What a fun read! I wanted a Christmas book with a touch of mystery and this delivered! It was a holiday rom com with a mystery thrown in and I ate it up! Enemies to lovers top tier.

⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

• mystery meets rom com 🎄
• enemies to lovers
• witty banter

The dynamic between our two main characters is really great! While I wasn't *super* interested in the main story, I did enjoy following along with their crazy antics. Overall, a fun enough holiday read.

🗣 Thank you to SOTC/Morrow Marketing and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book via early ebook! All opinions are honest and my own.

What a wonderful, fun book to read during the Christmas season! I love a great cozy mystery and this one is a fast paced, cannot wait to see what happens next kind of book. I highly recommend this book because it has it all: romance, mystery, adventure and heart. The banter is fantastic and you just want it to go on and on. Great for that flight or road trip this holiday season.

Maggie Chase is a brilliant cozy mystery writer. She loves writing and the fans love her. She has fashioned her own writing style but she still idolize her all-time favorite mystery writer Eleanor Ashley. When her agent informs her that ‘her biggest fan” has invited Maggie to spend Christmas at a remote English estate, she can hardly believe it and is a little reluctant. But agents can be pushy so she agrees to go. When she finds out the writer she despises most is also going to the same Christmas party in the English countryside, she cannot believe it. Ethan Wyatt is the cockiest, most annoying person she has ever met. He writes the big, action thriller type of books and is a darling of the publisher. He also calls her Marcie. She is regretting getting on that plane with him but wants to see this Christmas trip through. And the mystery fan turns out to be the reclusive Eleanor Ashley!

Once settled in, Maggie discovers there are quite a few additional guests. The first night dinner set events in motion and a real life mystery has to be solved. Eleanor has disappeared. A massive storm has stranded all of them on the estate. What happened to Eleanor? Who would hurt her and why? Ethan and Maggie team up to make it out alive and find Eleanor. Shenanigans ensue, thank goodness. What a story!

Oh my gosh, I LOVED this book!! I finished 5 mins before I had to be at work! It was such a good mystery with a cute side romance plot plus CHRISTMAS!!!! It was everything I didn't know I needed! It was so addictive and I didn't wanna stop. The audio was PERFECT! It's one I'll definitely reread again next Christmas. It was like Knives Out meets Inheritance Game but with a cute Christmas vibe and "enemies" romance. HIGHLY RECOMMEND esp the audio!

This book was so cute, quirky, and funny. I loved the story and characters. The perfect blend of romance, comedy, and mystery. I noted a few minor typos but no major issues.

Thank you Avon and NetGalley for allowing me to be able to get an eARC of The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year in exchange for an honest review!

This book is SO DANG FUN. I loved it so much. It combines both romance and mystery / suspense for me. I found this book to be so fun and Ally Carter did an amazing job writing it! I love the characters. Ethan’s protectiveness has me gasping for air.

A locked room, isolated location mystery romance? YES PLEASE!!
First off, I love the cover art. I know don't judge a book Yada Yada, but let's be honest here...good cover art draws interest.
I expected this to be a cheesy romance. It wasn't. There's romance, but it's a nice slow burn that makes it more believable for a rivals/enemies to lovers storyline. It doesn't jump in too fast, instead giving the characters room to develop both individually and into a romantic connection. I really enjoyed the dynamic between the two main characters. I had more than a few laugh out loud moments throughout.
The plot was great. Of course an aging mystery writer disappearing brings to mind Agatha Christie. As does the locked room mystery. There was more than one mystery to solve along the way, and the author did a nice job of bringing the story full circle.
All in all I really enjoyed this book. It's fun, well-written and has some great characters!
A big thanks to Netgalley and Avon and Harper Voyager for this ARC.

Thank you for the ARC!

I absolutely loved this! The mystery, the characters, the setting, the BANTER! It was fast-paced yet so fun and satisfying. I miss Maggie and Ethan already and would read more adventures of them.

I don’t think the cover fits the book but that’s my only criticism.

📚 #BOOKREVIEW 📚
The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year by Ally Carter
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ / Pages: 304 / Genre: Cozy Mystery
Release Date: October 8, 2024

Maggie Chase and Ethan Wyatt have been longtime rivals since graduate school. Now Maggie is the queen of cozy mysteries and Ethan is the king of action thrillers. Both have been invited to a Christmas weekend away at the home of Eleanor Ashley, a world-renowned mystery novelist and Maggie’s favorite writer of all time. So when Eleanor suddenly goes missing, Maggie is determined to find her or at least find out who’s responsible for her disappearance and possible murder. But, of course, Ethan has to involve himself in her sleuthing, which eventually turns from annoying meddling into welcomed flirting. Curiouser and curiouser!

This cozy mystery/romcom is the perfect Christmas read on a winter’s day under a comfy blanket next to a twinkling Christmas tree. I enjoyed the rivals-to-lovers banter and finally revealed revelations between Maggie and Ethan.

Thank you, @TheAllyCarter, @AvonBooks, @HarperVoyagerUS, and @NetGalley for my gifted copy.

A delightful holiday book with a fun mystery with a closed door romance. I loved how the book was framed and plotted. With the interview starting each chapter and a late added dual POV, it felt fresh and new and filled twists - some I guessed and so many more that I didn't. But most importantly there was a sense of depth to both the characters and the plot that is often missing from holiday books, but this one had in spades. Maybe one of my favorite holiday books.

If Carter writes it I will read it. I was an avid writer of hers while I was a tween and for her to keep writing and now for adults I just feel like I am dreaming.

4.5 stars
I've officially switched into Christmas mode, and this was the perfect read for it.
Did I pre-order this based solely on the title? You bet I did.
The Most Wonderful Crime Of The Year by Ally Carter is, first and foremost, hilarious. Just the mood I needed. But it's more than that. It's a locked-room (well, specifically, mansion) with all the associated tropes - sprawling country estate of legendary author Eleanor Ashley, snowstorm, power is down, bridge is out. And one bed for warmth, of course.
Authors Maggie Chase and Ethan Wyatt have been summoned to board a trans-continental flight - no details, just get on, we ride at dawn.
What follows is not only a fun rom-com, but also a great seasonal mystery with an entertaining cast of characters. And some heartbreaking emotional depth to our MCs to round it out.
Highly recommended!

This was a really cute, fast read. I enjoyed the book, but I felt it was lacking a bit of the meat you might get in just a mystery or just a romance. The mystery didn't really have any twists, and the romance was pretty shallow.

But it was cute. It was funny. It was a romp. Maybe it wasn't supposed to have twists or deep connection! Maybe it was just supposed to be a breezy read! And it was! I just didn't realize that was what it was meant to be going in, which left me feeling sort of unsatisfied.

Did I love it? No.
But did I like it? Yes, absolutely.

PS I think this would be great as a movie.

This book was the perfect mix of a little mystery along with a great romance plot. The characters were well developed and made sense together!

Thanks to NetGalley for the free eARC. I was in a serious rut and needed a palate cleanser, and this fit the bill perfectly. It's really best when it leans hard into the satire - there are some moments when it gets a little too sincere and schmoopy for my liking.

I'm not a huge romance fan, and on the rare occasions I talk myself into reading romance, the whole enemies to lovers trope is the trope I hate most! Here we have two fairly successful writers - Maggie writes cozy romances not unlike this one, and Ethan writes hard boiled thrillers (two guesses who gets more attention from their mutual publishing house!). They, along with a motley cast of characters straight out of an Agatha Christie novel, are invited to the home of Eleanor Ashley, one of the greatest mystery writers ever to live (and yes, she's clearly a Christie stand-in). Then of course there's a terrible storm and the bridge goes out and the phones go down and Eleanor disappears from inside a locked room. The whole place is crawling with suspects, given that Eleanor was older and had recently revised her will. Much like Murder on the Orient Express, everyone has motive.

Maggie and Ethan get to investigating, and like I said, this book is really at its best when it leans into the absurdity. There are all of these flashbacks to Maggie and Ethan's first meeting, and Maggie's terrible marriage, and Ethan's terrible childhood, and it really just grinds everything to a halt. The mystery itself is frothy and fun, and mostly held my interest, but I confess that I finished this about a week ago and I already forget how the whole thing shook out!

DNF 51% - I wanted to love this book, but after two attempts, it just wasn't holding my attention.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity.

Loved this book a whole lot!! I think it had such a perfect blend of romance and mystery - I loved both Maggie and Ethan and their emotional journeys along the way. I read this really quick and definitely recommend.

This was silly and cute but sometimes you are in the mood for silly and cute! Although it was set at Christmas it didn’t felt particularly “Christmas-y” but I enjoyed the romance/cozy mystery combo. It felt a little “insta-love” at times and due to their being history between the two leads you aren’t privy to until super late in the book some of their interactions didn’t make a lot of sense. Still enjoyed it overall and was a quick read.

The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year is a fast-paced romantic mystery. I admit that I've gotten a little tired of the romance genre from the little I've read, so the romance tropes annoyed me at the beginning, but there's a slow reveal of character backstory that made up for the tropes I found annoying. In contrast, I loved all the mystery tropes! This is just who I am as a reader. If you love the banter of the romance genre and the plot of a mystery, you should pick this book up

This was so good??? I've heard of Ally Carter before and was looking forward to the mystery component of this 'romystery' - and it did not disappoint! Ethan and Maggie are a fun dynamic duo as they navigate the sticky situation they've found themselves in. While there are some questionable decisions made by Maggie, the context of her life makes a lot of sense. I ended up really rooting for them and loooooved the switch to Ethan's POV that revealed just how down bad he was for her. Like. Yes. GIVE IT TO ME.

The Knives Out comparisons are very on point, and it definitely scratched the itch that that movie continues to leave in its wake. Would DEFINITELY recommend it for the holiday season.