Served Him Right

The novel opens with a prologue. A young office assistant named Jessica stays late to help her boss, Paul Hayes, with a client presentation. Paul pours her a drink; she loses consciousness and wakes hours later in her car, realizing he has drugged and sexually assaulted her. Paul waits by the exit and tells her he will not tell anyone "how you behaved tonight" (5), reframing the assault as her fault.

The story shifts to Ana, who narrates her chapters in first person and describes herself as a matryoshka doll: Someone who projects a controlled exterior to conceal her true self. She meets a stranger through a hookup app at a roadside bar, then slips out the back door rather than face him again. The approaching Wolf Moon, the first full moon of January, leaves her restless.

Ana's older sister, Vera, is disciplined, controlling, and fiercely protective. Vera is married to Brad Kline, owner of a fire-protection company, and they have two children: Coraline, a sharp-tongued high school senior, and Grant, a quiet freshman. When Ana proposes an "ex-orcism" brunch, a ritual in which friends digitally erase a woman's ex from social media, Vera agrees to host. Paul Hayes recently dumped Ana and apparently left for Aruba with a new girlfriend, Amanda Alessi. The brunch guests include Payton, a powerful attorney; Esme, CEO of a gaming company; and Iggy, Ana's best friend since college, who recently had a baby, Noah, with her husband, Brock. Vera's assistant, April Snell, manages the food preparation and serving. Ana contributes a cassoulet made from a family recipe.

Mid-toast, the doorbell rings. Detective Timothy Bandeau informs Ana that Paul has been found dead in a shallow grave at Black River Park. Paul's sister, Regina Hayes, named Ana as the likely killer. Payton steps in as Ana's attorney and ends the questioning. Iggy faints. Alone with Vera afterward, Ana insists she is innocent, but Vera doubts her.

Interspersed flashback chapters reveal the sisters' childhood. Their father, Mac, was a violent, abusive gambler. Their mother, Sadie, served him a beef Wellington laced with poisonous mushrooms; he fell into a coma and died. Sadie went to prison, and the girls moved in with their maternal aunt, Agnes, a florist who secretly maintained a walled garden of poisonous and medicinal plants. Agnes led The Cove, a self-governing collective of female herbalists and healers, and initiated Vera into The Knowledge: the study of plants and their power to heal or harm. Her guiding principle was that the difference between poison and medicine is the dose. Agnes later brought Sadie a bouquet of lethal flowers in prison, which Sadie brewed into tea to end her own life. Vera blamed Agnes for enabling the suicide; Ana blamed Sadie for abandoning them.

In the present, the investigation proceeds on multiple fronts. The medical examiner determines Paul was poisoned with hemlock and wolfsbane. A tracker finds three sets of footprints at the burial site and a menacing stick effigy bound with barbed wire. Hours after the brunch, Iggy collapses at home with severe cramps and seizures, slipping into a coma with failing organs. Her symptoms point to a different toxin: the death cap mushroom. Ana takes custody of baby Noah and secretly pockets Iggy's phone, discovering frightened texts she traces to the missing Amanda.

Ana investigates independently, finding that someone has broken into Agnes's locked library and depleted the hemlock stores. She confronts April at Make Magic, the occult bookstore where April works, and learns that Lisander, Agnes's mentee and acting head of The Cove, is monitoring the property. Separately, Vera visits Esme, who reveals that Jessie Parker, a coder in Esme's IT department, told Esme that Paul drugged and assaulted Jessie after a late work session. Vera also discovers that Iggy runs a secret apothecary workshop and online herbal remedy business from Iggy's basement.

Complicating everything is Ana's relationship with the detective. The hookup at the bar was their first meeting; neither knew the other's identity. Now Timothy investigates Ana as a murder suspect while struggling with his attraction to her. Ana feeds him leads pointing to other suspects, including texts between Paul and someone listed in his phone as "The Witch," whom Timothy identifies as Regina. Paul owed his sister $100,000. At a formal interview, Timothy presses Ana about Kevin Harding, a prior ex who claims Ana poisoned him into a coma. Victor Freeman, a criminal defense attorney brought in by Payton, shuts the interview down for lack of evidence.

Events converge on the night of the Wolf Moon. Lisander's enforcers corner Ana at Iggy's house; Ana stabs April in self-defense and flees. Vera, searching for Ana, is attacked and drugged with Deadly Trance, a powerful anesthetic, then brought to the Wolf Moon ceremony, where Lisander binds her to a chair and accuses her of murdering Mac, Agnes, and Paul. Lisander sentences Vera to "take the cure," a euphemism for execution by poisoning.

Coraline, who has been secretly studying The Knowledge with Ana for over a year, arrives with friends after tracking her mother's location. She declares the property belongs to her family and orders Lisander to stand down. Ana appears moments later with Timothy, to whom she has revealed The Cove's existence in exchange for his promise to set aside his badge.

Then Iggy emerges from the trees, having left the hospital. She confesses: "I killed Paul Hayes" (344). Jessie and Amanda step forward and echo the confession.

Iggy tells the full story. She was drugged and assaulted by Paul at an office event, a secret she kept out of financial necessity. Jessie experienced a parallel assault, drugged after staying late at the office, mirroring Jessica's violation in the prologue. When the women came forward, they received payouts in exchange for silence, but their careers suffered while Paul thrived. After Ana began dating Paul and Iggy noticed bruises on Ana's arm, Iggy decided to act. She, Jessie, and Amanda lured Paul to Amanda's home and mixed hemlock and wolfsbane into his drinks. They buried his body in the woods. Amanda entered rehab as cover; Jessie posted stock vacation photos on social media to create the illusion Paul and Amanda had left for Aruba.

Vera seizes the moment and assumes the leadership seat Agnes designated for her, naming Ana and Coraline as partners. Lisander and April are stripped of their positions: They conspired to frame Vera and accidentally poisoned Iggy when April laced Ana's cassoulet with death cap mushroom, intending to incapacitate Ana. Iggy advocates mercy, and Vera agrees, sentencing them to lifelong service.

Vera privately acknowledges the deepest family secret: She and Ana, not Sadie, killed their father by replacing the mushrooms in his beef Wellington with foraged death caps. Sadie took the blame to protect her daughters. Vera also visited Agnes the night Agnes died and confessed this truth. Agnes was alive when Vera left but was found dead the next morning.

An epilogue set at a spring equinox brunch shows the case gone cold. Iggy owns the bookstore and her online business thrives. Lisander and April tend Agnes's garden under Vera's authority. Coraline will study botany in the fall, preparing to co-lead The Cove. Ana and Timothy are together, their once-desperate encounters now grounded in what Ana finally names as love.