whose books were Maggie’s lifeblood growing up, goes missing from her locked office

Trapped by a blizzard with an assortment of Eleanor’s other guests, including her son and daughter-in-law, her niece, butler, doctor, a lawyer, a duchess and duke and fellow author Sir Jasper, Maggie has to draw on her extensive knowledge of Eleanor’s books to try to solve the mystery of what happened to her, if she can avoid all those pesky attempts on her life. It’s a good thing Ethan used to be a Secret Service agent! Maybe he’s not so bad after all …

This was really cute! The mystery is decent and serves to move the story along and give a reason for our MCs to grow closer, but it’s not the strength of the book. Where the book shines is the romance arc and the sarcastic, playful banter between Maggie and Ethan, which was so fun on the audio narrated by the talented Saskia Maarleveld and Zachary Webber. Each gets their own POV chapters, so you get both sides of the story, which is told in present and past chapters with short but hilarious police interview interstitials scattered throughout.

If you like a holiday rom-com with a little Agatha-inspired mystery thrown in, this is a fun one!

★★★★

Thanks to Avon and Harper Voyager Books, NetGalley and author Ally Carter for the digital ARC to honestly review and to my library/Libby for the audio. It’s out now.