Likely Stories - The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year by Ally Carter

Hello, and welcome to Likely Stories. I’m Paige Connell, and I teach English at Midway High School.

The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year by Ally Carter has become a book I recommend to everyone, and I can't sing its praises enough.

Maggie is the top crime fiction writer at her publishing house, but her personal life is in turmoil, and along comes fellow author Ethan to seemingly rub salt in her wounds. She’s the “Queen of the Cozy Mystery”, and he’s “Mr. Big Time Thriller Guy” in a leather jacket. The two have a history-separately and together-so when they are tapped by their editors to spend Christmas with Eleanor Ashley, the grande dame of fiction herself, they begrudgingly go together.

Eleanor's infamous mansion is set to host an eclectic group of holiday travelers-a cousin, a lawyer, a doctor, a duke & duchess, a butler, a nanny, and more (but no partridge in a pear tree). All hell breaks loose when Eleanor disappears from a locked room in her mansion-and then come gunshots, poisoned tea trays, fires, and secret passages. Maggie knows she can use her sleuthing skills from her books to figure out what happened to Eleanor (is she dead? Hiding? Testing them? Scamming everyone?), but she also will have to depend on Ethan, the only person she seems able to trust in a blizzard-locked labyrinth.

If he'll stop calling her Marcie and start looking at her with those gorgeous blue eyes, can Maggie possibly feel something other than contempt for Ethan? Perhaps she can accomplish both objectives–finding Ms. Ashley and finding her heart’s desire.

I just loved everything about The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year by Ally Carter. Maggie and Ethan both have narrating voices, and their enemies-to-lovers arc is snappy and believable. The mystery of Eleanor harkens back to Agatha Christie and Murder on the Orient Express with such an eclectic cast of characters, many of whom could be hiding secrets. I liked the layered way we revealed our characters’ back stories and the Poirot-esque exposition at the end (because if you know, you know) as everything wraps up when Maggie finally finds her confident voice. If you liked Knives Out or the classic Clue movie, you won’t want to miss this one, no matter what time of year you read it.

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