This fabulously funny and thrilling ride of a book opens with the line "It's a widely known fact that most moms are ready to kill someone by eight-thirty A.M. on any given morning". Finlay Donovan is a newly divorced mother of two whose husband left her for the woman he had been having an affair with. Stephen is also trying to get sole custody of the children, even though when he has them on the weekends, he has a friend of his fiancée babysit the children on Saturday so they can go out. Stephen and his fiancée, Teresea, own a sod farm where Stephen grows different grasses for his landscaping business and for the homes that Teresea, a real estate agent, sells. Finlay, on the other hand, is a writer of thrillers that few people read and doesn't make a lot of money. She is behind on every bill and cannot afford an attorney to fight the custody battle. Stephen told her to get a "real job," and he says he fired the nanny/babysitter, Vero, when in fact she quit when told she had the choice of sleeping with Stephen or not working.
Finlay is at a Panera (the one she was banned from for pouring hot soup over Teresa's head when she tried to explain what she did wrong in her marriage) with her agent talking over a new book idea. Finlay hasn't been able to write about anything since Stephen left. She tells her agent that she is doing something new. The woman at the next table overhears part of the conversation and misinterprets what they are talking about. She leaves a note for Finlay offering to pay her $50,000 to take care of her husband, a very bad man indeed. Finlay calls Patricia to explain that she is mistaken about her, but instead, Patricia just tells her where her husband will be on a specific date. He has a socializing date with various finance members at a bar called The Lush.
While Finlay had no intention of killing him, she does some research online and finds that Patricia's husband, Harris, beats her. Finlay goes to The Lush on the night Harris is to be there and sees him put something in a drink for a woman he is with. While the woman is distracted in the restroom, Finlay walks up and flirts with him, switching the drinks so Harris gets the drugged one. She planned to take him to Patricia's house, but instead goes home and calls Patricia, who tells her to look at his phone pics and videos. In it are women who were drugged and had their naked pictures as well as videos of him having sex with Harris. He then blackmailed them, telling them he would inform their husbands if they didn't pay. Finlay leaves her minivan running and goes into the house for a while. When she comes back to her vehicle, carbon monoxide is all over the closed garage, and Harris is dead. Vero appears and sees her with a body. After Finlay explains, Vero wants a forty percent cut, and she will help Finlay bury the body on Stephen's sod farm.
Finlay meets two very different men in this book who vie for her attention: Julian, a bartender at The Lush who is studying to become a lawyer, and Nick, a hot-shot detective who needs her help bringing down the mafia family that Harris works for. To make matters worse, Patricia recommends Finlay to another woman who will pay more to kill her husband, who works as an enforcer for the mob. Finlay worries about being caught by the police or the mob and losing her kids for good. Meanwhile, her writing has never been so good. This book is the first in a series and really sets it off with a bang. At the end, you are left craving more, and luckily five more books are waiting for you to devour.
Quotes
It's a widely known fact that most moms are ready to kill someone by eight-thirty A.M. on any given morning. On the particular morning of Tuesday, October eighth, I was ready by seven-forty-five. If you've never had to wrestle a two-year-old slathered in maple syrup into a diaper while your four-year-old decides to give herself a haircut in time for preschool, all while trying to track down the whereabouts of your missing nanny as you sop up coffee grounds from an overflowing pot because in your sleep-deprived fog you forgot to put in the filter, let me spill it out for you. I was ready to kill someone. I didn't really care who.
Elle Cosimano (Finlay Is Killing It, p1)
Someone had drawn a phallus in the grime on the back window, and Delia hadn't let me clean it because she'd said it looked like a flower, and it all felt like a metaphor for my life right now.
Elle Cosmano (Finlay Is Killing It, p 8)
Link to ThriftBooks:https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/finlay-donovan-is-killing-it_elle-cosimano/26494237/?resultid=740d1c19-caa2-4a7b-818d-39402f90d18c#edition=59452671&idiq=52021836
