Beach Wedding
Michael Ledwidge
On Sale Date: February 15, 2022
Hardcover
Fiction / Thrillers / Crime
352 pages
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About the Book:
A high-society wedding party stirs up new evidence in an unsolved murder in this thrilling stand-alone from the New York Times bestselling coauthor of James Patterson’s Now You See Her and The Quickie.
Hamptons sand… Hamptons money… Hamptons murder…
When Terry Rourke is invited to the spare-no-expense beach wedding of his hedge fund manager brother, he thinks that his biggest worry will be flubbing the champagne toast. But this isn’t the first time Terry has been to the Hamptons.
As the designer tuxedos are laid out and the flowers arranged along the glittering surf, Terry can’t help but take another look at a decades-old murder trial that rocked the very foundations of the town—and his family. He soon learns that digging up billion-dollar sand can be a very dangerous activity. The kind of danger that can very quickly turn even the most beautiful beach wedding into a wake.
My review:
When I think of a beach wedding, a decades-old mystery, a crooked DA, and scandalous secrets of moneyed society aren’t what come to mind. But that, and more, is what we get in Michael Ledwidge’s Beach Wedding.
Tom Roarke is getting married, and he’s doing it up big. He’s rented a palatial house in the Hamptons for his big to-do, and he’s invited the whole family. Terry, Tom’s brother and our protagonist, never wanted to go back to the Hamptons, but he’ll do it for Tom.
In the midst of all the pre-wedding activities, Terry stumbles upon a stash of information accumulated by deceased author Xavier Kelsey. Information pertaining to the only case Terry’s father ever lost when he was prosecuting, the case against Hamptons socialite Hailey Sutton for the murder of her her husband, Noah. The pull of the past is too much for Terry, and he delves into the past, determined to see Hailey Sutton pay for her crime. But is she guilty? If not, who is? Therein lies the story, with all its twists and turns.
Beach Wedding was a little bit of a slow starter for me, but it soon picked up. The ritzy, summery Hamptons beach setting was a perfect foil for the dark underbelly of the past that Terry found himself deeper and deeper in. There were several nail-biting moments, and more than one thing that I didn’t see coming. I love it when a book can surprise me more than once!
That being said, I did have to suspend an awful lot of disbelief. There were times where I thought, okay, Terry is supposed to a be a cop, is he really going to do THAT? It made for an exciting read, but this former prosecutor had a little bit of a hard time believing that things would have unfolded as they did, given some of the things Terry did to achieve his goal.
I know it’s not summer yet, but this would be an excellent summer read. Engaging, a quick read once you get past the first little bit, and characters you’ll either love or love to hate. I give it four solid stars.
Disclaimer: I received an advance review copy from NetGalley and Hanover Square Press. All opinions are mine, and I don’t say nice things about books I don’t actually like.
About the Author:
MICHAEL LEDWIDGE is the writer of seventeen novels, the last dozen being New York Times bestsellers cowritten with one of the world’s bestselling authors, James Patterson. With twenty million copies in print, their Michael Bennett series is the highest-selling New York City detective series of all time. One of their novels, Zoo, became a three-season CBS television series. He lives in Connecticut.
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