I Just Read About That…

[LISTENED TO: December 2024] The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year

This is probably the first romance book that I’ve listened to.  Technically it’s a romance mystery, but the format is pretty distinctively romance.

I can say that I really didn’t enjoy the more romancey parts of the book.  Not because of the romance, because heck, almost all books have a romance component.

But I found this romance to  be beating us over the head with the fact that a) Maggie HATES Ethan and b) Ethan is REALLY HOT.  Again, I’m fine with the romance angle and even these tow components of the romance, but jeez, how many times did Carter have to tell us these two things.

Every time she saw Ethan she pointed out his hot arms or his studly abs.  And every time she saw him she told us how much she hated him.

And, hey, Ally Carter, trust your reader that they can hold information for more than a few pages.

This may have seemed more obnoxious to be in an audio book format.  Saskia Maarleveld did a great job in both male and female voices.  But hearing some of those same phrases repeated over and over was annoying.  Zachary Webber did a good job as Ethan (towards the end of the book, Ethan starts getting his own POV), but I actually enjoyed Saskia’s voice more.

So a basic plot summary.  Mystery author Maggie Chase hates Ethan Wyatt, a fellow author at their publishing imprint. He’s good-looking, popular with literally everyone and the guy can NEVER get her name right.

I enjoyed this component–he keeps calling her the wrong name over and over.  The payoff for this was pretty great, honestly.

Maggie and Ethan are unexpectedly invited for Christmas to the vast estate of Eleanor Ashley.  Ashley is a massively famous author.  She has written 99 books and Maggie had read all of them.  (Of course there is a backstory about her and how important Ashley was to her).  Maggie is unbelievably excited.  She is of course really annoyed to find that Ethan has been invited too.

And things get worse when Ashley goes missing from her locked office–a locked room mystery.

There is a cast of others–mostly Eleanor’s family–who are all pretty much miserable to be there.  And, more worryingly, they don’t seem to care that Eleanor is missing.

Eleanor is a mystery writer and mystery lover, so she sets out to find Eleanor.  She’s annoyed that Ethan is following her around and being a pain.  But it turns out he’s pretty helpful too (which is even more annoying).  And you can see how the romance evolves.

I enjoyed the mystery, although the revelation wasn’t terribly exciting, but I did enjoy it.  Oh, and guess what?  The main characters get together in the end (who would have guessed?).

The funny thing about this is that my wife actually read the book a little bit after me.  We do read the same books a lot, but never romances (which she likes).  So it was kind of interesting to see her take on things.

Oh, and the cover of this book is 100% terrible.  Everything about it is awful, from the way it misrepresents the story to the way it makes the story look like something it’s not.