when proposals go really wrong
Jessamine Bricker left her job with a wedding planner to open up her own shop. Now she is Nashville’s premier proposal planner. If you want help planning and executing the perfect wedding proposal, Jess is the person to call. She helps create the ultimate experience, down to the lighting, the music, the setting, and even providing a photographer to take the perfect photos without drawing attention away from the moment.
So when her old classmate Diana tracks her down to beg for help, Jess takes pity on her. Diana’s boyfriend Trenton spontaneously pulled out a ring and asked her to marry him, she immediately shut him down. Trenton Tillard the Fourth is part of the Tillard Pecan fortune, and Diana knows that her proposal has to be perfect. And Jess is the person to make that happen. Diana has aspirations to be an influencer and eventually create luxury brands. So her social media has to be curated carefully, including a picture perfect proposal, especially since Trenton’s parents are not thrilled with the match.
Diana decides that they need to head to an opulent spa for a week of planning, so Jess joins Diana, her wedding planner Aubrey, and Diana’s cousin Kiki at the Golden Ash Spa and Wellness Resort. Located in Chickenhawk Valley in Tennessee, it’s a luxe resort offering a wide variety of spa services in a peaceful part of the Tennessee mountains. The spa is run by the Osbourne family, with Poppy coming to meet the limo as the women pull up and welcoming them.
They get settled into their rooms, but Jess knows that she’s not just there to relax and support Diana. She has to plan a whole new proposal for Trenton, and it has to be perfect. She has an assistant back in her office in Nashville to help her, but Jess will have to do the bulk of the planning at the spa, and without access to her phone. There is no service there, so she’s going to be borrowing some of Poppy’s office space and her telephone when she needs it.
But when Jess stumbles on a dead body in the meditation pool, she struggles to focus on the proposal. But it’s important that she does, because she’s about to be evicted, and the exorbitant amount Trenton is willing to pay her for this perfect proposal means that she can put a down payment on the building and control her own destiny. But when she finds a second body at the spa, and Trenton inadvertently ruins all her plans for his perfect proposal, Jess will have to dog deep to keep her clients happy and maybe solve a murder or two on the side.
A Proposal to Die For is a new mystery from Molly Harper, and it brings the humor and snark to the wedding party. This story is filled with layers of deception along with the texture of class struggles. The plotting is intricate and compelling, but it’s the characters who bring this story to life. Jess is hopeful and relatable and very entertaining to spend time with. The characters around her are vibrant and balance the story, so it never gets too heavy and never gets too flippant, despite characters with some healthy snark. I so enjoyed this story, wanting to spend as much time as I could in this universe, hanging out with Jess and those she drew into her world.
Egalleys for A Proposal to Die For were provided by Berkley through NetGalley, with many thanks, but the opinions are mine.
