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2The will is read by television. A lawyer nobody in the room has met presses play, and the late Trip Montgomery appears on the big screen in his study, sitting in the very armchair one of the guests now occupies, to settle his estate in person. His oldest friend gets one dollar. His son and daughter-in-law get one dollar between them. Everything else, the manor, the money and the mountain above a Colorado town of two thousand people, goes to Liam, the grandson who did not come home for the funeral. Before anyone has finished shouting, Liam walks through the door, announces that the mountain will stay exactly as it is, and the lights go out. It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Murder by Ally Carter wastes no time at all.
Watching from behind a tray of canapés is Ella Chambers. She grew up in the apartment over the Montgomery garage, the housekeeper’s daughter, and she was invited to this gathering as a relevant party, or so she thought, until Liam’s mother handed her an apron at the door. By the next morning the new heir has vanished, there is blood on the driveway, and the last person seen with him is Ella.
Where It Sits in Kiss, Merry, Kill
This is the second Kiss, Merry, Kill novel, Carter’s run of Christmas mysteries for Avon, and it is a companion rather than a sequel. The reading order so far:
- The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year (2024): two rival crime writers at a snowbound house party, where their reclusive host disappears.
- It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Murder by Ally Carter (2026): a new couple, a new town and a disputed fortune.
The thread joining them is Eleanor Ashley, the grande dame of crime fiction whose house hosted the first book. Here she exists only on paper. Ella was named after her, read her paperbacks on the floor of the Montgomery library, and keeps asking herself what an Eleanor Ashley heroine would do next. It costs newcomers nothing.
Carter came to adult fiction after more than a decade of young adult bestsellers, the Gallagher Girls spy school books and the Heist Society capers among them. She then wrote The Blonde Identity and its sequel, and she scripted the Netflix film A Castle for Christmas. All of it shows here.
When It Starts to Look a Lot Like Murder
What this second book adds is weight. The first was a lark in a country house. It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Murder by Ally Carter has a real subject: money, and what it is like to clean up after people who have too much of it.
Ella works six jobs, from waiting tables to walking dogs, and she is twelve credit hours short of a Dartmouth degree she had to abandon when her mother got sick. Her mother died uninsured, and the chemotherapy is still on Ella’s credit card. Carter treats medical debt as the background hum of a whole life, not a plot device, and it gives the comedy something to push against. When a suspicion of murder falls on Ella, the real damage is done by text message, as her clients quietly cancel one by one.
The structure is busy but clean. Chapters alternate between Ella and Liam, each labelled, and every day is stamped with how many remain before Christmas. Flashbacks from ten, nine and five years earlier fill in the long, prickly history between the heir and the help, so the enemies-to-lovers arc has twenty years of grievance behind it.
What Works in It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Murder
- The four families. Hidden Springs was built on gold and then on mining machinery, and it is still run by the descendants of the four people who kept it alive: Montgomerys own the mountain, the Foxes fix things, the Ridgeways build resorts, and the Sherwoods wear the sheriff’s badge. It gives It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Murder by Ally Carter the closed, inbred feel a whodunit needs.
- Archie Fox. The lawyer who appoints himself Ella’s counsel without asking, and arrives at the interrogation room with a briefcase that contains mainly candy, is the funniest character Carter has written.
- Grandma Sherwood. An elderly widow with a shotgun behind the door and an opinion on everyone, she knows more than the sheriff and says so. Every scene with her is a pleasure.
- The romance has teeth. Liam begins the book as an apparently spoiled heir who rented a minivan for reasons he will not explain, and the slow revelation of who he actually is, and what he has quietly been doing for the people he claims not to care about, is handled with patience.
Where It Gives Ground
- The solution is told more than earned. One fact the reader needs to assemble the final picture is held back until late, and much of the closing explanation arrives as a single long deduction.
- Detection by interview. For a long middle stretch, the investigating means visiting a suspect, accepting a drink, and listening to them explain the town’s history. Pleasant, and static.
- The romance repeats itself. In It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Murder by Ally Carter, Ella’s self-deprecation, Liam’s evasions and a handful of physical beats come round again and again.
- The ending is very generous. The final chapters hand out rewards on a scale that tips from satisfying into wish fulfilment.
Do You Need the Earlier Book?
No. The characters, setting and crime are all new, and nothing in It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Murder by Ally Carter depends on knowing how the first book ended. The only shared element is the fictional novelist, and you will understand everything about her that matters. Reading in order does give you a small extra smile at the name, but start wherever you like.
Read These Next
If It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Murder by Ally Carter sends you looking for more snow and suspects, these are the closest matches.
- The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year by Ally Carter, for the first Kiss, Merry, Kill house party and the real Eleanor Ashley.
- Everyone This Christmas Has a Secret by Benjamin Stevenson, for a playful, puzzle-first holiday mystery.
- The Mistletoe Mystery by Nita Prose, for another heroine who sees everything because nobody sees her.
- The Blonde Identity by Ally Carter, for Carter’s romance in full action mode.
- A Castle for Christmas, the Netflix film she wrote, for a lighter dose of the same festive charm.
The Verdict
Carter writes the kind of comedy that relies on rhythm, and her rhythm is excellent: short chapters, hard cliffhangers, a ridiculous line undercut by a painful one. The mystery is the weaker half, more pleasant than ingenious. The love story and the class argument carry the book, and they carry it well. It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Murder by Ally Carter is, underneath the tinsel, about a woman who has spent her whole life anticipating other people’s needs and has never once been asked about her own.
By the last page someone finally asks. That is the real twist, and it is the one worth waiting for.
