Wreck your heart A mystery

Lori Rader-Day, 1973-

Book - 2026

"From award-winning author Lori Rader-Day, Wreck Your Heart is an engaging, "wisecracking and wonderful" crime novel with a big heart, about a country and midwestern singer out to catch her big break before family-or murder-wrecks everything. Dahlia "Doll" Devine had the kind of hardscrabble beginning that could launch a thousand broken-hearted country songs, but now she's the star of her own stage at McPhee's Tavern. As part of Chicago's-yes, Chicago's-country music scene, Dahlia is an up-and-coming singer in spangles and boots of classic country tunes. Up and coming, that is, until her boyfriend Joey up and went, taking the rent money with him. So Dahlia is back to square one, relying on Alex M...cPhee-again. Alex helped her out of a bad situation when she was a kid living rough with her mother. Now he's part landlord, part band booster, all-around rescuer. It's just that Dahlia wishes she didn't keep giving him reasons to have to do it. Just as Dahlia suspects she's scraped rock bottom, the mother she hasn't spoken to in twenty years shows up with something to say. The next morning, a distraught young woman arrives at the bar, asking after her missing mother-Dahlia's mother, too, even if the missing suburban PTA mom the girl describes sounds pretty different from the one who let Dahlia down all those years ago. Though no one is using the word sister any time soon, Dahlia lets herself be drawn into reuniting the family that might have been hers. But when a body is discovered outside McPhee's Tavern, the crime threatens not just the place Dahlia has made into a home, but everything she's believed about her past, her dreams for the future, and the people she was just, maybe, beginning to let into her heart"-- Provided by publisher.

Saved in:
1 copy ordered
Subjects
Genres
Detective and mystery fiction
Fiction
Novels
Published
New York : Minotaur Books 2026.
Language
English
Main Author
Lori Rader-Day, 1973- (author)
Edition
First edition
Physical Description
pages cm
ISBN
9781250393739
Contents unavailable.
Review by Library Journal Review

In Rader-Day's (The Death of Us) new mystery, Dahlia Devine appears to have hit rock bottom. Her boyfriend has run out on her, and he has the rent money, leading to Dahlia's eviction and forcing her to crash in a shabby apartment above the bar where she performs. If this sounds like the makings of a country song, that's a small bright spot, as Chicago-based Dahlia is determined to make it as a country-western singer. Her life becomes even more complicated when her mother, Marisa, whom she hasn't seen since she was six years old, shows up at the bar, wanting to reconnect. When she's rebuffed, Marisa leaves the bar and promptly goes missing, causing Dahlia's half-sister to show up looking for her. When a body is found in the alley behind the bar, and Dahlia's dear friends are suspected, Dahlia delves into both the death and her mother's disappearance, leading to discoveries about her own past and identity. VERDICT Suspense novelist Rader-Day changes pace with this sharply funny, heartfelt mystery, and every bit of it works. Its exploration of family secrets will delight fans of Nina Simon's Mother-Daughter Murder Night and Nita Prose's The Maid.--Jane Jorgenson

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.