I voluntarily reviewed an Advance Reader Copy from the Publisher. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
A Proposal to Die For
by Molly Harper
Published by Berkley on April 8, 2025
Setting: Tennessee
Genres: Romantic Mystery
Pages: 349
Format: Audible Audiobook, Kindle, Paperback
Source: the Publisher
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Get Your Copy at: Amazon
A fast-paced, witty, and delightful new mystery about a marriage proposal planner whose biggest job yet is threatened by a dead body (or two).
Jessamine Bricker loves a plan. Contingency plans and pros-and-cons lists are her love language, and because of that, her proposal planning business is thriving. But with rent costs rising at her office building, Jess jumps at the chance to plan a proposal between her snobby high school classmate, Diana, and her very wealthy boyfriend, Trenton Tillard…the Fourth.
Roped into joining Diana’s ”pre-bridal” retreat at the exclusive Golden Ash resort, Jess hopes to fade into the background, get some work done, and maybe find some time to unwind. Their first day is anything but relaxing: Diana is furious about the mountain spa’s lack of cell phone reception, the couple next door argues constantly, and Jess swears she just saw a drug deal go down. To top it all off, she’s warned to stay out of the woods by the gruff and sexy chef, Dean Osbourne. Is this a retreat or a horror movie?
As Jess tries to do her job while placating the bride-to-be and her increasingly over-the-top demands, she spends more and more time with the resort owners, finding herself much more in tune with the laid-back Osbourne family than her social climbing “boss.” Between a meditation garden-related drowning and Jess’s discovery of a body in a sauna, it's clear that deadly secrets abound at the Golden Ash. Now it’s up to Jess to unravel the mysteries here in the mountains—before all her plans are cancelled…permanently.
A Proposal to Die For by Molly Harper puts Jessamine Bricker into a dangerous situation while planning a proposal that she didn’t even want to do.
Can Jess pull off a proposal that will make Diana happy?
Jessamine Bricker
Jessamine Bricker likes to go by Jess and nothing else. She loves a good plan, to-do lists, and all of that. The one thing that she doesn’t like is a lot of surprises, and that is what planning Diana and Trenton Tillard the Fourth’s proposal is. Jess ends up finding two dead bodies and is starting to think that maybe, just maybe, taking this job wasn’t worth it. Even if Jess likes the Osborne family a lot more, as she gets to hang out with them, she ends up liking Dean. Jess is a great character, and she definitely had some growth in the book. I feel bad that she had to deal with that growth while being with Diana and her messed up family.
The Proposal
Jess had a pretty great plan for Diana’s proposal and one that would’ve ticked off all of her boxes. The one problem is getting Trenton’s family there. Oh, and how the murders that are taking place around them have put a damper on everything. Overall, probably that means that Trenton’s family is right on them not being right for each other.
The Mystery
Jessamine ends up stumbling on a dead body and can’t help but investigate. Granted, she has her hands full planning a proposal, but that’s neither here nor there. She then stumbles upon another dead body, and everything spirals out of control. Jess ends up solving the mysteries and a cold case that has left some of the Osbornes sad.
Five Stars
My rating for A Proposal to Die For by Molly Harper is five stars, and I recommend it to my adult readers. Ms. Harper has done a fantastic job of bringing me to the Appalachian Mountains and this spa resort. I felt so bad for Jess and everything that she got roped into doing thanks to Diana and her lies.
Thank you for dropping by! I hope you enjoyed this review of A Proposal to Die For by Molly Harper.
Until the next time,
Happy Reading!
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About Molly Harper
About the Author:
Her Tagline: Snarky Romance with Bite
“My mother remembers an 8-year-old me setting up my “writing office” in our living room by putting her old manual typewriter on the couch next to a toy phone. And I (very slowly) pecked out the story of my third-grade class taking a trip around the world and losing a kid in each city.
I had a dark sense of humor, even then.
In high school, when other girls my age were writing poems about dying unicorns and bleeding roses, I was writing essays about having political arguments with my dad at the dinner table. (Whoever made the other person laugh at their own political party won the argument.) I knew I wanted to write when I grew up, but I also knew there was very little chance I could make a living writing books, so I went for the next best thing – newspaper writing.
I majored in print journalism at Western Kentucky University and used my shiny new degree to get a job at my hometown newspaper. I married my high school sweetheart, David, a local police officer. And for six years, I wrote about school board meetings, quilt shows, a man “losing” the fully grown bear he kept as a pet in his basement, and a guy who faked his death by shark attack in Florida and ended up tossing pies at a local pizzeria.
I loved my job at the paper. I loved meeting new people every day and never knowing where I would end up. But somehow, the ever-shifting schedules of a police officer and a reporter did not equal “family friendly.” One of us needed to take a normal job for the sake of our young daughter. I took a secretarial position at a local church office, which left me with dependably free evenings for the first time in my adult life. David was working the night shift that summer and I was losing-my-mind. We were living in “The Apartment of Lost Souls” while building our new home. This was the place where appliances and small electronics went to die. Every night I would tuck our snoozing child into bed and wait for the washing machine to start smoking or the computer to suddenly flash the “blue screen of death.” Then there was the plague of frogs in the bathroom that put our daughter of potty-training for about six months. “ ~to see the rest visit her author page on Goodreads (just follow the link below).
Reading this book contributed to these challenges:
- 2025 Cloak and Dagger
- 2025 Goodreads RC
- 2025 Medical Examiner Mystery RC
- 2025 Romance Book Reading Challenge
- 2025 Traveling the World
