Read time: 5 minutes
📱📖 Read on Kindle 📃 320 pages ⏱ Duration: 5 hours 📅 Expected release: October 6, 2026
Genre: Cozy Mystery 🏷️ Publisher: Crooked Lane Books | ARC by NetGalley
Book Blurb:
New parents Holly White and Sheriff Evan Gray are exhausted, thrilled, and ready to celebrate their baby’s first Christmas, surrounded by family, a spoiled newborn, and a freshly finished new home. But their holiday cheer turns cold when Holly finds the body of Greysen, the petting zoo’s animal keeper, among the reindeer at Candy Cane Lane. Odder still, the reindeer pen had been empty just hours before, no animals in sight until they reappeared alongside a corpse. Having witnessed Greysen arguing with a stranger earlier that day, Holly becomes his only hope for justice, and her daughter’s only hope for a peaceful first Christmas.
Let’s talk … murder!!!
Christmas Tree Farm Mysteries had always been fun to read. I enjoyed the journey Holly White had been on for the past 6 years. Every Christmas, she finds a dead body, Nicholas is around her house, and we are led to believe that’s Santa Clause (I definitely do believe that). Every Christmas, her family and loved ones are on the lookout for danger to protect her. And this Christmas is no different. Being a new mom, Holly White, now White-Gray (I love the season related names Jacqueline has in her books) is now particularly careful to avoid putting Joy in harm’s way. However, trouble has a way of finding her, and it is near to impossible to not get pulled into the investigation when the people of her town are pushing her to solving it.
However, this one was a bit slow, and I think it was intended that way. Holly trying to hard to keep away from the investigation resulted in the narrative switching to everything around the investigation but not the actual sleuthing, because she doesn’t sleuth much in this. The killer reveal also was a bit unexpected because I didn’t catch the clues hinting at the killer. Most of the book was spent going away from the investigation rather than towards it. I appreciate it written that way because it is more realistic than a new mother going head on into a murder investigation with a 6 month old. It’s just that the pacing was slow.
Nothing though would keep me away from Jacqueline’s Christmas world. She writes beautifully carved out Christmas towns. Even in the middle of summer right now, I could feel right in December, thanks to Frost’s writing.
Would I recommend it?
Yes. If you have been with Holly since book one, book seven feels like the right kind of quiet. It will not race you toward the reveal, and honestly, that is the point. A new mom is not supposed to go all in on a murder investigation with a six month old on her hip. Frost still hands you that same snow dusted, cinnamon scented Mistletoe though, and that alone was worth the trip back this year.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
If You Loved This, Try These Next
- A Wonderful Christmas Crime by Jacqueline Frost If you want more of Holly White’s world before baby Joy came along, book six picks up the same Mistletoe charm, the same family, one more Christmas murder to unravel.
Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | Litsy - Rest Ye Murdered Gentlemen by Vicki Delany For a different snow covered town with its own Christmas obsessed cast, Delany’s Year Round Christmas series opener gives you that same cozy holiday village pull that makes Frost’s books so easy to fall into.
Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | OpenLibrary | Litsy - Bundle of Trouble by Diana Orgain Want to see the new mom sleuth struggle from the very start? Kate Connolly is brand new to motherhood and just as reluctant to get pulled into a murder as Holly is here, minus the tinsel.
Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | OpenLibrary | Litsy - The Night Woods by Paula Munier Mercy Carr gives birth in the middle of a case in this one, so if Holly’s careful new mom hesitation left you wanting to see the opposite extreme, this is it. Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | Litsy
- A Delicious Deception by Lucy Burdette Also from Crooked Lane, Burdette’s Key West Food Critic series tackles the same question Frost is working through here, how a sleuth’s identity holds up once she becomes a mother.
Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Fable | Booktrovert | Litsy
Would You Sleuth With a Newborn on Your Hip?
Would you keep chasing a killer with a six month old strapped to you, or would you stay as far away as Holly tries to? Tell me in the comments, and let me know if your holiday reading has started yet even though it is still summer out there.
Book Links
Want to purchase this or any of your favorite books while supporting a local bookstore? Consider purchasing using the sites below. These sites work with independent local bookstore owners to fulfill your book orders. #SupportLocal
Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org
Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | OpenLibrary | Litsy
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