THE ACCIDENTAL MISTRESS

A makeup artist finds herself involved in a massive fraud scandal after a case of wrong place, wrong time.

Sisters Violet and Lily couldn’t be more different. Violet left their small town in Trinidad as a young teen with a scholarship to a New England boarding school. From then on, she spent her time working to fit in as an American, to the point that now, as an adult, she's ready to marry into black American royalty. Lily, on the other hand, has all the things that could embarrass her sister: a stripper’s body and the job to go with it, an outspoken nature that has led to the formation of a strippers union, and an accent that can’t hide her foreignness. But Violet and Lily have to work together when an act of kindness leaves Violet the No. 1 suspect in a federal fraud case. With the help of several friends, including an old friend from Harvard who sparks new chemistry, Violet does what she has to do to get her name cleared. While the plot is compelling, de León (The Boss, 2017, etc.) prefers to bounce around in the timeline and between characters. This constant motion can take a reader out of the story, but the character development keeps things interesting. While the primary story involves an investigation and a minor heist that will feel familiar to readers of de León's Justice Hustlers series, the romantic elements may draw in new readers. The explicit sex is clinical and doesn’t always add to the progression of the story. The book has a satisfying ending, though, and should leave most readers interested in the next step for the stripper collective, if not for any of the romantic pairings.

A passable heist novel with elements of romance and intersectional feminism.