splitting heirs

Hotel heiress Pomona Afton has an easy life. She goes to parties and posts on social media and lives in her family’s hotel. She’s never had to struggle or get a job or live on her own. She’s known the best things in life without knowing how hard other people have to work for what they have. Her lifestyle just fell into her lap.

And then it all changed.

Pom’s grandmother was the matriarch of the family. Her son, Pom’s father, was supposed to take over the business, but Grandma found him wanting. She had started teaching Pom’s brother Nicholas the business. He was being prepped to take over the entire Afton Hotel empire. But then Pom found her grandmother murdered, and within hours, she and her parents and brother were given 30 minutes to vacate the hotel. Apparently Grandma had concerns that she might meet an untimely end, and her will specified that all the family funds were frozen for a year. So all the Afton family members are no longer welcome at the hotels, and all their bank accounts and credit cards are frozen. Pom has no job, no money, and no home. And to get it all back, she’s going to have to figure out who killed her grandmother.

Pom has to find a place to live first. Her parents are staying with friends and their dogs in the Hamptons, but Pom doesn’t want to be a fifth wheel there. She tries a friend, but she doesn’t have room. So she takes Nicholas up on his offer to sleep on the sofa at his girlfriend’s apartment. She tries to make some money with an influencer campaign for an upcoming designer, but the comments left on the social media posts are too unkind, causing the designer to back out. After a couple of days, Pom feels like she’s in the way with Nicholas and Jessica, so she says yes to the only other offer she got, to move in with her former nanny’s son.

Gabe takes her in and shows her a tiny bedroom she can use. He even gets her a job at the coffee shop he manages. Life is challenging, as is the cash register, but Pom keeps trying. She learns about grocery shopping and laundry and starts stress baking. Best of all, she discovers that Gabe’s cat is the one that ran away ten years ago, when she went off to college. They had given Squeaky to Gabe, and he’s taken care of him all that time.

Pom is determined to find out who killed her grandma though. She and Gabe make a list of suspects, but for Pom, it’s mostly family. Is it possible that someone close to Pom is the one who murdered her grandmother and destroyed her life? And once Pom gets her life back, will she still want it?

Pomona Afton Can So Solve a Murder is a a clever murder mystery about how a spoiled rich young woman can lose everything and find what’s most important. It’s suspenseful and ironic, fun but with a depth that is engaging on so many levels. There is the schadenfreude of watching the rich girl fall, then the happiness of watching her figure out what makes her happy, then there is the puzzle of who killed Grandma and how Pom and Gabe can figure it out and bring the killer to justice.

I loved this book. Pom turns out to be a charming character, and I couldn’t help but root for her as she was struggling without all the money she had taken for granted for so long. It was fun watching her bake and worrying about laundry. But she’s smart and determined and compassionate, and she loves her cat, so this is someone I love to read about. At the end of the book, Pom jokes with Gabe about solving another mystery, and if that happens, I am all in.

Egalleys for Pomona Afton Can So Solve a Murder were provided by Atria Books through NetGalley, with many thanks.