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September 21, 2023
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September 23, 2023
My Rating:
Finlay Donovan and her nanny/partner-in-crime Vero are in sore need of a girls’ weekend away. They plan a trip to Atlantic City, but odds are—seeing as it’s actually a cover story to negotiate a deal with a dangerous loan shark, save Vero’s childhood crush Javi, and hunt down a stolen car—it won’t be all fun and games. When Finlay’s ex-husband Steven and her mother insist on tagging along too, Finlay and Vero suddenly have a few too many meddlesome passengers along for the ride.
Within hours of arriving in their seedy casino hotel, it becomes clear their rescue mission is going to be a bust. Javi’s kidnapper, Marco, refuses to negotiate, demanding payment in full in exchange for Javi’s life. But that’s not all—he insists on knowing the whereabouts of his missing nephew, Ike, who mysteriously disappeared. Unable to confess what really happened to Ike, Finlay and Vero are forced to come up with a new plan: sleuth out the location of Javi and the Aston Martin, then steal them both back.
But when they sneak into the loan shark’s suite to search for clues, they find more than they bargained for—Marco’s already dead. They don’t have a clue who murdered him, only that they themselves have a very convincing motive. Then four members of the police department unexpectedly show up in town, also looking for Ike—and after Finlay’s night with hot cop Nick at the police academy, he’s a little too eager to keep her close to his side.
If Finlay can juggle a jealous ex-husband, two precocious kids, her mother’s marital issues, a decomposing loan shark, and find Vero’s missing boyfriend, she might get out of Atlantic City in one piece. But will she fold under the pressure and come clean about the things she’s done, or be forced to double down?
Trigger Warnings:
Infidelity, Murder
Characters
- Steven – Finlay’s ex
- Vero – Finaly’s nanny/friend – she is currently in trouble for borrowing $200k from the mob when she was in Atlantic City trying to win money to pay back to her college classmates that she was accused of stealing
- Javi – Vero’s crush, he helped her with some of the sketchy stuff in the past; he was kidnapped along with the Aston Marton
- Charlie – Nick’s ‘closest’ friend, he is actually working for Virobv
- Nick – Finlay’s boyfriend; he is a detective with her sister
- Georgia – Finlay’s sister; cop
- Sam – Georgia’s girlfriend
- Joe – Nick’s ex-partner, he turned out to be a mole for internal affairs; he has everyone made at him in the force but he is the only one that suspects Charlie isn’t a good guy. He is also suspicious of Finlay
- Cam – Teenager, Joe’s nephew. He is a hacker who has saved Finlay’s life in the past. He is working for Virobv
- Marco – Mob boss that Vero got in debt with
- Louie – PI for Marco
- Ike – Marco’s nephew, he was sent to collect on Vero’s debt but ended up dead after a bunch of cars fell on top of him and crushed him. Virobv helped get rid of the body
My Review
This is my favorite series and I’m sad I finished this book so quickly. I love the characters, I love the ‘fun’ murder mystery. I would highly recommend starting with the first book and not jumping right into this one (and then binge read the rest of the series).
I think that being a mom of young kids does help with the appeal of the series a bit, but there is enough plot to make it a good ‘mystery’.
I think that the ending was great, it all came together in a way that made it feel like you could quit reading the series and feel fulfilled.. yet.. there’s a little fun thrown in with the epilogue.
Spoilers/Summary
Starts with them on a road trip to Atlantic City to save Vero’s crush. Steven goes with them. When they get there, Vero and Finlay go and have dinner with Marco to talk to him about their debt. He tells them to either pay back the $200k (AND he keeps the car) or bring them his nephew.
When they go to his hotel to look for the car, they break into his room pretending to be housekeeping. When they get there, they find Marco and his private investigator dead in the bathroom (Marco is naked!). They also find a little Weiner dog in the back room. They decided to try to make it look like he died later than he did to give themselves alibis for the night.
When Finlay goes back to the hotel, Steven confronts her for being gone. They go to a diner for breakfast and skip out on the bill. When they get to the hotel, Nick, Georgia, Sam, Charlie and an FBI agent are all there staying too. There was a tip that Virbov was on his way back to the US, landing two hours from Atlantic City.
Cam gets ahold of Finlay. He has followed them to Atlantic City looking for the car. He tells her that he had stolen the key to Virobv’s crypto (14 million worth) as well as a spreadsheet of every person who has ever worked for Virobov, including the dirty cops.
Finlay brings him back to the hotel with Vero to hide him away while they work to find the car.
Finlay goes with Nick and the FBI agent to meet with Ike’s wife. Finlay looks in the shed and sees a car had recently been stored there. The dog gets ahold of Ike’s tooth and eats it.
Charlie and Finlay go meet with her agent about selling her book rights for a TV show. She skips out in Charlie to go meet with Vero. Vero and Cam had found another person that owed Marco money.
They find Pokey at a male strip club (this scene made me laugh). He says he was at work the whole time the two men were killed. Charlie crashes the scene and almost shoots Pokey. Pokey ends up hitting him on the head and Finlay and Vero put Charlie in the trunk.
Vero and Finlay go back to the hotel to find Cam is having a huge party with escorts. It turns out he did this because he wanted to contaminate the crime scene with a lot of DNA. As they are figuring out what to do next, they get a call from the lobby that Nick and the FBI agent are on their way up to the room. Vero and Finlay wrap the dead bodies up in the blankets and humorously bring them down to Louie’s room. In Louie’s room, they find a phone number to call – they call the phone number and it sounds like a person is in a large garage when they answer. They task Cam with finding the owner of the cell phone and then they head back to their hotel.
At their hotel, they find the kids are missing! They all get up and head downstairs to find them. Charlie ends up carrying the kids over.. menacingly. They all head up to go to bed.
In the morning, Nick has gotten them a 4 hour spa package. Vero and Finlay sneak out while Sam and Finlay’s mom get their spa treatments. They go find the Aston Martin, escape death, and steal the car back while saving Javi. Javi and Vero share a night together and get married while drunk. Nick comes back after realizing that Feliks was not on the flight.
The next morning, Nick wakes up with an epiphany that Feliks was just distracting them and probably landed closer to where they were. He leaves to go search for him. Finlay realizes that Charlie must have Ricky and Cam hidden at Ricky’s house. Vero and Finlay go there with Kevin Bacon and a fake flash drive. On the way in, she calls Marcos wife/widow GG to tell her he found Kevin Bacon and the person who stole the dog has a gun.
Finally and Vero end up in a standoff with Charlie, he is going to kill Rickey and Cam but then Feliks walks in and demands the hard drive. Charlie shoots and kills the body guard and Feliks. Finlay records it and sends it to Nick and Georgia. She also had an imformant send over the spreadsheet from the hard drive (that they had promised to erase all links to Vero and Finlay). GG walks in and hears Charlie confess to killing her husband and shoots him dead. The cops come, Joe gives Finlay a cover story. Happy ending. All the bad guys are dead. Ekaterrina, the lawyer, gets to walk away with Feliks’ fortune.
Epilogue…. cops come flying over the Finaly’s neighbors house – they found a dead body buried in her backyard