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A compelling debut novel about an ambitious woman who, after a lifetime of conning alongside her mother, wants to leave her dark past behind and marry the heir to one of the country's wealthiest families. Like any enterprising woman, Bea knows what she’s worth and is determined to get all she deserves—it just so happens that what she deserves is to marry rich. After a lifetime of forced instruction in the art of swindling men by her mother, Bea wants nothing more than to escape her shadow, close the door on their sordid past, and disappear safely into old-money domesticity. When Bea finds her final mark in the perfectly dull blue-blooded Collin, she’s ready to deploy all her tricks one last time. The challenge isn’t getting the ring, but rather the approval of Collin’s family and everyone else in their tax bracket, particularly his childhood best friend Gale. Going toe-to-toe with Gale isn’t a threat to an expert like Bea, but what begins as an amusing cat-and-mouse game quickly develops into a dangerous chase. As the truth of Bea’s past threatens to come roaring out, she finds herself racing against the clock to pass the finish line before everything is exposed.
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0This book was good enough to devour in a day. I was really invested in the mystery. Unfortunately, it had a lackluster ending. It felt like it was building building building to be a huge world-shattering explosion, and then it ended so neatly like a dynamite stick that got snuffed out just before the fuse blew. The twists were okay, but their general structure was predictable. The first 3rd of the book has some of the main characters' inner monologue that was a little to…declarative for my taste, not enough show too much tell. Seeing that the author is a tv writer made sense because oftentimes, the main character's inner monologue read like the stage directions and character notes you might find in a script. Once the mystery was more underway, though, that luckily fell away and the narration was much more enjoyable. I love stories that include flashback chapters, and those chapters were some of the standouts of the book. Since the main character was a child in the flashbacks, they were much less heavy-handed since their perspective was limited, which made the prose more artful. The ending left room for a sequel which I would definitely read.
0Well that was a wild ride.
3.5
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