Nothing profound, but The Homewreckers is an easy-to-read engaging beach book with modern characters and incidents. The two female protagonists have nontraditional careers for women. Cassidy (Cass) Pelletier and Hattie Kavanaugh work for a local construction company and do all the manual labor. They have knowledge and pride in their work, and the community respects them. Cass is the foreman, and Hattie, her best friend, is the supervisor and daughter-in-law of the owner, Tug Kavanaugh. Hattie is a widow and had a difficult childhood salvaged by Cass’s mother, Zenobia, who does the books for Kavanaugh and Son Construction. So, friends and family are working together in a small beach area, Tybee, an island near Savannah, Georgia.
When she meets Mo Lopez, Hattie allows her latest house flipping project to become part of a reality television show. It goes against her better judgment, but she needs the money, it has been seven years since her husband died, and she is attracted to Mo. Of course, to make this a murder mystery, Mary Kay Andrews creates drama by interspersing the story of a missing schoolteacher, and clues to her whereabouts show up while the local team and television crew gut and rebuild the beach house.
I wonder about some of the name choices. Creedmore, the family name of the villainous family in the novel, is the name of a rifle cartridge. Zenobia, a Black character in the book, has a name that refers to a 3rd-century queen, is the subject of many legends, and possibly relates to Cleopatra. There were a few other names with some symbolic value, yet most of the main characters had common names that I didn’t think to research. The characters are interesting, though some are stereotypic. Their dilemmas and decisions encourage the reader to consider many of life’s predicaments.
