This is a fun cozy mystery. What is better than a holiday murder mystery and store that sells books and chocolate. The characters are realistic and interesting. The mystery was intriguing and had plenty of surprises, although the pacing started a bit slow.

All thoughts and opinions are my own, I have not been influenced by anyone.

Thank you to the publisher, Crooked Lane Books, and NetGalley for this ARC. The book is set in a small town in Montana and is home to twin sleuths Alex and Hannah who run Murder and Mayhem, a bookstore/candy shop. The cover art is fantastic and draws you right in to the setting.

Lots of elderly busybodies in this town and it leads to the death of one of them. Alex takes the lead on figuring out who the killer is since she is a suspect. I will say she is a decent sleuth as is her sister, Hannah. I enjoyed the quirky residents and storyline. My one issue is some of the book read like a second or third book in a series. However, things I was missing in the beginning do come out later in the book. I had an inkling of “who dun it” but wasn’t sure why.

Overall a solid debut and I look forward to the second book in the series.

A Christmas Candy Killing: A Killer Chocolate Mystery
By Christina Romeril
Crooked Lane Books
2023

Review by Cynthia Chow

A specialty candy line called Killer Chocolates that all have the names of famous poisons might seem a little sketchy in this litigation-happy world, but when they are sold out of the Murder and Mayhem: Killer Chocolates and Bookshop it makes sense. At least it does for identical twin sisters Alex and Hanna Wright, who have left their former careers to open a mystery bookstore and chocolate shop in Harriston, Montana. It’s a small town where gossip is a currency and everybody’s business is shared with one another, but there are still a surprising number of secrets being held by its residents. This becomes all too apparent when the Sleuth Book Club member Jane Burrows tells Alex that she suspects that one of their neighbors was featured on a recent true-crime special and suspected of at least four murders. Since Jane has routinely cried wolf and made false accusations more than once, no one is too alarmed until Alex finds Jane stabbed to death in her home.

Once interested in a career in law enforcement until pressured out of it by her mother, Alex immediately begins making a murder board and tracking down alibis and motives. She’s given a legitimate reason for conducting her own investigation when Alex becomes a prime suspect due to an unexpected inheritance written into Jane’s will. After guilting the deputy into providing inside information due to his dumping a heartbroken Hanna, Alex nudges the line of tampering with evidence and possibly interfering with a police investigation. What gives Alex both an incentive and excuse to meddle is the sheriff’s self-centered intention to quickly close the investigation before Christmas during an upcoming election year.

This first in the series has a clock ticking as Alex and Hanna have less than a week to find a murderer before the Christmas holiday. That doesn’t mean that Alex won’t also be hosting candy-making workshops in their candy shop or designing poison-themed confections. Veronal Vanilla Creams, Belladonna Black Currant Chocolates, and Ricin Raspberry creams are just a few of the candies that darkly-humored customers are clamoring to purchase and gift for the holidays. A very brief marriage during her younger years has the forty-something Alex leery of relationships and exhausted from dating, but the handsome pastor Tom Kennedy is undeniably appealing and interested in the older-by-fifteen minutes twin. If only his nosy neighbor Penelope wasn’t so determined to catch the widower herself, barging in on their amateur detective sessions with freezer-burned casseroles. Filled with Christmas candy-making hints and sleuthing shenanigans among nosy neighbors, this is the start of an engaging cozy mystery series perfect for the winter season.

Really great cozy mystery. Wonderful for the Christmas season. I must read for all those that. Love this genre

Small town murder mystery surrounding the partners/sleuths of a candy store in small town Montana. I just love these one nights reads. I fancy myself as the one who can interpret the clues before law enforcement gets around to it. Some times I can. This one, no. My thanks to the authors and NetGalley for a complimentary copy of the book.

From page one, I knew I was going to like this book. Alex & Hanna are unique heroines, they’re older than most cozy protagonists & that life experience adds a lot to the story. Their book/chocolate shop sounds enviable & I wish it was a real place to visit. The town is full of many eccentric characters & plenty of suspects. Alex is our sleuth & she is a great one, very smart. I truly did not know who the killer was going to be & what a fantastic ending!

This is such a perfect start to a new series. It has all the wintery, festive vibes you could want in a book & I will happily be reading the next one! It’s seems holiday themed too so maybe this is what the whole series will be?

A cozy read, despite there being a murder. Enjoyable. Would read more by this author. Thank you for the opportunity to read.

Thanks NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books for the free copy.
This book is about twins Alex and Hannah. Together they own a bookshop to sell poison-themed chocolates, which a killer decides to use to actually commit a murder. This was a really cute cozy mystery. Perfect to read while enjoying Hallmark’s Christmas in July!

Twin sisters Alex and Hanna operate a book and chocolate shop in small town Harriston, Montana. One of Alex's good friends, elderly Jane, is found dead in her home, causing Alex's amateur sleuthing skills to awaken. This cozy mystery, the first of a series, is well-written, charming, and fun to read. The combination of book store and chocolate shop is a genius idea. Thanks to NetGallery and Crooked Lane Books for providing an ARC.

A Christmas Candy Killing is a great cozy mystery. It is a fun Christmas story as well. It is easy to recommend this book.

This captivating debut cozy transports readers to a charming setting filled with delectable chocolates named after deadly substances. The main character, Alex Wright, along with her twin sister Hanna, runs the unique establishment known as Murders and Mayhem: Killer Chocolates and Bookshop, nestled in the picturesque Rocky Mountains of Montana. The peaceful atmosphere is disrupted when a member of the Sleuth Book Club is discovered brutally murdered, prompting Deputy Sheriff Duncan Fletcher to launch an investigation. The story wastes no time in kicking off the action, immediately drawing readers into its engaging plot.

I received this book for free from netgalley for an honest review.

Really well thought-out book with amazing characters and excellent setting. Love the cover

This was a delightful book and beginning of a new series. What made this book so different from other cozies is the sleuth is actually twin sisters. Alex and Hannah have a great chemistry when solving the murder and having two sleuths meant more ideas and sleuthing. The book takes place in Montana but I didn't really fall in love with the town, yet but I think as the series goes on it will come alive. A great Christmas cozy and a great start to a new series

A Christmas Candy Killing is the first in a new shopfront cozy series by Christina Romeril. Released 11th Oct 2022 by Crooked Lane, it's 304 pages and is available in hardcover, audio, and ebook format. Paperback format due out in 4th quarter 2023 from the same publisher. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links and references throughout. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately.

This is a promising start to a comfortable easy-to-read small-town "shopfront" holiday cozy with a pair of appealingly intelligent twin female protagonists who own a shop featuring everyone's favorite combo: chocolate and books. An elderly neighbor who claims that a real-life killer has taken up residence in town turns up murdered and so the sisters are soon on the case to solve the mystery and clear their names.

As with most cozies, the emphasis is on the characters and the puzzle. The crimes are described off-scene and without being too graphic. The language is clean and there's no gruesome content. The subplot threads are skillfully entwined into a satisfying climax and resolution. Although I do confess I figured out "whodunnit" before the end, I still enjoyed it very much. I'm looking forward to the next installment in the series (due out in late 2023).

Four stars. Definitely one for shopfront cozy fans. It's full of book and series name drops and it's always fun to find new authors to follow. The author has also included an intriguing detailed recipe for pear ganache bonbons, including instructions for everything from tempering the chocolate to making the forms and the pear ganache to fill them.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

Chocolate, books, and a little side of murder. What is not to like? I am not an avid reader of cozies, but I always admire their covers and pun-worthy titles, so when I saw this one was available, I was happy to request it.

The setting was so cute and perfect, I really enjoyed the setting and characters. As a German, I also enjoyed the little additions of German thrown in as Christmas always reminds me of Germany. I am not a chef, but seeing the addition of recipes at the end was also a nice touch. The mystery was satisfying and believable, as by the end I could see how the clues were there all along. Overall, a nice debut and I will continue to look for more books by Romeril.

Identical twin sisters Alex and Hannah are the owners of Murder and Mayhem, a mystery bookshop that sells their famous poison-themed Killer Chocolates. Shortly before Christmas, their neighbor, Jane, confides to Alex that a murderer from a true-crime show has taken up residence in the village. The next morning, Alex shows up at Jane’s house to watch the show, but instead discovers Jane's body, with a box of Killer Chocolates nearby. The sheriff quickly zeroes in on two suspects: Alex, a beneficiary in Jane’s will, and Zack, a handyman who was seen leaving the crime scene. But Alex maintains her innocence and sets out to find the true killer.
This was a great first-in-a-series cozy mystery. I loved the idea that a bookshop sells chocolate. It would be wonderful to visit. Alex is a wonderfully likeable sleuth who solved the mystery using her intellect and observational skills. I can’t wait to read the next one in the series. Thank you to NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books for the advanced reader’s copy. This review is my unbiased opinion.

Thank you to Netgalley and Crooked Lane Books for this ARC. #netgalley #achristmascandykilling

I got a chuckle out of reading this book! I love the background of it twin sisters at a murder mystery little shop with themed poisoned chocolates! I had a lot of fun reading this book. For me it went fast and I didn't want it to end. I look forward to reading more.

This one was more of a 3.5, but I rounded up. It took me a while to get into this one. To the point that I started it and put it down several times. I requested the ARC because I love cozy mysteries, I have an identical twin, and I love chocolate. This book should have been perfect. And once I got a couple of chapters in, I started enjoying it and finished it fairly quickly. I can't really pin down why it took me so long to get into it. Maybe because having the candy named after poisons really didn't appeal to me.

Overall, it had all the pieces of typical cozy and had a fun story.

Thank you to the author and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Chocolate and Poison. What a combination!

The candies don’t really have poison in them. They are just named after lethal substances like Poison Pear Ganache and Strychnine Strawberries, and they are called Killer Chocolates at the Murder and Mayhem mystery bookstore and candy shop at the heart of Christina Romeril’s debut mystery whodunit A Christmas Candy Killing.

Alex and Hannah, identical twins, own the shop in Montana. Anna runs the book end of the business while Hannah is the chief chocolatier. It’s Christmastime, and Linda, a neighbor, tells Alex that the killer on a reality crime show might be living in their town. Alex goes to the Linda’s house to see the recording, only to find the woman…dead…and a box of Killer Chocolates.

One of the best ways to introduce an amateur sleuth in a new cozy mystery series is to have the murder victim be someone close, whose death demands justice that local law enforcement doesn’t seem to provide. Or (even better) to have the sleuth-in-waiting be a prime suspect, forced to use the skills of a detective to solve the case and prove their innocence. Alex is hounded by the police who have lots of evidence they think points to her, so she has to find the real killer.

Linda had told her suspicions to the town’s leading gossip, so everyone had heard about it, which meant anyone in the whole town could be the true suspect. This wasn’t the first time she claimed somebody in the town fit the profile she saw on reality television, so people didn’t pay much attention to her accusations…unless a real killer thought she was getting too close to the truth. Linda ran the gardening society, so her killer could have been one of her rivals for the job. Several club members raised poisonous plants, so maybe it was one of them. Linda had arguments with others, had she accused the wrong person…who was the right person?

While more and more circumstances link Alex to the crime, she digs into the past of the town, bringing up secrets some people don’t want known. Will she stop the killing? or become another victim?

Romeril lays out the clues, but they are subtle. This box of chocolates is a treat, and there are recipes and tips at the end to inspire the future chocolatier, but not the future poisoner.

A cleverly crafted plot and candy….what could be better? I love this series and look forward to the next installment.
Many thanks to Crooked Lane Books and to NetGalley for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion.