Jaime Moore has to start life over after her divorce which left her with nothing but the skills she had learned during her marriage, and a house that needs a lot of TLC. Jaime’s first act of TLC is knock out a dry-wall wall to make more space in the dining room. Hidden behind the dry wall is a body.

It turns out to be the body of a local woman that went on holiday a few months earlier but was not seen since. Jamie, curious about how the woman ended up in her house and currently without a project because the police are treating the house as crime scene, sets out to do some mild snooping. As it turns out, quite a few people had had an argument with the woman shortly before her disappearance and any number of them had access to the house because they had the key or knew were the spare key was.

I liked the setting and Jaime’s job as a renovator. Though I’ve got to question some of her choices. She’s all about salvaging things and repurposing materials, but has no qualms about suggesting to a client to replace his gingerbread trim with PVC. (No matter how good the quality of the PVC, it’s going to look fake.) I also didn’t like the way her mom talked down to her like she was an eight-year-old that might forget about safety. If my mom questioned my professional skills like that I would have declined Christmas dinner. (There’s difference between worrying about your kid knowing that they are competent and giving off the vibe you worry because you think your kid is incompetent.)

I liked that Jaime had to go round to her different suspects a few times and learning new things each time. Constantly adding, dismissing and re-adding suspects. Though some of the conversations were oddly short, such as the first time she met McKenzie. She could have learned a few things from him about what Cilla was like.

I didn’t like the quick romance. Jaime just got out of a long relationship. No need for her to rush into a new relationship, yet everyone is pushing her towards her neighbour. Parts of the story I was hoping it turned out he was the murderer so the annoying instant-romance could be nipped in the bud.

One thing that was bugging me throughout this book is that Jaime was left with nothing in the divorce because of the prenup she signed, including she got nothing of the company she and her (ex-)husband built. (Prenups usually exclude property owned before the marriage, not property gained during the marriage.) At some point, the story states Jaime is thirty-two, and it is repeated many times she was married for fifteen years. That means she got married at 17. Which is possible in North-Carolina, but she would have needed her parents’ permission. But at 17 would her parents not also need to sign on the prenup? That is after all a major contract. So either her parents hadn’t paid attention when signing the prenup, or the prenup is void, and her divorce lawyer is even more incompetent than suggested by the story when in the divorce settlement negotiations he did not flick the document back across the table with the words “my client was under-age when she signed this”.

I can accept that Jaime does not know this, but many people she would have told about the prenup have college educations, they should know better.

The other option is that Jaime was 18 when she signed the prenup, but the author (and editor) doesn’t know that 18 + 15 = 33.

And there is one thing the story did not clear up:

Spoiler

why was Roger so adamant the dry-wall wall was “load bearing”? He’s a lawyer. What does he know about construction? Or was he aware of another reason the wall needed to stay in place? And if so: how?

I read an ARC through NetGalley.