Book ~ "Sunset Beach" (2019) Mary Kay Andrews

From Goodreads ~ Drue Campbell’s life is adrift. Out of a job and down on her luck, life doesn’t seem to be getting any better when her estranged father, Brice Campbell, a flamboyant personal injury attorney, shows up at her mother’s funeral after a twenty-year absence. Worse, he’s remarried - to Drue’s eighth grade frenemy, Wendy, now his office manager. And they’re offering her a job.

It seems like the job from hell, but the offer is sweetened by the news of her inheritance - her grandparents’ beach bungalow in the sleepy town of Sunset Beach, a charming but storm-damaged eyesore now surrounded by waterfront McMansions.

With no other prospects, Drue begrudgingly joins the firm, spending her days screening out the grifters whose phone calls flood the law office. Working with Wendy is no picnic either. But when a suspicious death at an exclusive beach resort nearby exposes possible corruption at her father’s firm, she goes from unwilling cubicle rat to unwitting investigator, and is drawn into a case that may - or may not - involve her father. With an office romance building, a decades-old missing persons case re-opened, and a cottage in rehab, one thing is for sure at Sunset Beach: there’s a storm on the horizon.

Drue is a 36-year-old server in a bar.  She doesn't really like her job or her boss and is fired.  Around this time, her estranged and successful father contacts her to let her know that she has inherited her maternal grandparents' rundown cottage due to the recent death of her mother.  Plus he offers her a job in his law firm.  With no other prospects, Drue moves into her grandparents cottage and works for her dad and his wife (Drue's former best friend but now enemy due to an incident in the grade eight).  Answering the phones and trying to meet quotas isn't Drue's idea of excitement but at least it's paying the bills.

Drue's interest is piqued when Yvonne, a former client of her father's, comes into the law office demanding what's fair.  Her daughter had been murdered on-the-job at the resort where she worked and Yvonne was awarded not a lot of money because it happened during work hours.  Drue doesn't think this is fair so starts digging into the case.  And in the meantime, she finds a box in her attic which included newspaper clippings about a woman named Connie who had disappeared 40 years ago.  She becomes obsessed with finding out what happened to her.

I've read quite a few books by this author and thought this one was just okay.  It is written in third person perspective and as a head's up, there is swearing.

I found the story a bit convoluted with the two mysteries going on ... finding out what really happened to Yvonne's daughter and ensuring she had proper compensation and figuring out what happened to Connie 40 years ago.  Considering she had no experience or inclination in the past, I found it a bit unbelievable that Drue could/would jump right into being an "investigator".  The "whodunnit" in the present case came out of the blue and I didn't really buy it.  I didn't find Drue overly likable and had a hard time believing she was 36 ... she acted more like 26.  And I wasn't buying the love interest in the end.