Baby Queen by Ty Landers

    When choosing a book to read and review on NetGalley, I look for certain elements. Baby Queen, by Ty Landers, being published by Harper Perennial on November 17, 2026,  ticked off many boxes on my criteria for a book I would be interested in reviewing.  

    The blurb (which would be a front jacket statement in a hardbound copy) touted Baby Queen as similar to the series Ozark, or Breaking Bad. For me that was "enough said," because those are two of my most memorable and well written favorites as television  family crime dramas go.  I chose this book based on that fact alone.  Thankfully, it was a wise choice indeed.

    Baby Queen is a crime  family drama mystery, set in the Alabama countryside . Natalie LInk, raised by her grandmother, a sharp and cantankerous entrepreneurial bee keeper, is setting out to start her own company selling a honey based face mask. Little does "Nat" know that her long ago absent father will be found dead and buried, yet perfectly preserved in a large barrel of her grandmother's honey.  At the same time that her father's body  is discovered, Nat is promoting her face mask on the local morning news program. Nat inadvertently becomes big news. 

    Lana Link, Nat's grandmother is showing signs of progressive dementia.  She has secrets that Nat needs to know about the "family"  business and what exactly is being transported along with the bee hives in their company trucks.  Secret partners, secret products, secret murders...everyone is keeping secrets along with the bees.

Bob Sauk was a detective on the case of Nat's father's disappearance 20+ years prior. He lost his career when he couldn't let the investigation go. He has been continuing to investigate the disappearance as he practices his trade as a private investigator.  Is he stalking the Link family to assign blame of a long ago murder, or there to protect the baby once abandoned to her grandmother?

Plot twists and turns as treacherous as the Alabama countryside ensue until the very end of the book, creating a story that lives up to it's claims to be a compelling novel along the lines of the series "Ozark." The characters had depth and were multidimensional. Though the storyline was often dark, I did appreciate the author's ability to create believable circumstances that pulled the reader into the drama.  There was never a moment when I lost interest in the story, I wanted to keep reading to learn the resolution of the conflict. 

Overall, Lander's debut novel is an effective crime mystery that I rate with 4 stars. I highly recommend this book for crime suspense thriller enthusists. 

Thank you to NetGalley, Ty Landers and Harper Perennial and Paperbacks for this advanced reader's copy of Baby Queen in exchange for this honest review.

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