Finlay Donovan is having a bad morning. Her preschool-aged daughter has cut her own hair (and part of her scalp). Her infant son is sticky and poopy. Her kitchen is a mess. Unpaid bills are piling up. She has a meeting shortly with her book agent, and she’s way behind on her deadline. And her ex-husband just fired her part-time nanny. Finlay is broke, late with her book, and may be losing custody of her children to her ex-husband. And she has to go to the one Panera she was once kicked out of.
But she can’t put off her meeting with her agent anymore. So she slaps on her blonde wig and scarf combination, hoping that it’s enough to disguise her from the manager who kicked her out when she dumped food onto her ex-husband’s new fiancee, also known as Theresa, Finlay’s (former) realtor. So Finlay slides into the small table across from her agent and talks about how frustrated she is, with the same murders over and over. She wants something different, and she wants a lot more money for her next contract. Her agent tells Finlay that she just needs to fulfill the obligation of her current contract or she’ll have to give her advance back. And then she leaves. As Finlay is cleaning up to leave, she finds a piece of paper on it with a man’s name, a phone number, and a dollar amount: $50,000.
When she calls the number, she realizes that the woman who had been sitting next to her had completely misconstrued their conversation. She though Finlay was a contract killer, and she wants to hire Finlay to kill her husband. She tells Finlay what a bad man he is and that he’ll be at a specific bar that night. Finlay doesn’t want to kill anyone, obviously, but $50,000 could pay for an amazing lawyer, one who could fight her ex-husband’s lawyer if he really does try to get full custody of their kids. It could pay off all of her bills. It could fix her minivan. And it could pay back her publisher, if she can’t come up with her new book really fast.
Finlay feels like it wouldn’t be wrong just to do a little research on this man and his wife, and a quick internet search on Theresa’s computer shows her that he is an abuser. So she takes a little black dress from Theresa’s closet and heads to the bar to see the man for himself. After a flirty conversation with the bartender, Finlay heads to the bathroom, right past the husband’s table. That’s when she sees the man drug his date’s champagne. Thinking fast, she detains the date and goes to talk to the man herself, distracting him long enough to switch the glasses, so the drugged champagne is now his. When it kicks in, Finlay helps him into her minivan, intending to take him back to his wife. She doesn’t want him and tells Finlay to look on his phone. She does and she finds the photos of women he had drugged, slept with, photographed, and then extorted. Clearly, he is not a good man. But Finlay has no idea what to do with him.
She drives the van home with him still in the back, and after heading in to clean herself up, she goes back out to the garage to see that she had left the van running. And the garage door was closed. She did just what she had been contracted to—she’d killed a man. And when Finlay’s former nanny Vero stopped by then to pick up the rest of her stuff, Finlay told her everything. They decided on a 60/40 split, and then they head out to get rid of the body.
Within days of Vero moving in to the house, the kids are in good shape, the bills are paid, and Finlay has written several chapters of the story, to try to figure it what exactly had happened that night. But then a new client offers $100,000 for Finlay to get rid of her husband, a handsome cop stops by to get Finlay’s help with his missing persons case, her agent cancels her current book deal to get her a much better deal based on this new story, and Finlay wonders if Theresa is involved with the Russian mob. So, just typical working mom stuff.
But Finlay has to figure out how it all fits together, both to keep herself and Vero out of prison and to finish writing her new book. Will Finlay figure out an ending where she’ll get to live happily ever after, or will her story end in a different way?
Finlay Donovan Is Killing It is a phenomenal story that blends the struggles of a working mom with two kids and a jerk of an ex-husband along with a murder mystery with enough twists to keep you guessing. Author Elle Cosimano brings humor and street smarts to her first adult novel and ends up with a comedic thriller about misunderstandings and modern life.
I really enjoyed Finlay Donovan Is Killing It. I thought it was smart and interesting, and while some of the situations may seem far-fetched, Finlay struck me as the type of person who could get herself into (and out of) such situations. I thought it was fresh and fun, and I look forward to seeing how Finlay gets herself into and out of more shenanigans.
Egalleys for Finlay Donovan Is Killing It were provided by Minotaur Books through NetGalley, with many thanks.
