LILY Quinn is incredibly lucky. She's found the man of her dreams and won an enormous amount of cash. Unfortunately, Lily Quinn is also incredibly unlucky.
Her best friend has disappeared, leaving her senator brother under suspicion, and her health has taken a nosedive.
Her life is a confusing mixture of highs and lows, but she does at least feel alive, which is more than world-weary, alcohol-addled NYPD detective Spencer O'Malley feels. He is a functioning drunk, staying sober through the working week while looking for missing persons who don't necessarily want to be found, and then going AWOL himself at weekends by boozing himself into oblivion.
But then he meets Lily, whose friend he can't find, whose brother he must investigate, whose family considers him marginally less appealing than a flea-infested street-dweller and who might just be the love of his life.
Part thriller, part love story, part family drama, Paullina Simons has created a compelling novel that will keep you on the edge of your seat. She makes the unlikely attraction between Lily and Spencer utterly convincing; the whodunit plot rattles along at a pleasingly frenetic pace; and the potentially maudlin subplot about Lily's health is written with just the right combination of honesty and dark, dark, humour.
But it is in her relatively minor characters that Simons' true talent shines through. Spencer's NYPD colleagues and Lily's highly dysfunctional family are a riot of colour and beguiling charmlessness. Get scribbling Ms Simons. More please.