The overwhelming word to describe a book like this would just be pure fun. Everything about it makes me feel like it would be a perfect novel to adapt into an exciting comedic movie. There's a great ensemble of characters, lots of confusion and deliberate miscommunication, insane but believable events, and people and relationships to root for.
The novel starts with the foundations of a story you expect to be simple and straightforward, as simple planning to kill your husbands for money can be, but it grows to such a more exciting and thrilling story once you bring in perspectives from the husbands, hitman, and other important characters. It builds to the kind of book that is built on dynamic and complete characters that you care more and more about. It reminded me a lot of reading The Thursday Murder Club series because it's a group of older people getting themselves into ridiculous and dangerous scenarios but in the most fun way possible.
I loved Pam and Hank and their friends, and all the crazy shenanigans they got themselves into. The love these characters had for each other and the secrets that formed the divide in their relationships were revealed so perfectly that you can't help but cheer while reading this book by the end. I adored everything about this novel, and while my focus was always on the characters, it was really because of how lovely the author's writing and structure were from start to finish. Despite all the murder and mayhem involved, it's the sweetest and most fun book to read and I'd read many more stories about Pam, Hank, Hector, and their gang's adventures!
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

What do you get when you put marriage, friendship and murder together? You get this dark twisty and hilarious book! This was a super funny and exciting read and I hope the author will consider writing a sequel!

☕Review: The Retirement Plan

💗Rated: 5 Stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

🕯️Characters: I do believe The Golden Girls would be proud of this book! This had me on the edge of my seat in both anticipation and pure, utter laughter! Can you imagine a bunch of couples in their retirement time ready for life to take a different chapter? And then bam! Their savings are gone because one of their friends poorly invested?! Pam, Nancy, Shalisa, and Marlene are beyond funny! They are dark comedy in human form!

🍨Details: Now no marriage is perfect LOL however in this book it takes a very different turn! A Shocking turn! LOL think Golden Girls meets a slight darker comedy mix with Oceans 11! Not to give too much away here is what I got from the book! Wives who are vengeful that they are going to have to start working when they look forward to a very well off retirement! Husband's keeping a dozen secrets not knowing their wives dissatisfaction in their lives! A plant to commit a crime where the wives are well off and the husbands are gone! Lots of twist and turns involving a casino, secrets, and connections with so many twists and turns it had a mystery touch to the book!

💖Extra Details: all in all this was a severely entertaining read! If this book was a cake all the layers and icing would be perfectly decorated! And cutting inside the cake you would get a lot of flavor surprises! The author has a serious gift I hope Sue keeps writing! I look forward to another book!

Bravo! ❄️

A group of husbands lose their retirement accounts in a bad investment. In order to replenish their funds, they siphon off money from the slot machines where two of them work unbeknownst to the wives. When one of the husbands dies unexpectedly, his widow uses his insurance to start a new life in a nice home in FL. Her friends decide to have their husbands killed so that they can start over and begin to live the “good life”. They set out to hire a hitman. Meanwhile, the husbands fear that their theft has been discovered by the casino bosses. They fear retribution and seek help from the same hitman their wives have hired. What could go wrong?? This read like a British farce and was full of humor. It is a quick read. I thank NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this ARC.

This was a lot.of fun, loved the scenarios these 4 women had to go through and yet still made it work. Great subtle irony and sarcasm sprinkled throughout,

The Retirement Plan is a middle aged murder mystery that i loved so much! Easily one of my top 10 reads thus far. Thank you NetGalley and William Morrow for this advanced readers copy in exchange for my honest review.

this was such a good book! these 3 old ladies want to get rid of their husbands and get the life insurance money so that they could enjoy the rest of their lives. Little do they know their husbands have a plan of their own... It was a funny book with a lot going on and it was so entertaining, I would definitely recommend it!!

Thank you to NetGalley, to the author, and to the publisher for this complementary ARC in exchange for my honest review!!!

I'm definitely in the minority here but I could not get into this one at all. I found the husbands odious. I found the wives not much better. In and of itself that's not necessarily a problem, especially in this kind of book, but I just couldn't find the rhythm of the writing either and with neither characters nor plot drawing me in, there wasn't much chance of this being a good fit for me. It didn't move as fast as I wanted it to or in as light-hearted or funny a direction as I expected from the cover and blurb. When I realized I was forcing myself to turn pages in a book that was supposed to be a fun romp, I decided to call it. This one wasn't for me...

3.5 stars. I found that this book started out really slowly. The setup took far too long and the jumping back and forth for perspectives from different characters, covering the same material, really dragged the book down at the beginning. But luckily things picked up toward the middle and the ending was strong.
We first meet the couples, Pam & Hank, Nancy & Larry, Shalisa & Andre and Marlene and Dave, at a summer backyard BBQ. The couples, all in their early 60's, have been friends for decades, but their marriages and friendships have been strained since Hank got all of the men to invest in a sure thing that went belly up before their wives even knew that their life savings was missing. Now, the wives resent their husbands and the fact that they have to work and can't retire. Meanwhile, the men remain best friends and don't seem to notice their wives' disdain. When Dave is found dead after the garage door, that Marlene had been harassing him to fix for years, crushed his head, Marlene is at first devastated until she learns that Dave had a large insurance policy and she can sell her house and move to Florida. When the other women learn that their husbands have the same policy, they decide to hire a hitman to kill their husbands. They turn to Hector, a barber who was a former gangster in El Salvador.
Meanwhile, Hank is the one who discovers Dave's body and he is scared to death. The men had all been stealing millions from the casino where Hank & Dave work when Dave discovered a glitch in the new slot machines. Together, they worked with Andre, who owned a courier service that would get the betting slips cashed, and Larry, the banker who set up offshore accounts to hide the money, and started building their retirement plan. They were only a few hundred thousand dollars short of their $10 million goal when Dave was killed. They should have pulled the plug on the operation when the casino was sold to an Indian company with ties to the mob. They are convinced that Padma, the new manager of the casino, put a hit on Dave because he was found with a $1000 chip laying on his chest, a gang sign, and her mother is a powerful mob boss. If only they knew that Padma was in way over her head and had no idea how to run a casino and was more concerned about avoiding her mother's matchmaking attempts. To protect themselves, Hank and the husbands hire Hector to kill whoever is trying to kill them, not realizing that it is their own wives who have put a hit on them. Hector leverages the situation to get his wife, Brenda, a job at the casino in security. Thus ensues a series of events where the women begin to have cold feet, Brenda, Padma and her cohorts discover the slot machine glitch and start to look for the missing money, and Hank and the other husbands are presumed dead after their boat explodes in the harbor.
But wait! The husbands aren't really dead! Hector faked their deaths so that they could escape with their money. They originally planned to send for their wives but that plan changed once they found out that they put a hit on them for the insurance money. Eventually Padma, with Hector and Brenda's help, is able to pin the theft on a shady Indian mobster and escape from under her mother's thumb. Hector and Brenda take their earnings and move to El Salvador where they, together with the husbands, buy and run a resort hotel. Brenda, a year later, tells the wives that they have won an all expenses paid vacation and they come to the resort and are surprised to reconnect with their presumed to be dead husbands.

This book was FABULOUS! I loved it from the first page to the last page.

There was just enough character development that you weren't bored reading about it, but you knew exactly who everyone was and could tell them apart. The pacing was great - never bored, never a paragraph skipped. The story moved - and it moved realistically. And this especially spoke to mid-life women (like me) I think - not that I'm going to hire a hit man, lol. But there were so many identifiable things and you went along because it was SO PLAUSIBLE in an absurd, fiction way. After so many years of marriage there are so many things you make assumptions about and make judgements about - it all made so much sense.

I loved that there was no confusion - no "they don't know that we know that we know" - I loved Hector's morality, ha ha. This book was like the best kind of misunderstanding, one step behind comedy ever.

And of course, having Elmer in the story so much was great!
Can't wait to see what else this author comes out with.

Entertaining and delightfully ridiculous. This book kind of reminds me of one of those 80s rom-coms where everyone is running around misinterpreting things and getting involved in ridiculous shenanigans instead of just sitting down and having a simple conversation. I mean, the events of this novel could have been almost entirely avoided if the couples would have simply communicated with each other. But I guess I'm kind of glad they didn't because this story wouldn't have been nearly as fun if everyone had behaved like responsible adults, so …

But, yeah. This was a delightful read. What should you do when your husband loses your entire retirement savings and then kind of starts getting on your nerves? And what if your best friends are in the same exact situation? Well, you get together and hatch a plan to murder your (not so) significant others for the life insurance payouts … obviously. But what if your husbands have a secret retirement plan of their own? And what happens if you all happen to know the same very sketchy barber with a slightly-less-than-legal (and apparently booming) side business?

This novel switches points of view frequently. And while I enjoyed the antics of the husbands and wives tremendously, I think my favorite chapters were probably from the perspective of Padma, the frazzled casino boss (of two of the husbands) with a very overbearing mother. Hector the shady barber is also a delightful character to follow through the story – perhaps there's a lot more depth to his personality than it initially seems?

It's almost impossible properly discuss The Retirement Plan without spoilers, but expect lots of humor and twists and turns and all kinds of underhandedness. None of these couples have healthy relationships and they all suck a whole, whole lot at communication, but their antics are certainly amusing and make for a delightful read.

My overall rating: 4.25 stars, rounded down.

Many thanks to NetGalley and William Morrow for providing me with an advance copy of this book to review. Its expected publication date is May 6, 2025.

I really enjoyed this story. It was funny and full of twists and turns. The characters are interesting. It’s crazy what a little miscommunication can start. Thank you NetGalley for the read.

@WmMorrowBooks

@williammorrowbooks

This was a light and humorous read. The characters were well developed, and the story line moved well. I will say is was rather predictable, in this case, that didn’t distract to much from the story being enjoyable. As I was reading it, I was picturing this book as a mini series, I think it would be fantastic!

Thanks to NetGalley and the Publisher for this eARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

This is a humorous and satisfying caper. There were elements of predictability in the story (and, I am not one to generally see things coming. . .) but, that didn’t detract from the fun

It was an enjoyable light read, but one that might make an even better mini-series or movie. The characters were fun…broadly drawn, but full of life. This would be a great vacation read.

Three wives wanting a new life, three husbands in their way…

After thirty years of friendship, Pam dreams of her perfect retirement with Nancy, Shalisa, Marlene, and their husbands—until their husbands pool their funds for an investment that goes terribly wrong, and their dreams of beachfront condos and a sunny, carefree retirement vanish. The golden years are looking as dreary as their marriages.

But when one husband dies in a freak accident, the other three women are shocked to see his widow rebound with a huge life insurance payout and a new life in Florida. In the aftermath, the women discover that their husbands have identical, seven-figure life insurance policies. A new dream forms, and this time, it involves a hitman.

Meanwhile, their husbands have a secret retirement plan of their own. So, when things begin to go awry, they fear their own scheme may have backfired…with deadly consequences. The husbands scramble to stay alive, but they may not be fast enough to outmaneuver their wives.

What follows is a high-stakes tale of cat and mouse, both laugh-out-loud funny and unbearably tense, while ultimately a bighearted look at marriage, friendship, and middle-age.

Loved it. I loved the friendship between the ladies. Loved the humor and snark. Will recommend to others.

Thank you NetGalley for this early copy of The Retirement Plan.
This was a very fun book to read. Lots of misunderstanding is what fuels the plot but with enough intrigue that you do not know how it will all resolve itself.
I enjoyed the characters and loved that the main ones were in their 60s. I especially enjoyed the relationship of the barber and his wife. Dialogues for the most part rang true, not falling into the trap of stereotypes. Much has to don with the author herself being of the same age.
Fun that this was her first book. I look forward to what she writes next!

It took a little bit to get into and I really didn't care for most of the characters at first. But as the book went on and they started to learn some things, I wound up really enjoying it. Highly recommend, especially for those of us who aren't getting younger and get irritated with our spouses ;)

Thank you to NetGalley and Sphere for this ARC.

I thought this book was a fun read. Reminded me a bit of Ocean's 11, but a little messier. It makes for a nice, quick weekend read. While I did enjoy it, I didn't feel super connected to the story line. I think many will really enjoy this book, but I didn't feel strongly enough to love it or dislike it.

What a FUN read! "The Retirement Plan" is a crazy story - three mid-life women try to have their spouses bumped off for the insurance money, and meanwhile, the husbands.... Lots of snark in this one, but also a good commentary of life, marriage & friendships. My thanks to Net Galley & the publisher for my advance readers copy - enjoyed the ride!

I could not get into this - only made it about 20%. I was not invested in the characters and just found it boring.