Determined to make sure everyone has the perfect last trip, Harriet and Wyn resolve to fake their relationship for the week. Telling the truth about their breakup is out of the question, because the cottage is up for sale, and this is the group’s last hurrah. But (surprise!) Wyn is there too, and he and Harriet have to share a (very romantic) room and a bed. She’s ready for a vacation at her happy place-the Maine cottage she and her friends visit every summer. So they keep it a secret from their friends and families-in fact, Harriet barely even admits it to herself, focusing instead on her grueling hours as a surgical resident. They’ve been part of the same boisterous friend group since college, and they know that their breakup will devastate the others and make things more than a little awkward. Wyn Connor and Harriet Kilpatrick were the perfect couple-until Wyn dumped Harriet for reasons she still doesn’t fully understand. More, please.Įxes pretend they’re still together for the sake of their friends on their annual summer vacation. Suspenseful, funny, and even a tad mysterious. YA specialist Cosimano cuts dexterously between Finn’s adventures as a hit woman, her deeply iffy romance with Fairfax County Detective Nicholas Anthony, and the domestic crises that keep on piling up as if nothing had ever happened to disturb them. Everything seems to have worked out improbably well until Finn, who really does need the money, is offered an even bigger purse for killing someone else considerably more savvy and dangerous. The only bright spots are that Veronica, the accounting-student nanny Steven just laid off without warning Finn in advance, comes upon the scene ready and eager to help and that Steven owns a sod farm where the conspirators can bury the body without telling him. Of course Finn has no intention of going through with this harebrained scheme, but a series of unlikely miscues ends with Harris Mickler dead in her garage with every indication that she’s murdered him. What stuns Finn is the way Patricia communicates her hatred for her husband: She offers Finn $50,000 to kill him. He’s a blackmailer and serial rapist who’s beaten his wife repeatedly. So she’s not entirely surprised when Patricia Mickler, overhearing her chatting with her agent in the local Panera about her latest work in progress, indicates that her own husband is even worse. Struggling romantic suspense novelist Finlay Donovan doesn’t think much of her ex-husband, Steven, who’s been nickel-and-diming her ever since she dumped him over his affair with Theresa Hall, the realtor who’s since become his fiancee.

A suburban Virginia divorcée struggles with that classic dilemma: What should she do when she’s offered a fat paycheck to kill a complete stranger?

Finlay donovan is killing it book