2026 Holiday Reading Challenge | The Running Bibliophile

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Who doesn’t love a good challenge, especially when it pushes you to read outside your comfort zone or discover a new author? I’ve always wanted to join a reading challenge or reading bingo, but so many of them feel repetitive. So, I decided to create something a little different. It doesn’t mean a challenge like this isn’t out there; I just haven’t come across one myself. Introducing The Running Bibliophile’s 2026 Holiday Reading Challenge, a fun and unique way to expand your reading list while celebrating the spirit of the year. This challenge features 14 books of your choice, with one key twist: each book’s plot must revolve around the specific holiday mentioned. The challenge runs for January 1 through January 31, 2026. To keep things exciting, you may not duplicate any books on the list. By the time you've completed the challenge, you will have read 14 new books to diversify your reading list. To kick things off, the first prompt is simple: choose any holiday-themed book as l...
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Book Review: Christmas Cookie Murder (A Lucy Stone Mystery, #6) by Leslie Meier

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book review christmas cookie murder leslie meier

It's the Christmas season in Tinker's Cove, Maine, and Lucy Stone is looking forward to hosting the annual cookie exchange that Sue normally hosts. When  Tucker, one of the guests, is found murdered the next day, the entire town is in shock, and the local dentist is arrested for it. Lucy decides to investigate on her own in Christmas Cookie Murder (A Lucy Stone Mystery, #6) by Leslie Meier.

This is the perfect book to put me in the mood for Christmas, and it's in one of my favorite genres . . . a mystery. Who would ever think a murder mystery would put a person in a holiday mood? But, with the cookie exchange, the holiday shopping, and Santa Claus visiting the elementary school during the Christmas play, it's easy to get excited about the holidays.

As far as the suspects go, the obvious one is the dentist because he's the boyfriend of Tucker, but I dismissed him right away. I did consider Lee, the wife of the dentist for most of the book because I thought she had more motive to kill Tucker since Lee and her husband were separated. About halfway through Christmas Cookie Murder, I did start to suspect the fire chief from a neighboring town after he reported a theft committed by four of Tinker Cove's volunteer fire department. You'll have to read the book for yourself to see if either of the people I suspected was the murderer.

There were a quite a few things I enjoyed about this installment of the series. I could totally relate to Lucy and all the things that went wrong during the exchange because I could see the same things happening to me. Various scenarios in Christmas Cookie Murder were extremely believable like when Lucy's son and his friend were procrastinating on filling out college applications and parents bragging about which colleges, or universities, their children were accepted into.

Five out of five stars is the rating I gave Christmas Cookie Murder (A Lucy Stone Mystery, #6) by Leslie Meier. If you enjoyed this book, I recommend reading Christmas in High Heels (High Heels, #3.5) by Gemma Halliday.


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