An unlikely pair fall in love while battling rapacious building developers in Hathaway’s novel.

When readers meet protagonist Holly Heathway, she’s visiting the posh Hamptons on New York’s Long Island in hopes of challenging “the big developers” by buying and renovating the few properties that the developers haven’t yet snapped up themselves. While there, she meets Fred Stevenson, overseer of a local farm. When Fred sings an aria from Wagner’s opera Rienzi, Holly is overcome with admiration. Fred, she learns, has the talent to be a professional singer, but he spurns ambition for the joy of simple living. At first, Fred and Holly seem to be a perfect match. But then, inexplicably, Fred breaks off the relationship and refuses to explain why. After much protesting, he informs her that his father’s property, which the family has owned for 300 years, is now threatened by an avaricious developer named Jayson Slattery who signed a “right of first refusal” agreement decades ago, which he claims gives him ownership of the land. But when Jayson goes missing, and Fred and two others are suspected of murder, Holly seeks to learn the truth of what transpired on the night of the disappearance in the hopes of saving him from prison. Hathaway’s ambition is commendable. The book addresses the environmental and social dangers of unchecked housing development in a story that’s by turns cozy and tragic. The author excels in sneaking topical issues into a readable and often engaging narrative. But sometimes characters behave in puzzling and unrealistic ways: Fred’s refusal to divulge his dilemma to his partner scans as arbitrary; the amount of gasping and breaking into sobs verges on the melodramatic. Cliches abound (“It did not surprise me when he took the business by the horns and brought it to the next level”), but lapses in style and logic are redeemed somewhat by the obvious warmth the protagonists display toward one another.

Mingles romance, murder, and social issues with intermittent success.