Homemaker by Ruthie Knox and Annie Mare (who also used to write as Mary Ann Rivers) is a departure for both authors as they shift from contemporary romance to mystery. But don’t worry – there is a still a little romance here to keep any fan of their work fully engaged even as the mystery plays out (and a great mystery it is!).

Prairie Nightingale is a divorced mom of two teenage girls. She has a good co-parenting relationship with her ex-husband, Greg, who still plays a prominent part in his daughters’ lives, and has turned her profession of homemaker into a business. As part of the divorce settlement, she had Greg (who is wealthy due to all the supportive work Prairie put in to enable him to pursue his career) set up a trust in which they are partners, and Prairie used the money to separate out the roles she had singlehandedly been performing and hired others to fill some of them. She has a staff (a cook, a housekeeper, a logistician) and can now devote her time to other pursuits. Those other pursuits? Well, mostly they involve taking an interest in the lives of those around her. It was her questioning of a missed donation to a school fund that ultimately led to the discovery of a local doctor who was abusing his female patients. The resulting fallout and scandal from that caused her mom-group of friends, those with children going to the same school as her kids, to shun her. But it doesn’t stop her from noticing things when she’s waiting outside the school and seeing all of her former friends.

One of those things is that a former mom-friend, Amber, has a really fancy and expensive new purse. It doesn’t match the rest of the details that Prairie sees, that Amber has an older phone model with a cracked screen, and a broken taillight on her car, and Amber eventually tells Prairie that it was a gift from another mom-friend, Lisa Radcliffe. Now Lisa is practically a local celebrity in that she’s making a ton of money through a multi-level-marketing program selling Kitty Blue clothes. Lisa is at the top of the pyramid, a distributor for the clothing, and many of the mom-friends were recruited by her and are also selling Kitty Blue merchandise. But none of them seem to be raking in the money in the same way that Lisa is.

Later that day, a police notice goes out that Lisa has gone missing. According to her husband, Chris, she had gone out after dinner the night before and hasn’t come back. She’s officially a missing person. The family is frantic. Prairie soon discovers that other women also received expensive gifts from Lisa in the days before her disappearance. Is this a planned disappearance? A suicide? Or is it something even more sinister? Prairie will have to use all her amateur sleuthing skills to find out the truth.

I wasn’t really sure what I was getting into when I picked this up, I just knew it had Ruthie’s name on it so I was going to read it. Well, I knew it was a mystery, but I hadn’t read the back copy so I didn’t have any preconceptions. And I’m glad I didn’t know, because it’s not the type of story I would normally read, but by the time I realized that I was totally invested in the story.

Prairie is a very interesting, very feminist character. I wasn’t sure if I liked her at first, but she grew on me. There’s a lot in the first several chapters about how much women do for men that goes unappreciated, how controlling men are, and just general anti-men bias (or at least that’s how it felt to me). But the points the author makes are good and thought provoking (as I’m sure is the intent).

I promised in the intro that there is some romance and there is, due to the presence of FBI agent Foster Rosemare. One of the sneaky things Prairie does just after Lisa has gone missing is to organize a vigil for her safe return. It quickly becomes a large event, with other people in charge, which was exactly Prairie’s intent, because her purpose in holding the vigil is to scan the crowds and see who shows up. She soon realizes that she has been spotted by a good-looking besuited man who is doing the same thing she is, and when he approaches her and they introduce themselves, a spark of interest flares between them. This leads to some coffee shop meetings that are combination dates/case working sessions as Prairie continues to delve into the missing mom mystery and how the Kitty Blue business might fit into it all.

The pace quickens as clues are uncovered and I definitely stayed up reading way too late because I had to know how it was all going to end! Suffice it to say the truth is uncovered, and a relationship starts to blossom. Prairie’s family and friends are all part of the story and are characters that make it richer. I know there is going to be a sequel and I’m invested in how Prairie and Foster will continue their relationship and also what kind of case she’ll get her hands on next!