It all started with swimming lessons at the club. Nora is hardly making rent and food, as she trades her dreams of a non-profit marketing career for a part-time job at the children's museum and a weekend gig cleaning up poolside and teaching rich kids to swim. The club is in the ritzy Winter Park, Florida, home to over the top wealth and snotty homeowners. When 28 year old Nora cleans up the mess made by one of the teens who was sneaking alcoholic drinks, she has to call Mia's dad to come pick her up. She escorts Mia through the service entrance to the parking lot to find the flashiest sports car, holding Mia's divorced dad, who is gorgeous but nice, and she feels the tingle. So did Will, apparently, since he asks her out for dinner the next time he sees her, and they start "a thing." All too quickly, the thing turns into a marriage proposal.
Unfortunately, Nora does not fit in with the country club set, of which Will's partner is a prime example. Fritz lends class and old money to their law firm, while Will basically does all the work, and they are wildly successful. Constance, the first wife, dumped Will years ago, but you would never know it the way she tries to pull rank on Nora, every chance she gets. Her best friend, Gianna, is Fritz's wife, and they led a very nasty group of wealthy women in a campaign to make Nora's life a horrible and sad one. The only ones keeping Nora afloat are her arriviste next-door neighbors who were California transplants and didn't buy into nasty games of one-upmanship. As Will starts showing Nora his workaholic side and gives up on demonstrating how much he loves her, she feels alone and unloved. After a bad fight, Will realized that he might lose his new wife, and made up with her, and she decides to throw him a birthday party to celebrate their reconciliation and maybe figure out how to fit in better. The party was a success, and they were just about to begin their own after party, when Will gets a call from Mia to rescue her sweatshirt from their boat...she never sees him again.
The mystery of who murdered Will becomes the focus of the novel. Not only does Nora lose the love of her life, but all newspapers, television, and social media find an easy target in the young beautiful second wife who will inherit a large fortune. But she didn't do it...or did she? The authors paint a great picture of a life you might envy if you didn't have all the facts. Nora must grow up quickly to avoid being swept away by the folks with money and status while learning to stand on her own two feet and giving up being Will's pampered pet. Hope for the best, expect the worst.
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