We Love to Entertain
A Novel
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3.7 • 9 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
“A diabolical and deliciously twisty romp through reality TV home renovations infused with humor and warmth. Sarah Strohmeyer does murder and suspense in all the best possible ways!” —Wanda M. Morris, award-winning author of All Her Little Secrets and Anywhere You Run
From the bestselling author of Do I Know You? comes a fast-paced, riveting psychological thriller that skewers our modern obsession with home renovation and fixer-uppers.
Holly and Robert Barron are attractive young real-estate investors and contestants in a competition run by To the Manor Build, the nation’s most popular home renovation app. With millions in product endorsements and online followers at stake, they’re rehabbing a Vermont home they scored at a bargain price into a chic hilltop estate ideal for entertaining.
It’s all camera-ready laughs and debates over herringbone tile until Holly and Robert go missing hours after their picture-perfect wedding—leaving behind a bloody trail.
Suspicion falls quickly on Erika Turnbull, the Barrons’ twenty-something assistant—eager, efficient, and secretly in love with Robert. Did Erika let her misguided passion turn her into a murderer? So claim the townsfolk of Snowden, Vermont, who still haven’t forgiven her for a tragic accident back in high school.
But Erika’s mother, Kim, is not about to let small-town gossip and a cop with an axe to grind destroy her daughter—again. With time running out and their own lives at risk, the mother-daughter duo set out to find what really happened to the Barrons. First, though, they’ll have to confront the vengeful former owner of Holly and Robert’s estate, ruthless reality-show producers, and a secret that might bring their own house down.
Fast-paced, full of humor, and undeniably twisty, We Love to Entertain is another winner from Sarah Strohmeyer.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this propulsive but less than plausible page-turner from Strohmeyer (Do I Know You?), charismatic real estate investor Robert Barron and his fiancée, Holly Simmons, are one of three couples vying for grand prize on the property rehab show To the Manor Build with their environmentally visionary hilltop estate nearing completion in tiny Snowden, Vt. Then, only hours after the pair's livestreamed wedding—and just days before the show's final reveal—the newlyweds vanish. Though the hard-charging self-proclaimed "Robber Barron" has plenty of enemies, the local cops seem quite happy to home in on outcast Erika Turnbull, Robert's assistant, who's not so secretly smitten with him, as their prime suspect. Which leaves it to Erika's brook-no-bull mother, Kim, the town clerk, to turn sleuth to try to save the day—with some assistance from Tammy, Holly's own freshly arrived from Florida steel magnolia mom. Apart from this unlikely band of mothers, several other characters seem disappointingly generic, as does Strohmeyer's satire of reality-rehab TV. Nevertheless, there's sufficient treachery, trickery, and twists (improbable though they be) to make good on the title's promise of entertainment.
