Merry Christmas! Happy New Year! It’s my favourite time of the year (tied with Halloween, of course). I am currently on my holiday break from work and doing the final touches on my annual family New Year’s Eve murder mystery. And with it being the end of the year it’s time for my final reading update… I read 65 books this year! If you want to know my favourite reads this year just read to the end of this post (past the rating). And for my final review of the year, I chose The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year. A Christmas romance/mystery by Ally Carter. And for my drink, I made an It’s a Wonderful Life cocktail. I know the pun isn’t perfect, but it’s got “wonderful” and it’s Christmas themed so it works enough.
It’s a Wonderful Life Recipe
1.5oz Baileys
0.5oz Crème de Menthe
3oz Half-and-half
1 sprinkle Ground Cinnamon
3 “Mistletoe” Leaf Candies*
*This is an optional ingredient.
In a shaker with ice, add all liquid ingredients and shake for around 10 seconds. Strain into a highball glass half-filled with ice. Sprinkle ground cinnamon on top, garnish, and enjoy!
For this month’s special ingredient I knew I wanted to use mistletoe somehow. But obviously mistletoe is poisonous, which most of us know and you’d definitely know after reading this book. So instead, I used spearmint leaf candies because they look like mistletoe leaves. Plus, I figured they’d be the perfect garnish for this minty cocktail. This cocktail was so good! It tasted almost like a mint chocolate milkshake from the foaminess of the Baileys. I’m not even a mint chocolate fan and I found this one delicious, so that’s saying something.
The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year Synopsis
(from book cover)
The bridge is out. The phones are down. And the most famous mystery writer in the world just disappeared out of a locked room two days before Christmas.
Meet Maggie Chase and Ethan Wyatt:
She’s the new Queen of the Cozy Mystery.
He’s Mr. Big-time Thriller Guy.
She hates his guts.
He thinks her name is Marcie (no matter how many times she’s told him otherwise.)
But when they both accept a cryptic invitation to attend a Christmas house party at the English estate of a reclusive fan, neither is expecting their host to be the most powerful author in the world: Eleanor Ashley, the Duchess of Death herself.
That night, the weather turns, and the next morning Eleanor is gone.
She vanished from a locked room, and Maggie has to wonder: Is Eleanor in danger? Or is it all some kind of test? Is Ethan the competition? Or is he the only person in that snowbound mansion she can trust?
As the snow gets deeper and the stakes get higher, every clue will bring Maggie and Ethan closer to the truth—and each other. Because, this Christmas, these two rivals are going to have to become allies (and maybe more) if they have any hope of saving Eleanor.
Assuming they don’t kill each other first.
Review
“If mankind has one universal superpower, it’s gaslighting women into thinking they’re the problem.”
Well, we’re ending the year on a meh note. But I feel like this year’s reviews were largely only ok reads. And The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year unfortunately follows this trend. I really wanted to love this one since I love cozy mysteries and a Hallmark Christmas romance, but this one missed the mark for me. I didn’t fully dislike it, but the mystery aspect definitely stood out to me more than the romance. So, let’s get into it.
As hinted at above, I think I’m largely going to discuss this one as two sections—the romance side of the novel and the mystery side of the novel. But first, I’ll do my general comments. Positive one, it was a super quick read and the chapters are extremely short, which I love. Positive two, I thought the gaslighting stuff was pretty well done and showed a good representation of someone’s behaviours and thoughts after going through that kind of situation. Negative one, the writing was a bit juvenile, but it did work for the story and was Hallmark-y and cute. Negative two, it took a while to get into it and the first 100 pages were a little cringe-y, in my opinion.
Moving on, let’s start with the mystery side of The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year. I loved this aspect of the novel. If you’re a regular reader of the blog, you know I love a cozy mystery and am a sucker for Agatha Christie. And this novel was definitely cozy and the character of Eleanor is clearly based on Christie, so I enjoyed that a lot. It is a locked room mystery, which I personally love and always find intriguing. We had a solid selection of suspect characters and it was relatively easy to keep track of them all and follow the mystery. I did, unfortunately, figure it out pretty quickly, but that didn’t take away from my enjoyment of the mystery.
As for the romance aspect of The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year, I don’t have as positive of things to say. I just couldn’t fully get into this side of the novel and the enemies to lovers trope didn’t really work here. She starts off by saying that she hates him for pretty much no reason, which immediately bothered me. She was just stereotyping him and putting out a really negative energy that I didn’t enjoy. And she would constantly mention hating him so passionately, but then say she barely even knows him, and then the next line understand him on a deeper level. It was very flip floppy, weirdly paced, and didn’t feel cohesive.
On a similar note, she would bounce between hating him and then having extremely romantic thoughts constantly. And both of them kept saying and thinking just super corny things. As mentioned above, the cringey-ness and the cheesy lines were making me want to roll my eyes a bit. And I know some cheese is expected in a romance, but it was over the top. I mean, “I’d fight the whole sky for you”… what does that even mean? I did get more into the romance once we started getting into Ethan’s perspective, but I also found it strange that it took over 100 pages before we got a perspective switch.
Final comments on the romance stuff, Ethan’s “spicier” lines and him being an avid romance reader were so Booktok-y that I just couldn’t take it seriously and, again, found myself rolling my eyes. Also the pet name “sweetheart” genuinely made me want to gag. Maybe some people love that as a term of endearment by a partner, but that makes me think of dads talking to their daughters. And that’s a very subjective issue, but it just did not work for me at all. But despite all the negatives I’ve mentioned here, I did still find the romance side cute and hopeful, and it made me all smiley and giggly when I wasn’t being annoyed with it.
Overall, I thought The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year was cute and fun and a perfect read for this time of year. I liked the mystery aspect a lot, but it kind of felt like two different books mashed together with the romance side of the novel. I wish it was less of a 50/50 split in the content and more focused on the mystery with a hint of romance and flirting. So all in all, the mystery wasn’t overly difficult to figure out and I was bothered that one question was never answered. And the romance was sweet, but also corny and laden with misunderstandings. All that being said, if you like a semi-enemies to lovers romance and a cozy mystery then I’d recommend checking this one out! If not, maybe pass on this one. But as always, or mostly always, I absolutely recommend this perfect holiday cocktail!
My Rating:
My Favourite Books of the Year:
The top 3 books I read and reviewed for the blog this year are:
Other books I loved that I did not review this year (in no particular order):
- Beach Read
- Beartown
- The Fragile Threads of Power
- Finale/the entire Once Upon a Broken Heart series
- This is How You Lose the Time War
Thanks for reading! And, if you read the book or try the cocktail let me know in a comment or on Instagram. Also, if you haven’t yet read my previous reviews, I recommend reading The Christmas Wish, Three Holidays and a Wedding, and Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone if you liked this one!
Teghann
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