Hallelujah! Teeny Templeton (Gone with a Handsomer Man) has returned, and she’s been served another plateful of crazy to boot. Cooper O’Malley’s high school girlfriend, Barb Philpot, draws Teeny into trouble with an outrageous lie: Coop, who is now Teeny’s beau, is fooling around with Barb behind Teeny’s back. Teeny’s attempt at surveillance goes horribly wrong when she is spotted by Barb and, worse, when she witnesses Barb being strangled by a masked man. Before her death, Barb ditched her ten-year-old daughter Emerson on Coop. Returning the girl to her legal father in Bonaventure, GA, Teeny’s hometown, brings more than bad memories for Teeny; there, she finds coded messages sent from the grave and discovers a black market of human parts. Verdict: West’s second mystery rises to the occasion by following a surefire recipe for adventure: a dash of quirky heroine, a pinch of deadly secrets, and a lovely dollop of sweet romance, all carefully folded into a story of clever twists, turns, and red herrings. Readers already under Teeny’s spell will be relieved to find everything they were hoping for and more; newcomers will be racing back to the first book to discover what they’ve missed. ***Starred Review***
"In West’s madcap second novel featuring Charleston, S.C., baker Teeny Templeton (after 2011’s Gone with a Handsomer Man), Teeny is certain—well, almost certain—she witnessed the murder of Barb Philpot, an old high school frenemy. Barb’s body disappears, surfacing much later in the guise of a suicide victim. Meanwhile, Barb’s now motherless 10-year-old daughter might be the long-lost offspring of Coop O’Malley, who’s currently engaged to, that’s right, Teeny. Only a DNA test will tell what Coop’s been keeping secret. As for the killer, could Barb’s less than broken-up widower, pharmacist Lester Philpot, have been the man in the Bill Clinton mask Teeny saw strangle Barb? Or maybe it was Lester’s shifty brother, who may or may not be involved in illegal human organ harvesting? The plot continues to thicken as West tosses one red herring after another into an already deliciously roiling stew of blind alleys."
