In Quant and Land’s comic mystery, a woman contends with numerous travails when former classmates converge at her just-opened bed-and-breakfast.

Minnesotan Maggie Livingston is an “almost divorced, thirty-something autistic woman who had just moved back down south to rent out her beloved ancestral home to strangers,” and she’s been dealing with one problem after another. First, she hustles the corpse of an elderly guest, who apparently died of natural causes, out of her place to escape the health inspector’s notice; later, it comes to light that old Mr. Trembolt may not have been who he said he was—and may have been the victim of a murder. Meanwhile, her booked wedding party, all former high school classmates, is plagued by numerous disasters over the course of a week, including food poisoning and poison ivy, aggressive yellowjackets, and the discovery of a severed human leg, among other things. In the midst of all this, Maggie—who once underwent fertility treatments—is nervous but hopeful that she may be pregnant, due to an ill-advised hookup with her cheating, soon-to-be-ex-husband, Lance. He tries to lure her back to Minnesota, as does a promotion-offering former employer. Maggie’s also anxious about seeing Alice, her former high school girlfriend, whom she betrayed by sleeping with Lance some 14 years ago. There’s also a blackmail plot, related to a tragic event that occurred during Maggie’s high school days. This colorful, spiraling whodunit effectively combines suspense with tongue-in-cheek absurdity; chapter titles include “Scooby Do or Die” and “What’s a Body Part Between Friends?,” and there are nods to both the 1997 horror film I Know What You Did Last Summer and the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Readers may find that keeping track of this book’s large squad of characters is challenging, but they’re a believable and attractively diverse bunch of potential suspects. Ultimately, though, this novel has a sweetness to it, with Maggie and her former antagonists coming together in common cause.

An amusing, antic mystery with surprising and touching twists.