By: Ally Carter
Pub Date: 10-13-2026
Genre: RomCom Mystery
Rating:🌕🌕🌕🌕🌗
Heat Level: 🔥🔥🔥(Howl)
Tropes: Holiday Romance, Childhood Enemies-to-Lovers, Cat and Mouse, Slow Burn, Forced Proximity
REVIEW
I absolutely adore this series by Ally Carter. This one felt like a Romcom written by Rian Johnson (Knives Out). A succession story with real death, faked death, and second chance enemies to lovers romance. It was written beautifully and was an absolute thrill ride. I truly don’t feel these books get enough credit. Yes, they are holiday themed, but they are, at their heart, incredible murder mysteries. The locations are well established and feel real, the problems are real world problems, and the characters are varied and well fleshed out. I also LOVED the dynamic between oht MCs and the dual POV deepened the relationship and the mystery itself.
I truly hope there are more books in this series. It is like playing Clue in book form, and I will be first in line, ravenous for more!
Thanks to NetGalley and Avon Harper Voyager for the advanced ebook copy in exchange for a fair and honest review!
PUBLISHER’S SYNOPSIS
Ella Chambers didn’t kill Liam Montgomery.
If she had, she certainly wouldn’t have done it outside his family’s mansion during the Christmas party of the year. She definitely wouldn’t have loaded his body into the trunk of her car. And she absolutely would not have announced to the town that the boy who ruined her life ten years ago was “so dead to her.”
But now Liam is missing—nothing but a bloody spot on the drive and a host of unanswered questions—and Ella is the only person who knows he’s still alive.
So it’s up to her to prove it.
Liam Montgomery didn’t want to die.
But, it turns out, when you’re the sole heir to a billionaire, someone might want you dead. Luckily for Liam, being dead works for him.
Now he’s on the hunt for a killer. Unfortunately, Ella is on the hunt for him.
She’ll have to prove he’s still alive to clear her name, but that’s easier said than done in a quaint mountain town where everyone knows your story but no one knows the truth. Can the billionaire’s grandson and the housekeeper’s daughter join forces to catch a killer? Or is their past too steeped in secrets and lies?
As the storm of the century blows in, every step will bring these two childhood rivals closer to a killer—and each other.
Because, this Christmas, only one thing is certain: it’s beginning to look a lot like murder.
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