REVIEW: We Love to Entertain (book) by Sarah Strohmeyer

We Love to Entertain may look like a domestic thriller, but it'd probably be more accurate to call it suspense fiction. At times, it also almost feels like a cozy mystery. I bought my copy new.

Review:

This is told from a couple different POVs, with some blog posts sprinkled throughout. The blog posts are by the couple at the center of this book, while the POVs are Erika and her mother, Kim. 

Holly and Robert are contestants on a reality show competition about house flipping. While working on their competition entry, an eco-conscious home makeover in a small Vermont town, they fell in love and are planning on getting married close to the end of the competition. It's the kind of stuff publicity dreams are made of. Erika is their assistant, a local pariah who desperately wants to make up for it by doing well in this job. Erika's intense loyalty to Holly and Robert is helped along by her unrequited (?) crush on Robert. It gives her a little thrill, knowing that Robert asks her help for things he doesn't always tell Holly about.

Something's had Robert on edge for a while, but the wedding goes without a hitch. That evening, though, Robert shows up at Erika's place out of the blue, asking to temporarily trade his Tesla for her much cheaper car, so that he and Holly can take a sudden honeymoon trip. Erika isn't great at saying no to Robert, something she soon has reason to regret, as Robert and Holly become suddenly unreachable during the important last days of the competition.

Meanwhile, Kim, Erika's mother and the town clerk, is experiencing some guilt over the way Holly and Robert got the house in the first place, and she's determined to set things right, even it means she's forced to resign. 

This really was not the domestic thriller I expected it to be. It took ages for Holly and Robert to be declared missing, and I felt like a huge chunk of the book was hints of the overall problem/mystery (the angry former owner of the house, Holly having lots of personal details she wants to keep secret, Robert getting threatening mail, etc.) and a bunch of really boring home renovation stuff. Holly and Robert's entry sucked, by the way. Yeah, sure, it was eco-conscious and all, but not in a way that was doable without boatloads of money, which they were already spending like it'd never run out on luxuries like a kitchen table and a fancy stove they never planned to use.

I wish this had both leaned into its cozy mystery aspects more, and that it had been marketed accurately. Maybe if I'd gone into this with different expectations, I might have enjoyed it more. As it was, I just wanted it to be over.