Mistletoe Murder by Leslie Meier (Lucy Stone Mysteries, #1) * * * *

Mistletoe Murder by Leslie Meier is a small-town Christmas mystery. First published in 1991, it comes from a world without mobile phones, and that matters more than you might expect. There are moments where the modern reader instinctively thinks, just call someone, just text, just check, only to remember that none of that exists yet. 

I experienced this as an audiobook, and unfortunately that had a noticeable impact on my enjoyment. The narration is by Karen White, and it is not very good. At first I genuinely wondered whether I was listening to a poorly edited AI recording, because the delivery is full of awkward pauses in the middle of sentences. Words are separated strangely, and then I realised the narrator just had to jump to the next line on the page, resulting in readings like blue… sweater. The rhythm never quite settles, and it repeatedly pulls you out of the story.

That issue is compounded by a recurring structural choice in the book itself. Each chapter opens with a description of an item sold by Country Cousins, the mail-order shop where Lucy works the phones. At first, this feels quirky and charming, a little slice of small-town retail life. After a few chapters, especially in audio form, it becomes irritating. The novelty wears off quickly, and instead of adding atmosphere, these descriptions start to feel like obstacles you have to get through before the story can continue.

The premise itself is simple. Lucy Stone lives in a small village in Maine, it is the middle of the Christmas season, and a murder disrupts the quiet routine of holiday preparations. Lucy is not a detective, but she is curious, observant, and constantly in motion. While baking, cleaning, shopping, working, hosting family, and dealing with children, she also finds herself helping the police piece together what happened.

What I genuinely appreciated is how grounded Lucy’s life feels. This is one of the rare mysteries where domestic reality is not smoothed away. She cleans. She works. She juggles children and in-laws. At one point she casually mentions being on her period, something I honestly cannot remember encountering so plainly in a novel before. The chaos of Christmas is not romanticised; it is loud, exhausting, and relentless. The integration of everyday life into the mystery feels organic.

That said, Lucy’s life also made me deeply uncomfortable. Not because it is unrealistic, but because it is exhausting to witness. She does everything. Everything. The cooking, the cleaning, the emotional labour, the childcare, the holiday planning, the hosting, the worrying. Her husband goes to work and comes home, and that is more or less the extent of his visible contribution. When Lucy finally admits she is overwhelmed, his response is to attribute it to PMS. That moment landed badly. I could not tell whether Meier was consciously pointing out casual misogyny, or whether some internalised assumptions slipped through. Either way, it is grating.

Reading this now, Lucy’s role feels uncomfortably close to what we would call trad-wife territory today, even if the term did not exist at the time. She lives in the middle of nowhere, has three children, and carries endless domestic responsibility with no visible rest and very little support. On top of all that, she regularly works the late shift at Country Cousins, from 5 p.m. to 1 a.m., several times a week. I kept wondering when she sleeps. I also kept thinking, very firmly, that I would not want her life.

The mystery itself is competent rather than brilliant. The clues are fair, the village cast is varied and reasonably well drawn, and the investigation fits naturally into Lucy’s routines. The ending, however, feels rushed. The solution arrives suddenly, as if the book realises it has reached its allotted length and needs to wrap things up. It works, but it does not quite satisfy.

In the end, this is a book I am conflicted about. I enjoyed parts of it. I appreciated its attention to domestic detail and its refusal to pretend that murder investigations happen in a vacuum. At the same time, the audiobook narration actively works against the story, and Lucy’s life made me uneasy in ways that never quite resolve.

I liked it, but I did not love it. I am left with one very clear thought at the end: I would happily read about Lucy Stone solving crimes, but I would never want to trade places with her.