Prepare to snort-laugh, gasp out loud, and fall hard for an ex-Navy SEAL who keeps showing up with coffee and instructions she has no intention of following. SPARKING TROUBLE is packed with disastrous stakeouts, is a romcom mystery with a body count, a grandmother with a cane and zero filter, a best friend who deserves her own book, and a slow burn that pays off with the door wide open. If Janet Evanovich, Lucy Score, Tessa Bailey, or Ali Hazelwood live on your shelf, meet Charlie Sparks.
Charlotte Sparks is about to die in her worst pair of underwear.
Tied up. Dead body on top of her. Bargaining with God about church attendance and whether her mother will find out about the underwear situation before or after the funeral.
This is not how the week was supposed to go.
All Charlie had to do was survive her shoe department job, her teenage manager's little notepad of infractions, and the lingering humiliation of catching her ex-boyfriend mid-affair via surprise Pad Thai delivery. That was the whole list. Keep her head down, stop Googling "is 27 too old to not have a career," and maybe figure out what comes after getting laughed out of art school, writing a novel no one read, and catching a culinary institute on fire.
Then a crying woman on a try-on bench asked for help. And Charlie, who has never once in her life left well enough alone, said yes.
Now she's tangled up in a case her PI brother told her to stay away from, stumbling over dead bodies she can't explain to a detective who doesn't believe in coincidences, and getting better intel from her grandmother's senior center gossip network than the police. Everything she's touched, knocked over, vomited on, and accidentally pocketed is pulling her deeper into something much bigger than a simple divorce case.
And then there's Kane Branson. 6'4". Ex-Navy SEAL. Depthless gray eyes. Works for her brother. Was specifically told to keep Charlie out of trouble.
He's doing a terrible job.
Tropes:
- grumpy / sunshine
- brother's best friend / partner
- slow burn
- disaster heroine
- overprotective hero
- he falls first
