Moorewood Family Rules by HelenKay Dimon (2023)
If you can't resist a mystery thriller set amongst a pit-of-vipers family, all of whom are up to no good to varying degrees, welcome to the Moorewood clan.
As an extended shady gang of conniving grifters, these familial sociopaths specialize in marrying wealthy heirs and heiresses, with a cold eye centered on their victims' bank accounts. Jillian, one of their few non-psychopathic members, made a futile demand for them to give up the grifts and go legit. For her troubles, one of them anonymously set her up for an FBI arrest, resulting in a grueling, miserable prison stretch of almost 3 years.
Out on parole, Jillian's back and seething with a vengeful agenda to thwart all the family's illegalities.....control their money, claim ownership of their mansion home and thwart their newest two grifts to marry into separate fabulously wealthy families.
But the Moorewoods aren't likely to take Jillian's 'go-legit-or-or-else' demand sitting down. When mysterious, murderous 'accidents' begin to befall her, her few family allies supply Jillian with hunky bodyguard Beck.......and a predictable but still amusing slow burn romance simmers while literally everybody's deepest family secrets start coming out.
While the set-up seemed to promise a deliciously dark comedy, I felt surprised to find the book spent more time on the soap opera conniving and the all too serious drama of the Moorewoods' dysfunctional family histories. True, there a good amount of wit in many of the dialogue exchanges, but the 'Knives Out' type laughs, if that's what your expected, don't occur with any frequency. And Jillian, along with the storyline, both take an awful long time to finally get where they're going.
Even with the dawdling plot, the chapters do zip along fast enough. Plus, I'm right there for any book that offers the fun of watching a sprawling household of toxic rascals meet their match. Best saved for a warm lazy spring afternoon.....or even the beach. 3 stars (***)
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