Kiss, Merry, Kill Books in Order

Kiss, Merry, Kill brings together Ally Carter's Christmas romance-mysteries, where a holiday gathering becomes the setting for danger and an unlikely partnership. The books have different central couples, but both combine a mystery with relationships shaped by rivalry and misunderstanding. Snow and isolation make escaping the situation difficult. The characters must work with someone they would normally keep at a distance, discovering that their assumptions about one another may be less reliable than they believed.

Christmas creates the occasion, and a disappearance changes the plan.

In The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year, cozy mystery author Maggie Chase and thriller writer Ethan Wyatt accept invitations to an English house party. Their host turns out to be Eleanor Ashley, a famous and reclusive mystery novelist. Maggie and Ethan arrive with an awkward relationship already in place, giving the gathering a personal discomfort before anything goes wrong. When Eleanor disappears from a locked room, the two visiting writers face a puzzle outside the fiction they normally create. The weather and failed communications leave the estate cut off from straightforward help.

Maggie has to consider whether the disappearance is a genuine emergency or some kind of elaborate test. Ethan's presence adds another uncertainty: she must decide whether he is competition, an obstacle, or someone she can trust. Following clues brings the pair into closer cooperation, allowing the romantic story and the investigation to develop together. Their knowledge of mystery and thriller conventions gives them a reason to engage with the problem, while the danger prevents them from treating it simply as an entertaining exercise.

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Murder introduces Ella Chambers and Liam Montgomery, childhood rivals connected through the wealthy family whose house Ella's mother kept. After a Christmas party, Liam is missing and suspicion falls on Ella. She knows he is alive and needs to prove it to clear her name. Liam, meanwhile, has reasons to let people believe he is dead while he searches for someone who wants to kill him. Their different objectives pull them into a pursuit complicated by old secrets and a storm closing around their mountain town.

Begin with The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year for the first book in the collection, then continue with It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Murder for a different couple and mystery. Expect holiday romance with suspense, verbal sparring, and forced cooperation. The shared attraction is watching people revise the stories they tell about each other while trying to discover what actually happened. Solving the immediate danger also creates the possibility of a relationship neither expected at the start.