🎧 Reviewed by LD | Rating: 3.4/5 | Steam: 🔥🔥🔥
⭐ I received an advance reader copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
⚠️ This is a full spoiler review. If you haven’t read Home for the Homicides yet — go read it first. We’ll be here when you’re done.
The Opening
Okay. Before we get into this, I need you to understand a few things. This book is set in an actual town called Christmas. Not a town with cute holiday vibes, not a town that leans into the aesthetic. An actual town, legally named Christmas, where it is the holidays all year round, everyone’s last name is somehow festive, and swearing is apparently so offensive that the entire town will stop and stare if you drop a single word. Into this setting, the authors have placed a murder investigation, a slow-burn rivals-to-lovers romance, a strip club called the North Pole, and a character named Ben Balshwet. That last name is intentional. It is meant to sound exactly like ball sweat…
This book reminds me of 2 people with a weekend, a whiteboard and unlimited access to weed gummies…. I don’t know what to tell you. Let’s get into it.
The Full Story — Spoilers Included
Holly’s expecting a proposal
We open with a woman in her hotel room, convinced tonight is the night her boyfriend is going to propose. She is hopeful and optimistic and wrong about basically everything she believes in this opening scene.
A body in the nativity scene
Meanwhile, the local sheriff is responding to a murder. A tourist has been stabbed to death in the middle of the Christmas nativity scene with an icicle ornament. The most festive crime scene you have ever heard of.
A year ago, a holiday party
Flashback. A year ago, Holly and her colleague Special Agent Mark Shepherd hooked up at the office holiday party. Holly freely admits she will hate Mark if he gets a promotion over her. She has worked twice as hard and sacrificed twice as much. He gets it. Marks asks her on a date and she stands him up that night because he got the promotion and she didnt and she cannot physically stand to watch him be happy about something she wanted. She hates him.
Sent to Christmas, together
Present day. The town of Christmas has a murder on its hands, the local police are completely out of their depth, and Holly and Mark are the agents sent to solve it. Together. When they arrive, there is one room available. One bed. Holly freaks out. Mark leaves.
He goes to sleep at his brother’s house, which is when we find out this is Mark’s actual hometown. His brother Jack is the Sheriff. His mother is the mayor. Holly, left alone and convinced that Mark has gone to find someone else to sleep with, does the most logical thing she can think of: she creates a fake Tinder profile using an AI guy. Obviously.
The morgue, and a lot of explaining
At the morgue, Holly immediately recognizes the victim. Because Ginger matched with her fake AI Tinder profile. So Holly now has to explain, in a professional setting, why she knows who the dead woman is. Mark, meanwhile, has to come clean about growing up in Christmas and the fact that his mother runs the whole town. He also used to be engaged to a local woman named Noel, broke it off years ago, and his mother has never fully let go of that dream.
This is fine. Everything is fine.
Ginger’s hotel room
They find the victim’s car and get into her room at the same hotel. Ginger packed an impressive quantity of personal items for a trip to a Christmas-themed tourist town, including all the sex toys you can think of.. There were noise complaints on Saturday night. In her room: an engagement ring box with a note from her grandma, and access to her email account, where she had been messaging someone named Ben, probably hundreds of times. He has never once replied.
A town holding its breath
Christmas is spiraling. The murder has everyone worried the annual Jingle Bell Jubilee might get cancelled, and this festival is apparently how the entire town’s economy survives. The pressure to solve this before the Jubilee is significant. Why solving it after would ruin the festival is genuinely unclear to me — but it is a plot point, so here we are.
A sting, a wire, and borrowed clothes from a dead woman
Holly sets up a sting date with John Snow, the local coffee shop guy who spoke with Ginger on the dating appmbefore she died. Before the date, she realizes she has nothing to wear. And so she goes into Ginger’s hotel room, which has already been processed by investigators, and borrows a dress. From the dead woman’s wardrobe. Just walks in and takes something. I found this a really, really weird move, but we keep going.
Background check on John Snow: widower. Two dead wives. Two daughters. Interesting.
The date is actually going pretty well — John is charming, Holly is having a good time — and then Mark is there. Whispering things in her ear all night, trying to mess with her, basically attempting to sabotage the whole operation for reasons he won’t admit to himself. When John asks if he can kiss Holly, Mark absolutely loses it. And then John notices the wire she’s wearing. Mark comes running in and covers for it — says they just needed a way to reach her. Sure, Mark.
Holly is done. She is leaving this town. She walks back toward the hotel, bends down to rub her foot, and an axe flies right over her head. She gives chase. She loses him.
From almost-axed to something else entirely
She calls Mark. He shows up, escorts her back to her room, and somehow this very stressful night turns into something neither of them was expecting. Holly apologizes for standing him up the night of his promotion. She tells him she actually showed up that night, saw how happy he was, and let her pride drag her out the door before she could say a word. They have sex. Immediately after: a crash. Smoke. Someone firebombed Holly’s door. Mark puts out the fire. Naked. There is an icicle ornament hanging on the door handle when they open it, with a note: Welcome home.
Ben Balshwet
They finally track down Ben, the man Ginger had been obsessively emailing. He claims he never got her messages, says they went on one or two dates and it fizzled. He alibis himself: he was in the big city. (The town near Christmas has no actual name. Everyone just calls it the big city. That is, again, that kind of book.)
Except — Mark calls Ben, and while they’re on the phone, the town’s big clock bells go off. At Mark’s end, the sound fades. On Ben’s end? Still echoing. Ben is in Christmas. They chase him. They catch him.
And Ben’s version of events is something else entirely. Ginger was not the victim in this situation. She was the stalker. One date, and then she showed up at his work. Sent bridal magazines to his house. Enrolled him in couples counselling under his name without his knowledge. Sent a fake jury duty summons to get him to the courthouse, where she had a marriage certificate waiting for his signature. Two weeks before she died, she showed up at his restaurant and told him she was done waiting — she’d booked a trip to a cute romance town with three Tinder matches. His alibi checks out. Ben Balshwet did not kill Ginger.
A brief interlude for the North Pole
I have to pause here. This town has a strip club called the North Pole. The stripper is named The Slayer. The madam is named Candy Cane. The guy strips completely nude. Everything in Christmas is Christmas-themed: the coffee shop, the sex toy shop, the strip club, all of it. A random narrator also appears throughout the book to offer commentary that I can only describe as inexplicable and unnecessary. Every name is a pun. John Snow. Ginger Bell. Ben Balshwet. The town of Christmas.
This book reads like two people got a whiteboard, a long weekend, and unlimited weed gummies. I genuinely cannot decide if that’s a criticism or a compliment.
John Snow, the interrogation
John Snow is brought in. He was supposed to meet Ginger that night, but his babysitter was late due to a concert, so he arrived half an hour after she was already dead. A news van shows up from the big city — someone leaked the victim’s identity to the press.
Christmas Eve at Mark’s mom’s house
It’s Christmas Eve and they end up at a family dinner at Mark’s mom’s house. There is an extremely awkward moment involving John Snow and some ornamental balls he made with Holly on their date that leads everyone at the table to suspect that Mark’s mom and her new husband have had some kind of arrangement with John Snow that nobody wanted to know about.
Noel is there. She corners Mark at the mistletoe and triple-dog-dares him to kiss her under it. He says no, there is someone else. She does not take this well.
At dinner, Noel is openly hostile to Holly. Holly notices. Holly files it away.
The hacker, the Tinder app, and a theory
Holly calls in a favour from a hacker friend and gets access to John Snow’s Tinder profile. Noel matched with him about six months ago. They went on multiple dates. A month before Ginger died, John told Noel his commitment was to his daughters and ended things. Two weeks later, Noel reached back out — said she’d be okay with keeping it casual. He turned her down because he had “big plans” with Ginger for those few nights she was in town.
Holly is 100% certain: Noel killed Ginger. And probably threw the axe. And probably set the fire.
Noel comes with a stake
Noel comes for Holly with a stake, talking fast and unraveling. All of this is Holly’s fault. When she killed Ginger, she thought her life was over. And then fate intervened and sent Mark back to her little hometown. Divine plan.
From Mark’s side of things: he refused the mistletoe, told Noel there was someone else, and she slapped him and stormed off. Then he heard a fight, somehow on the roof, and got up there in time to see Noel confront Holly. He arrests her for the murder of Ginger.
The full confession
John Snow said the word “commitment” and something in Noel broke completely. She could not stand the idea of him committing to anyone who wasn’t her. When Ginger told Noel that John had given her his grandmother’s ring and they’d been secretly together — all lies, for the record — that was it. Noel chased Ginger into the nativity scene and killed her with the icicle ornament.
She also admits to the fire outside Holly’s room. She wanted to smoke them out and see what was happening in there. The axe? On the day Noel threw it, she had watched Holly go out with John Snow and then with Mark. Both of her exes. Both clearly interested in the same woman. That angered her enough.
The promotion question
Sitting there waiting for backup, Mark suddenly remembers: the major crimes promotion. One spot. Goes to whoever makes the official arrest. He tells Holly she should do it. She tells him no, he should. They go back and forth until they hand the whole thing off to Jack, the actual sheriff, so that neither of them has to be the one who arrested their childhood connection.
Resolution
Christmas Day. Holly’s parents died in a car crash on Christmas when she was thirteen — she has hated this holiday ever since. Her adoptive mom Barb has tried everything over the years to make it feel okay again. Nothing worked. Until, apparently, this trip, for reasons I think I understand.
John Snow shows up with coffee and desserts to say thank you. The Jubilee is back on. Christmas town is saved.
And then their commander calls. They’re trending online — the whole rooftop confrontation between Holly and Noel was caught on someone’s doorbell camera and posted. The commander’s take: you two screw up and somehow solve the case anyway. Also, Neil is retiring. They’re both being promoted to Major Crimes. As partners.
Which is the exact outcome they both agreed, two minutes before that phone call, would absolutely never work.
So who knows what happens next.
The Steam Rating Breakdown
There is real tension between Holly and Mark from the very first scene, and it builds in a way that actually pays off when it gets there. For a mystery rom-com set in an all-Christmas town with a strip club, it’s warmer than you’d expect. Nothing explicit, but definitely more than a fade to black.
🔥🔥🔥 — Warm, with a side of absolute chaos.
The Ending Explained — Satisfied or Disappointed?
Honestly? Amused. The “you both get promoted as partners” twist was genuinely fun, mostly because they had literally just agreed that becoming partners was the one thing that would ruin everything. The universe said no. I’ll take it.
Who killed Ginger?
Noelle
Would I Reread It?
No. You experience the town of Christmas once. You meet Ben Balshwet once. You discover the North Pole strip club once. None of this needs to happen twice, trust me.
The Hot Take
This book commits completely to the bit. Every single name is a pun. Every business is Christmas-themed. A random narrator appears periodically to offer unnecessary commentary for reasons I never fully understood. It is chaotic and weird and over-the-top and it has absolutely no shame about any of it. If you’re going to write a book this unhinged, you may as well go all the way…
Who Is This For
If you love cozy mystery energy with some real romantic tension, if you can fully embrace a book that is clearly having the time of its life, and if you’re in the mood for something that does not take itself seriously for even one second — this one is for you. Do not go in expecting a tight thriller. Go in expecting to be entertained by something completely unhinged.
Ready for more from LD? Find them here
Plot Twisted. 🔥
🎧 | Genre: Mystery / Rom-Com | Steam: 🔥🔥🔥