The really dead wives of New Jersey A novel

Eden is the showrunner for Garden State Goddesses, a popular reality-TV show on the Huzzah Network. While she likes her job, she has higher career aspirations and knows that a buzzworthy season will help land her a spot on a more popular series. She tries to shake things up by adding her mysterious cousin Hope as the newest cast member. Hope is nothing like the other goddesses: sisters-in-law Carmela and Valerie, single bisexual mom Renee, and Birdie, the wealthy matriarchal figure of the group. When one of the goddesses dies during filming, Eden believes foul play is involved. Determined to save her season, she decides to catch the killer herself. Just like enjoying reality TV, reading this soapy mystery requires suspension of disbelief. The over-the-top characters are a perfect representation of the wildly popular Real Housewives franchise. Some moments are genuinely shocking; readers will be surprised by the twists and turns throughout. Dahl's debut entertains from the first page.

Fledgling showrunner Eden Bennett faces challenges too real for reality TV in this breezy whodunit from Dahl (a pseudonym for Perfume and Pain author Anna Dorn). Eden is taking over the reins of the New Jersey--set megahit Garden State Goddesses as it enters its third season. To shake things up, she introduces an outsider to the show's insular Sicilian American cast: her Californian cousin, Hope, who has married into Garden State's central family, the Fontanas, after Eden introduced her to her now-husband. But Eden may have underestimated the passions that hippie-ish Hope would arouse in everyone from her sharp-tongued new sister-in-law, Carmela, to fan favorite Renee, a jewelry designer who's recently been outed as bisexual and nurtures a crush on Hope. At first, the new conflicts make for great TV; then someone gets killed, forcing Eden to add "gumshoe" to her job description. Dahl, like her protagonist, proves to be an adept ringleader of this comedic circus, but readers will wish her players were slightly less stereotypical--for a novel so sympathetic to sapphic romance, for example, the lone gay male character is a surprisingly flat camp cartoon. Still, mystery fans with a taste for the absurd will have a frothy good time. Agent: Sarah Phair, Sanford J. Greenberger Assoc. (Jan.)