The Homewreckers by Mary Kay Andrews

 Mary Kay Andrews embraces the whole home-fixer-up genre on television as she releases her latest novel, a murder mystery called The Homewreckers, in May.

Hattie Kavanaugh flips houses for a living with her father-in-law’s company in Savannah, Georgia. Obsessed with the business, Hattie has little time for anything outside of her job. A widow, Hattie first refuses the proposition of Maurice Lopez, an executive producer of home improvement programs, to star in a series about flipping houses in her city called Saving Savannah.

However, Hattie changes her mind because a bad flip investment has put her finances in jeopardy. But what she thinks she is signing up for is not what Rebecca Sanzone, the head of the HPT network, has in mind: a show called The Homewreckers, combining a home improvement show and a dating program by bringing in hot decorator Trae Bartholomew to woo Hattie. What could possibly go wrong with switching up things for Hattie who does not suspect what is going on?

During Demo Day, Hattie’s best friend and foreman, Cassidy, finds a wallet between the walls in the bathroom of the house on Tybee Island they are flipping for the program.  The contents of the wallet reveal it belongs to Lanier Ragan, a woman who just disappeared 17 years ago leaving behind a husband and a young child. Coincidentally, that woman was Hattie and Cassidy’s high school English teacher. What will an investigation into a long-missing woman’s wallet do to the already tight timeline for The Homewreckers? What might this clue lead to in solving the mystery about what happened to Lanier?

Mary Kay Andrews  a pseudonym for Kathy Hogan Trocheck, is definitely one of my go-to authors for summer reads. A native of St. Petersburg, Florida, she started her professional journalism career in Savannah, Georgia, where she covered the real-life murder trials that were the basis of the book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, a non-fiction novel by John Berendt. A former journalist, Andrews has lived in Raleigh, North Carolina, but is currently residing in Atlanta and has her own hideaway on Tybee Island.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting March 18, 2022.

I would like to thank St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in return for an objective review.