Ooof. This was... not good. 

From a plot standpoint, it takes 30% of the book to get any murder mystery - at one point, we get a whole rehash of a previous chapter at the beginning of the next, as though the character whose POV we were in wasn't there for everything happened. That was weird! And the murder is pretty easy to solve, even if the motivation is shoved in there at 97%.

But the writing... good lord the writing. Everyone is either a "handsome older man" or a " cute young boy" - like, the former phrase occurs 26 times in the book. That's too many! If you did a shot every time someone was described as "handsome," you'd be hospitalized after the first chapter. And in three consecutive paragraphs, the latter phrase shows up four times. I had an ARC, but if this made it into the final book, someone needs to have a sit down with the copy editor. 

There are a million weird asides through the book, too, and so very few of them are relevant. How JP's parents died, the name of the place they got their seat cushions from, PJ's dad's commitment to car culture (and PJ's implied superiority for rejecting it), the marital status (confirmed or assumed) of various characters we see once in the whole book, the flavor profile of a Bell's Two-Hearted... what is the point? Why do we need all this? Why couldn't we do more murder mysterying?

And, of course, we can't forget the names of a few side characters, specifically the real estate agent Cheri Maison and local Detective Nick Paczki. Yes, the real estate agent's name is essentially house and the detective is essentially Detective Donut. I almost put the book down for that second reveal.

Anyways, I think this was poorly plotted and even more poorly written, but if neither of those things bother you, it's not NOT a decently fun read.

Thank you Kensington and NetGalley for the ARC.