Review: Careful What You Wish For by Hallie Ephron

Title: Careful What You Wish For

Author:  Hallie Ephron
Publisher: William Marrow
Publishing Date:  August 6th, 2019

Pages: 288
Genre: Mystery Thriller/ Suspense

Series:  Stand Alone
Source:  Audio

 

Emily Harlow is a professional organizer who helps people declutter their lives; she’s married to man who can’t drive past a yard sale without stopping. He’s filled their basement, attic, and garage with his finds.

Like other professionals who make a living decluttering peoples’ lives, Emily has devised a set of ironclad rules. When working with couples, she makes clear that the client is only allowed to declutter his or her own stuff. That stipulation has kept Emily’s own marriage together these past few years. She’d love nothing better than to toss out all her husband’s crap. He says he’s a collector. Emily knows better—he’s a hoarder. The larger his “collection” becomes, the deeper the distance grows between Emily and the man she married.

Luckily, Emily’s got two new clients to distract herself: an elderly widow whose husband left behind a storage unit she didn’t know existed, and a young wife whose husband won’t allow her stuff into their house. Emily’s initial meeting with the young wife takes a detour when, after too much wine, the women end up fantasizing about how much more pleasant life would be without their collecting spouses.

But the next day Emily finds herself in a mess that might be too big for her to clean up. Careful what you wish for, the old adage says . . . now Emily might lose her freedom, her marriage . . . and possibly her life.

This is one of my Edelweiss books that I am a little late in reviewing. I find many mysteries and thrillers just kind of hanging out on this site and this was one of them. The synopsis sounded great and intriguing and the cover was pretty, so I grabbed it. I finally got to this book on audio and I liked it. It was very entertaining and I was very happy with the read when it was done. 


Emily and her best friend run a de-cluttering business. They go out to their client's house and they de-clutter anything that they need to have de-cluttered. This includes a storage unit of one of their newest clients. Everything goes haywire when a body turns up in this storage unit....also its the husband of one of Emily's other clients. Now Emily is the main suspect. She and her family and her best friend are on the hunt for the truth.... the truth may be Emily's worst nightmare. 

I really enjoyed this book. It started off quickly. This book didn't take long to get to the crazy.  It was a very fast read and I quite enjoyed it. In this book there is a couple different mysteries going on. One that is about art theft and the other is a murder. It seems that the main character finds herself in the middle of both. I didn't quite know what was going on in the beginning and the building up to who was involved was well done. There was a point that I started to have my suspicions but didn't know the why or the how.  

There were some very interesting characters in this book and some very interesting relationships. There was the main character and her mother, the main character and husband, and the main character and her best friend, and finally the main character and her clients. They all interweave at some point and through all these relationships I was able to get a good read going the main character. She is a very loyal person in all her relationships and I quite liked her. I feel at times she was a bit naive but it seems many mysteries and psychological reads go. 



This was a very fast read and quite the page turner. The book never slowed for me and I was never bored.I truly enjoyed this book and look forward to reading more from this author.

Hallie Ephron (http://hallieephron.com) is a New York Times bestselling author of suspense novels. Her last five have all been Mary Higgins Clark Award finalists.

Her (August 2019) Careful What You Wish For tells the story of a professional organizer married to man who can't pass a yard sale without stopping. In this respect, Hallie is writing from personal experience. Early praise comes from Kirkus: "Ephron's tidy approach to stowing clues, arousing suspicions, keeping the chaos of the climax under control, then tying up loose ends makes her a professional organizer of this type of entertainment. In a word—neat."

Hallie's Never Tell a Lie was made into the Lifetime Movie Network film.

A book lover, she also wrote The Bibliophile's Devotional and 1001 Books for Every Mood. For twelve years she reviewed crime fiction for the Boston Globe. Her Writing and Selling Your Mystery Novel (now in a revised/expanded edition) was an Edgar and Anthony award finalist. She teaches writing at writing conferences and workshops all around the world.

Hallie lives near Boston with her husband and has two fabulous daughters. She is the third of four writing Ephron sisters.