Previous book here.
Chloe's seven months pregnant and planning to be in her best friend Lori's wedding when all hell breaks loose: her asshole criminal brother Chris has started stalking Lori and her wedding in an attempt to get to Chloe. Even though Chloe's not employed in any official crime-busting capacity these days, girl is always on the phone to her team of security/PI's/detectives, etc. to investigate for her, as well as protecting the heck out of Lori and even arranging to move her wedding. Meanwhile, Chris is decidedly acting weird even for him---he keeps begging for help and wants to be moved out of town, keeps saying someone is after him but nobody can find evidence of this, and when the heck did he get a dog? While Chris's reticence is frustrating for all (Chris in general is frustrating for all), I liked that there did turn out to be a reason for it and that Chloe deduced what the real cause of all of this was. I hadn't been expecting that, but it made sense as a reason and led to some tricksiness on the part of Team Chloe. Even though they're good, the bad person is better, leading to Chloe managing to be Action Girl while hugely pregnant. You go, girlfriend.
"What is it with you and smart criminals? Why can't you get the usual violent dimwits?"
"I'm special like that."
This book wraps up more of the mystery from the last one, though some details are still left open-ended (see below the spoiler cut for discussion of that).
I dunno if I think this is the best written book in the series---I kind of felt like some things were really repetitive after awhile and we know these details by now. Also it kind of seemed like whenever someone was supposed to be cracking a joke, it wasn't really funny. Though admittedly, Chloe is a pretty serious person rather than a laugh riot so that's in character, I just wished I was finding things as funny as she was or her audience was. Though I did find it genuinely hilarious when the big strong guard-type men were all, "We know more about being shot at than...." and Chloe and Dina were all, "HEY LET US SHOW YOU OUR SCARS FROM WHERE WE WERE SHOT AS CHILDREN." (Though Jason's remark about wanting to keep some innocence about children being shot made me think, "Dude, you know this about your wife, what innocence is left?") Oh yeah, and then there was the time Jason claimed to not know how to paint nails and then Chloe calls him out on it and he admits he auditioned for Cabaret.
There's also a fair chunk of this dedicated to Lori's future mothers-in-law. Once upon a time her fiance Charles's dad cheated on his mom and married the lady he cheated with---but by the time of this book, both of those ladies are a best twosome and they are ganging up against and disapproving of Lori. After all the weirdness and vague insults and whatnot they had going on, it was good when everyone finally hashed things out about why they were behaving like that. On the other hand, Charles is still a cipher in this series---he isn't onscreen much and I still feel like all I know about him is his job, family situation, and that he gets bothered by Lori having a rich best friend. It wasn't as affecting to me since I don't feel like I know the guy and thus don't even feel like I know about his depression issues or whatever else is freaking out the moms.
Overall, I'm giving it three and a half stars.
Spoiler space
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Who killed Chris's friends is still left open, as is the mystery of "Why the hell is Tessa's favorite stalker graffiti symbol a purple lightning P when she doesn't even have a P in her name?" Seriously, I really want to know the answer to that one.
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