Author: Lori Rader-Day
Publication: Minotaur (January 6, 2026)
Description: From award-winning author Lori Rader-Day, Wreck Your Heart is an engaging, “wisecracking and wonderful” crime novel with a big heart, about a country and midwestern singer out to catch her big break before family―or murder―wrecks everything.
Dahlia “Doll” Devine had the kind of hardscrabble beginning that could launch a thousand broken-hearted country songs, but now she’s the star of her own stage at McPhee’s Tavern. As part of Chicago’s―yes, Chicago’s―country music scene, Dahlia is an up-and-coming singer in spangles and boots of classic country tunes. Up and coming, that is, until her boyfriend Joey up and went, taking the rent money with him.
So Dahlia is back to square one, relying on Alex McPhee―again. Alex helped her out of a bad situation when she was a kid living rough with her mother. Now he’s part landlord, part band booster, all-around rescuer. It’s just that Dahlia wishes she didn’t keep giving him reasons to have to do it
Just as Dahlia suspects she’s scraped rock bottom, the mother she hasn’t spoken to in twenty years shows up with something to say. The next morning, a distraught young woman arrives at the bar, asking after her missing mother―Dahlia's mother, too, even if the missing suburban PTA mom the girl describes sounds pretty different from the one who let Dahlia down all those years ago.
Though no one is using the word sister any time soon, Dahlia lets herself be drawn into reuniting the family that might have been hers. But when a body is discovered outside McPhee’s Tavern, the crime threatens not just the place Dahlia has made into a home, but everything she’s believed about her past, her dreams for the future, and the people she was just, maybe, beginning to let into her heart.
My Thoughts: Dahlia "Doll" Devine tells this story in a sort of stream-of-consciousness way though, Thankfully, with punctuation. She's fallen on hard times. Her boyfriend Joey absconded with the rent money. Her landlord has locked her out after allowing her five minutes to gather her belongings which are packed into a black garbage bag. He phone is out of charge, and the charger must be in the apartment.
Doll finds herself back at McPhee's Tavern and back with Alex McPhee who has been rescuing her since she was a child. She's sharing an apartment with Oona and her two big dogs while she's trying to rebuild her life. The only consistency is her Wednesday night performances with her band on McPhee's stage.
But McPhee's is in danger of being sold out from under her with local real estate maven putting pressure on Alex to sell. Then her mother shows up. Doll hasn't seen her mother for twenty years. She left her with Alex and disappeared out of her life. Doll wound up in foster care but with frequent visits from Alex through the years. She has a lot of resentment about her mother which is exacerbated when a young woman shows up the day after Doll's mother comes and goes looking for her mother who just happens to be Doll's mother too.
Then Joey's body shows up in the alley behind McPhee's wrapped in curtains from their old apartment.
Doll has to find out who murdered Joey, track down her missing mother, and keep McPhee's from being sold if she wants a chance to get her life back on track.
This was an entertaining story. I enjoyed Doll's character. She prickly and needy and just recognizing that she has built her own family after thinking she was alone in the world.
I received this one in exchange for an honest review from NetGalley. You can buy your copy here.
I received this one in exchange for an honest review from NetGalley. You can buy your copy here.
New book and author for me. Thanks for the review.
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