Book Review: 

He Will Be My Ruin

by K.A. Tucker

DarkMatters review — Four Stars

Heiress Maggie Sparkes leaves her charity work in Africa and heads to NYC to perform one last favour for best-friend-since-childhood Celine who died of an apparent overdose of Xanax and booze.

As she packs away Celine’s belongings, Maggie comes across her BFF’s diary and other clues that shatter the image of who her friend had become. The revelations lead her to believe the open and shut case isn’t the simple suicide police reported. Celine was murdered.

The women come from different worlds but grew up as close as sisters. Maggie was guilt-ridden over her family’s energy wealth while Celine came as part of the package when her mother took over as the Sparkes family nanny.

Maggie’s investigations show Celine had been ambitious, smart, and possessed a fabulous eye for detecting bargain antiquities at garage sales and low-key estate sales.

But she discovered a darker side that led her friend into a risky lifestyle and a secret relationship that Celine predicted in her diary would not go well: “He will be my ruin.”

He Will Be My Ruin is an easy-to-read, fast-paced, sexy whodunit that maintains suspense as Maggie unwraps the events leading to Celine’s murder. I would rate the novel as a five star read except for the one item I couldn’t buy into despite the author’s attempts to explain it.

Celine’s dark sideline pushes her into dangerous territory and triggers the circumstances that lead to her death.

Given her connections, talent, and spectacular eye for antiquities, there was no need for the sideline when a phone call to Maggie or a bit of added detective work on the antiquities side might (and did but too late) achieve the same end. Without the sideline, none of the situations that led to her murder would have occurred.