Kendall Shores has happy memories of growing up in Winter Park.

But they didn’t stop her from skewering the city’s well-heeled residents by putting murder in their midst in “Happy Wife,” the bestseller she co-wrote with Meredith Lavender.

Not that she put real people on the pages — at least not by name.

“A friend said a lot of questions were going around: ‘Do you think we’re in it?’” Shores said with a laugh.

Only a little factual name-dropping occurs: A home of former Enron executive Kenneth Lay is mentioned, and a nod is given to the years when Paul McCartney’s stepson attended Rollins College.

Plenty more real places, however, appear.

Genius Drive, Lake Maitland, Lake Osceola, Trismen Park, Winter Park Golf Course. In one passage, a character’s “aimless walk” takes her from Winter Park Library to Hannibal Square to Kraft Azalea Garden.

“There are little ‘Easter Eggs’ in there for places I miss, places I love,” said Shores, who will get a chance to revisit old haunts when she and Lavender make two local public appearances Sept. 8.

“Happy Wife” acknowledges the Morse Museum and the kayak tours through the Chain of Lakes from Dinky Dock. Park Avenue, of course, features heavily — though many a frustrated local might question the ease with which Nora finds a parking spot there in Chapter 27.

Nora is at the center of “Happy Wife.” She’s the second — and significantly younger — wife of wealthy Will. His social circle looks at her like a gold digger. And then he disappears, launching a murder investigation.

Such is the focus on place that the critic for Kirkus Reviews called the book “a story rooted more deeply in setting than in suspense.”

“The focus on the wealthy community of Winter Park necessarily limits the possible suspects, so there isn’t much suspense baked in,” the critic wrote. “The fascination lies in the way Lavender and Shores pull back the curtain on this enclave of affluence, and how Nora is both repelled and seduced by this world.”

‘Greedy, entitled bubble’

Perhaps not surprisingly, locals have their own perspective on the fictitious inhabitants of “Happy Wife.”

“It was fun to have Winter Park used as a setting, although it purported to show a side of life here that I don’t recognize,” said longtime resident and Florida native Lisa Everett. “Maybe I just make better choices than the protagonist,” she joked in a social-media conversation about the book.

Park Avenue, pictured in November 2024, features in “Happy Wife,” a Winter Park-set mystery by Meredith Lavender and Kendall Shores. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel)

On the other hand, Bonnie Osgood said she recognized the insular wealthy characters all too well.

“There’s a greedy, entitled bubble of people jockeying for social position,” said Osgood, who lived in Winter Park for 55 years until moving to Ormond Beach in May. “I thought they did a really good job of portraying that.”

Over the years, Osgood observed the not-always smooth assimilation of wealthy newcomers into the high society inhabited by those whose families had been in Winter Park for generations.

“It’s interesting how they meld,” she said with a laugh. “At certain clubs, they meld easier than at others.”

And Osgood thinks Shores and Lavender captured the attitude of city residents.

“Everyone in Winter Park believes Winter Park is the center of the universe. I think I even had that mindset for a while, and I’m not sure why that happened to me,” she said. “They nailed that.”

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Osgood said times were simpler in her early years as a Winter Park resident: “It was more of a sweet, small town then, that was more focused on art than wealth.”

Gossip from grandma

Shores remembers that small-town feel.

As a child, she would learn the local scuttlebutt from her grandmother, a one-time secretary to President Harry Truman turned Winter Park realtor.

“She would hear the gossip that would drift through her houses,” Shores recalled — and then pass it along.

“There was something in me at a really young age that felt a love for the stories she would tell me, and I hoped to tell them myself one day,” she said.

Born at Winter Park Hospital, Shores’ Central Florida pedigree runs deep: Her grandfather helped build the Disney theme parks, her father and aunt attended Trinity Preparatory School in Winter Park, and her parents met as students at Rollins College. She herself attended Park Maitland School and Winter Park High, where she was on the crew team.

A crew scholarship took her to Barry University before a transfer to Elon University, where she graduated with a degree in professional writing and rhetoric.

“It was about how language builds worlds,” is how Shores describes her academic work, and she’ll get to hear how Central Floridians feel about the world built for “Happy Wife” at next week’s events. She’s looking forward to seeing familiar faces.

“Everyone should write a book about their hometown,” Shores said. “One of the best parts is reconnecting with people. It’s been really special.”

Critical response

Reaction from critics has been mixed.

Oline Cogdill, a longtime book reviewer based in South Florida, found “Happy Wife” to be “a seamless story” and “highly entertaining.”

“Happy Wife” by Meredith Lavender and Kendall Shores; Bantam; 320 pages; $30. (Courtesy Bantam)

“’Happy Wife’ moves at a brisk pace, enhanced by the self-indulgent, gossipy characters — ‘status-obsessed social snipers,’” she wrote. “While the supporting characters are a shallow bunch, they also are unfailingly realistic.”

Publishers Weekly agreed on the pace but dissented on the secondary characters.

“Lavender and Shores keep the pacing brisk and the prose clean, but their characters are frustratingly two-dimensional, and the workmanlike plot fails to make much of an impression,” wrote its reviewer, describing the plot as “a lukewarm Cinderella story turned murder mystery.”

Both Ogdill and Kirkus Reviews agreed, though, that Nora makes an appealing hero — “a standout,” Ogdill wrote.

“Happy Wife” was chosen by Jenna Bush Hager, a host of TV’s “Today,” for her “Read With Jenna” book club as a “delicious” summer thriller, and was featured on air. Readers have responded: The book, available in hardcover and large print as well as digitally, is on its third printing, Shores said.

“I’ve been trying to picture what 30,000 books would look like,” Shores said. “It’s a gift, it’s all a gift.”

Fish out of water

A sequel is on the way, featuring some of the same characters. And, of course, Winter Park.

“We want to continue telling stories about Winter Park — archetypes of people who live in small towns,” Shores said. She has a fondness for her protagonist.

“Nora is somebody I identify with,” said Shores. “In any fish-out-of-water situation, there’s more to the story than the fish can see.”

And Winter Park is a place that can make newcomers feel like that proverbial fish.

“We’re looking at an outsider’s perspective on Winter Park and how that can change when you move into the center of it,” she said. “You get this fairy tale and realize the ‘happy ever after’ is much more complicated than it looks.”

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That idea plays into Americans’ ongoing fascination with what goes on behind opulent doors.

In her review, Cogdill compares the novel with TV shows such as “Beyond the Gates,” “The Gilded Age” and “The Real Housewives” franchise because it’s satisfying to know that money and status don’t guarantee class, taste or good behavior — sometimes just the opposite.”

Shores, who now lives in Atlanta with her husband and daughter, was intrigued by marrying that idea with “the way a community responds over a criminal investigation. … The way that could overlay onto Winter Park was fascinating to me.”

There was only one problem: Busy with a career in corporate communications, Shores never seemed to complete the books she began.

“I was really good at those first hundred pages and then I’d say ‘I don’t know what to do with this,’” she said.

Kendall Shores is a communications consultant, and Meredith Lavender is a screenwriter and showrunner for “The Flight Attendant.” (Courtesy Grace Dinwiddie/Gracie Blue Photography)

Turning 40, Shores was determined to finish this one. To make sure the manuscript didn’t languish in a drawer somewhere, she enlisted the help of Lavender, a TV writer who was idled by the 2023 Writers Guild of America strike.

“This was a big leap for me,” Shores said. “I’d never shared my writing with anyone.”

Lavender jumped on board, a first draft was finished in three months, an agent was procured, and the book sold at auction to Bantam, an imprint of Penguin Random House.

“We were off to the races,” she said.

The book has been both personally and professionally fulfilling.

“There was certainly nostalgia for me in writing it,” said Shores, who still recalls being told as a child in Winter Park not to play with certain kids because their mother was thought to have broken up a dentist’s marriage.

She’s teaching her own young daughter different messages, bringing her along to watch the authors’ TV appearance on “Today” to celebrate the selection of “Happy Wife” as a “Read With Jenna” pick.

“I’m showing my daughter now that girls can do anything,” Shores said. “That has been the most emotional part of this for me.”

Follow me at facebook.com/matthew.j.palm or email me at mpalm@orlandosentinel.com. Find more entertainment news and reviews at orlandosentinel.com/entertainment or sign up to receive our weekly emailed Entertainment newsletter.

‘Happy Wife’

What: Meet co-authors Kendall Shores and Meredith Lavender in two Winter Park events next week.
Afternoon: 1 p.m. Sept. 8 at the Edyth Bush Theater in Winter Park Library, 1052 W. Morse Blvd. Free, but registration is required at winterparklibrary.org/event/happy-wife-author-talk
Evening: 6 p.m. Sept. 8 at the Azaela Lodge at Mead Botanical Garden, 1300 S. Denning Drive in Winter Park. The two-hour event, presented by The Writer’s Block Bookshop in partnership with the Winter Park City of Commerce and the Park Ave. District, includes a glass of wine. Tickets are $17.85; for more information, go to writersblockbookstore.com/upcoming-events

https://www.orlandosentinel.com/2025/09/02/happy-wife-novel-winter-park-murder/