If you love country music and very voice-driven amateur detective stories, Wreck Your Heart is the book for you. Check out my Review of Wreck Your Heart.
Jen’s Quick Take on Wreck Your Heart by Lori Rader-Day
- An amateur detective with a larger-than-life, voicey narrator
- Set in Chicago, bar singer Doll Devine solves a murder that breaks her heart
- Heavy on character development, setting and voice, this book is as twangy and mournful as a country song
- Publication date: January 6, 2026 by Minotaur Books. Thanks to the publisher for the advance copy.
Review of Wreck Your Heart by Lori Rader-Day
I decided to try Wreck Your Heart based on a five star review from a Goodreads friend.
While it wasn’t really a “me” book, it was a really enjoyable read (always good to mix it up!) and I would love to help it find its core audience!
Wreck Your Heart is an extremely voice-driven first-person mystery, with a larger-than-life main character.
In these kind of books, I can usually tell if this is an “I will follow you anywhere” character … or not. It makes sense to me that the author is a professor of creative writing, because I loved the writing but I think that some mystery and suspense readers may think that the lovely writing slows the book’s pace too much.
Dahlia “Doll” Devine is a Chicago country singer who performs at McPhees with her band. She’s tough as nails after a less than ideal childhood.
Despite that, her hard shell is going to get a few hard knocks in this story in the form of the death of someone close to her, a visit from a ghost from her past, and then the appearance of a family member she wasn’t aware of.
I’m not a big country music fan, but if you are, you might want to give this a try. Doll is passionate about music, her found family of bandmates, and the bar’s owner. (McPhee’s is a colorful place that is almost a character in the book.)
Chaotic and voice driven, this reminded me a little of the show Shameless (also set in Chicago) crossed with the emotion and heartbreak of country music and seasoned with a take-no-prisoners main character who has worked hard to create a life for herself and is not about to let anyone threaten it.