Cross Your Heart and Hope He Dies

by Jenny Elder Moke

January 20, 2026 · Minotaur Books

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B

Genre: Contemporary Romance, Mystery/Thriller, Romance

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I had a tremendous amount of fun with this book. Not only is it actually laugh-out-loud funny, the heroine is perfection. Or to quote my Gen Z work colleague, she is goals. Slay.

Let’s begin with the trauma that makes her who she is. Juliette Winters had two psychologists for parents who treated her more as a lab experiment than a beloved daughter. They published books about her! Multiple books! The result is that Juliette is pretty messed up but in a way that makes her so so much fun to read and you kind of want to be her friend too. If you can stop being intimidated by her for long enough for friendly relations to begin, that is. Juliette is beyond driven and refuses to trust anyone. She is firm in her belief that nothing is beyond her abilities. Despite this she has a good gang of people around her who appreciate her loyalty and drive even if Juliette sees only her fearsome drive.

Juliette’s drive has a particular target at the start of the book. She is trying to save the publisher she works for by bringing in a tell-all memoir by an aging but still very powerful business magnate. Only on the night of his 70th birthday, the magnate dies of an apparent heart attack and the manuscript is stolen. Juliette is beside herself. She has to get that manuscript back. And so ensues a very satisfying mystery plot.

I enjoyed the mystery elements enormously. The number of characters (aka suspects) is manageable for a semi-focused reader. You can’t quite let your mind wander but you also don’t need to take notes while reading in order to follow the story. There are a good number of twists and turns in the plot, some of which were very good indeed. There is rather a lot of daring investigation led by Juliette, with the assistance of her friends. Not quite edge of the seat stuff, but compelling nonetheless. Overall the mystery plot really hit the spot.

A lot of the humour comes from Juliette’s sharp tongue and then also from the comic relief provided by her friends, her assistant Veeta and one of her authors, Kate. Sometimes also with her colleague Kennedy. Incidentally, this book is part of a series with Kate being the lead of the first book. I could follow the story easily enough but I had serious FOMO when the events of book one were mentioned because I wanted to have experienced it too. Please sound off in the comments if you’ve read the first one, She Doesn’t Have a Clue. Should readers start with book one?

There is an excellent opposites-attract romance as well. It’s between our beloved fiery virago, Juliette and a rumpled, gentle doctor called Charlie. Their chemistry is great and I really enjoyed seeing Juliette get to grips with someone so different to her. It’s all very emotionally mature at the end, but the process of getting there is a bit rocky. Naturally!

I do have an issue with the book’s title. As with all mystery books like this, there is more than one murder. But that first murder is the critical one. And while the magnate was seriously unpopular with everyone, Juliette needed him alive and well and all her plans were junked by his death. So while some did hope that he would die, the critical voice, Juliette, did not want him dead. But that’s me, the pedant, talking.

Okay so if I had so much fun with this book and Juliette is such a treat, why only a B. First of all, a B is a GREAT grade. We firmly believe in using the full grade range at SBTB. Also personally, I firmly resist the BookTok-fuelled nonsense that only a five star read is worth your time. There are too many different takes on a single novel and way too many readers for a grading to be one-size-fits-all. Yes, I’m getting sidetracked.

Back to the point: I didn’t stay up past my bedtime while reading this book. That’s what it comes down to. If my tiredness disappears, then I know the book is stellar. This book is good and I happily recommend it to the Bitchery, but a Bad Decisions Book Club, it was not. I feel bad for ending on such a downer. Back to Juliette and her fearsome, flawed ways! I loved her!