Careful What You Wish For: A Novel of Suspense

Hallie Ephron

Aug 2019 · Sold by HarperCollins

About this ebook

From the New York Times bestselling author of There Was an Old Woman comes a novel about a professional organizer with a deadly problem she may not be able to clean up.

Emily Harlow is a professional organizer who helps people declutter their lives; she’s married to man who can’t drive past a yard sale without stopping. He’s filled their basement, attic, and garage with his finds.

Like other professionals who make a living decluttering peoples’ lives, Emily has devised a set of ironclad rules. When working with couples, she makes clear that the client is only allowed to declutter his or her own stuff. That stipulation has kept Emily’s own marriage together these past few years. She’d love nothing better than to toss out all her husband’s crap. He says he’s a collector. Emily knows better—he’s a hoarder. The larger his “collection” becomes, the deeper the distance grows between Emily and the man she married.

Luckily, Emily’s got two new clients to distract herself: an elderly widow whose husband left behind a storage unit she didn’t know existed, and a young wife whose husband won’t allow her stuff into their house. Emily’s initial meeting with the young wife takes a detour when, after too much wine, the women end up fantasizing about how much more pleasant life would be without their collecting spouses.

But the next day Emily finds herself in a mess that might be too big for her to clean up. Careful what you wish for, the old adage says . . . now Emily might lose her freedom, her marriage . . . and possibly her life.

Ratings and reviews

The current craze surrounding Marie Kondo and her personal organizing empire has opened the floodgates for others looking to piggyback on the momentum surrounding the fad. In Careful What You Wish For, Hallie Epron’s protagonist, Emily Harlow, is a newly minted professional organizer who is continuously pitted against characters and events representing deliberate chaos. Emily’s own husband is a lawyer, and (ironically) an avid “collector” of detritus gathered from yard and estate sales. There is obvious tension between them caused in turn by disagreements about their infertility issues and the growing build-up of clutter inside their home. Emily’s need for order becomes further thwarted when she takes on two new clients with complications and convoluted pasts. Both clients provide the novel with mysteries that become increasingly puzzling and intertwined. In one case, Emily is suspicious that her client’s deceased husband may have a collection of stolen items, and the other embroils Emily in a “Strangers on a Train” type plot. As an amateur detective, Emily often shows a degree of questionable judgement and naivete that may cause the reader to experience exasperation at her obtuseness. Careful What You Wish For also contains many twists and red herrings, but savvy readers will not be duped due to the numerous hints provided and their sheer predictability. Ephron’s newest release is a perfect summer read: light, quickly paced and well-written, but probably not her best nor most memorable work thus far. Thanks to Edelweiss and William Morrow for an ARC of this book in return for an unbiased review.

stupid boring and the main character is so annoying can't blame her husband. I should know by now as a female that female writers these days obit write about flawed women who blame the manfor everything .then when the man does something real stupid the woman is seen as the victim and Winner. shes on my black list to avoid

About the author

Hallie Ephron is the New York Times bestselling author of Never Tell a Lie, Come and Find Me, There Was an Old Woman, and Night Night, Sleep Tight. For twelve years she was the crime fiction reviewer for the Boston Globe. The daughter of Hollywood screenwriters, she grew up in Beverly Hills, and lives near Boston, Massachusetts.