Careful What You Wish For: A Novel of Suspense

After a video of her organizing her sock drawer goes viral, Emily Harlow uses her moment in the spotlight to start Freeze-Frame Clutter Kickers and launch her career as a professional organizer. The catch: she’s married to a man who can’t drive past a yard sale without stopping.

Like other professionals who make a living decluttering people’s lives, Emily has devised a set of ironclad rules. When working with couples, for example, she makes it clear that each person is only allowed to declutter his or her own stuff. This stipulation has kept Emily’s own marriage together these past few years as her basement, attic, and garage have filled up with her husband’s finds. She’d love nothing more than to toss out all his crap. He says he’s a collector. Emily knows better—he’s a hoarder. And the larger his “collection” becomes, the deeper the distance grows between Emily and the man she married.

Luckily, Emily’s got two new clients to distract herself: an elderly widow whose husband left behind a storage unit that she didn’t know existed, and a young wife whose husband won’t allow her stuff into their house. But when Emily’s initial meeting with the young wife takes a detour involving too much wine and fantasies of how much more pleasant life would be without their collecting spouses, Emily finds herself in a mess that might be too big for her to clean up.