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Lifetime Movie Network’s ‘Sizzling Summer Nights’ comes to an end with a movie that should have been as fun and breezy as a summer beach read, but ends up being so convoluted you may be lost halfway through. We’ll try to break down the story as best as we can, but be warned, there will be spoilers.
Christie Leverette plays Jen, best selling author of a series of ‘beach read’ mysteries, apparently modeling her lead characters on herself and her husband Roman (Colton Tapp), something her groupies are quite aware of. But Jen is keeping a major secret from her fans — she’s in the throes of a divorce from Roman, who is now engaged to a woman named Carly (Rachel Turner). The divorce is taking a toll, causing Jen some major writers block that is preventing her from finishing the latest novel in her series. The only resolution she can come up with finds her lead character dead by the last page and she’s not happy with that. The movie humorously depicts Jen’s thought process, putting her in place of her heroine and dying in several creative ways to then address the camera that that scenario is not going to work. In fact, the movie starts out with one of these moments that is so cheesy you may be tempted to switch channels before you realize what’s going on. But Jen’s lawyer, Portia (Maya Brim), is ruthlessly trying to get the divorce settled, and her friend/publicist/real estate agent(?) Susannah (Juliette Cecile) is doing what she can to help Jen through her writers block and the sale of her and Roman’s home in Miami. She even books a reading at a local book store, hoping that meeting her fan (more like groupies) will get Jen’s thought processes flowing again. After the reading and book signing, Jen has a moment to chat with the store owner Nora (Alyssa Renee Olson) who, it turns out, had a twin sister who owned the store with her (it is called Twin Reads, after all), but she died a year earlier. The sister was also a writer but left an unfinished mystery novel behind, and Nora asked Jen if she would take a look at it. Jen was impressed and after some puppy dog eyes from Nora, agreed to spend a little time with her to help her complete the novel to honor her sister.
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Portia, though, isn’t happy that her client is about to waste time helping someone else write a book when she has her own book to finish and pressures Jen to drop her offer … which she does, texting Nora that she’s just over-extended herself and doesn’t have time to help her. What she does have time to do is go play pickleball with Susannah, and go shopping with Susannah, and have meetings with Roman and his lawyer, jogging, and get the house ready to be shown … everything but actually writing. While jogging she somehow gets an anchor rope at the marina dock wrapped around her leg — the rope came out of nowhere! (Jen actually says this) — with the heavy anchor pulling the rope tight. A good Samaritan shows up and helps get her untangled, but said good guy shows up at her house unannounced snapping pictures. Being one to shoot first and ask questions later — because it seems any scenario in her real life has been written about in her books — she bashes the guy in the head with a piece of decorative driftwood and demands he delete the photos. Turns out his name is Logan (Rob Mayes) and he is a private investigator who had been hired by Roman to spy on Jen to see if he could find her doing anything that might help his case in the divorce (mind you, he cheated on her and is engaged while still legally married to Jen). Jen notes to Logan is a terrible PI, but he still gives her his card in case she needs anything. It’s not long before she does because a mystery person seems to be stalking her, sneaking around the outside of the house, vandalizing things like the security lights, to the point that Jen doesn’t feel safe and spends the night elsewhere. Luckily Susannah’s husband Payson (Matt Fling) — apparently his last name but that’s how he also introduces himself, ‘I’m Payson’ — is a local cop but he and Jen do not have the best relationship as she took Susannah’s side at a point when the two had broken up (Jen only strains her relationship with Susannah when she reveals she saw Payson with another woman and … surprise! … she’s okay with it because they now have an open relationship (at least he does and she’s fine with that because she wants no one else but him). It becomes clear to Jen that Payson isn’t going to be much help so she starts investigating things herself, and the only person she can come up with who may be terrorizing her is … Nora, having taken offense by Jen going back on her word to help with her sister’s book. Jen gets Logan involved, but it becomes clear that Nora is up to no good when Jen and Roman are called to the real estate office to meet with a potential buyer for their home — and it’s Nora (honestly, it’s not clear if Nora really wanted to buy the house or if she was just giving Jen a bit of her own medicine but Jen is adamant that Nora will not be allowed to buy her house).
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At some point, Jen began stalking Nora and saw her get a bouquet from a local florist, so she followed her to a dock where Nora had set up a makeshift memorial for her sister. The two share some angry words and Nora tells Jen how her sister had written Jen a letter and Jen responded and it meant so much to her, but now Nora sees Jen for who she really is, someone who needs to learn a lesson that words have meaning and broken promises hurt. But after their argument, Nora turns up dead and Payson wastes no time in arresting Jen, not calling her a suspect in the murder but flat out saying she was being arrested for the murder of Nora. No innocent until proven guilty here! Portia does get Jen released, but as the mysterious figure continues to terrorize Jen, she begins to put things together — everything that’s happened, starting with a fish hook stuck into her car’s tire, is directly from her book, chapter by chapter. She doesn’t yet know that Logan also has a lead because while going through the images he snapped — that were supposed to be deleted — he saw the unknown figure clearly in the photo and knows who the culprit is. But now Roman is MIA, having a violent encounter with the culprit, leaving him bloody and unconscious in his car. Logan is also confronted and ends up unconscious himself in the sand next to the dock where the memorial is. Jen keeps thinking about that note and goes to the dock to see it for herself, walking right past Logan’s body, and discovers that the note from her is not in her handwriting. She then spots Logan and helps him up and is now pretty sure Portia is behind everything that’s happened. She even plays it out in her mind until she realizes that makes no sense. Roman shows up and tries to warn them that they are in danger, and Portia is there too (there’s a lot going on at this point, so this is the Reader’s Digest condensed version of the story). The real culprit shows up and it’s — Carly, a bit freaked out that Roman is obviously still in love with Jen, so she shoots him. She’s gotten Logan tied up on a boat, and she forces Jen and Portia onto the boat as well. While Carly is preoccupied, Jen gets Logan untied but Carly then forces him to tie up Jen and Portia. There is a confrontation and Logan gets shot and falls off the boat into the water, and apparently doesn’t resurface. Carly rages at Jen and Jen tells her she was being too predictable. Noticing the anchor rope tangled around Carly’s leg (it must have come out of nowhere and snuck up on her too) Jen kicks Carly in the stomach, causing her to fall backwards into the water and Jen tosses the anchor in as well to keep her there. The sun has set (it was the middle of the afternoon when all of this transpired) and the ambulance is just now wheeling Roman away, surprisingly not having bled out hours after being shot. Payson sort of apologizes to Jen and tells her security footage from another boat showed Carly killing Nora, so she’s in the clear. He also makes some weird analogy about sand and his relationship with Susannah. Jen goes to Logan — so he did get out of the water and is completely dry at this point (he dried but Roman didn’t bleed out?) — and he tells her about the photo. (We are left to assume Carly did not survive.) But it all works out in the end because she and Roman seem to be in a relationship, and she’s finished her book (although it appears to be more of her life story now than another novel) which is sure to be a huge bestseller. (She and Roman also go live on social media and admit they are divorcing just to clear the air.)
I’m sure I’ve left some things out of the plotline here, or have things in the wrong order because a lot of this was pretty nonsensical and felt like someone put some plot points into an AI script generator and this is what it regurgitated out. I will say that some of the thought processes of Jen’s as she was trying to come up with an ending were clever in how they were depicted, as was the climax when she thought Portia was the culprit and then Carly. Director Damián Romay certainly studied those classic Agatha Christie movies (or Columbo or any other mystery series and films) to show us how things played out with flashbacks. Well done. Unfortunately there were too many elements in the movie that didn’t work. Everything that happened to Jen could have been avoided if she had just kept to her word. She wasn’t writing anyway, and yet she had time to chat with her fans online and offer them writing suggestions. There was also a lot of blaming of people going on with no hard evidence. Jen blaming Nora, Payson blaming Jen, Jen blaming Portia. It was tiring and confusing and none of it helped the actors really get a handle on their characters.
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Leverette did what she could with Jen. We’re supposed to feel sympathetic toward her as she is the one being victimized, but she’s also written as someone who is only focused on herself so it’s hard to get in her corner. She could have actually gone to Jen and talked to her rather than just sending her a text, especially since she had time to go out and play pickleball with Susannah. Maya Brim does a good job as the ruthless Portia, to the point that we actually can believe she is behind all of Jen’s torment. Brim really makes things interesting when she’s in a scene, easily stealing focus from whoever is there with her. Alyssa Renee Olson comes off as sympathetic but then just seems completely unbalanced, refusing to see beyond her own needs, not respecting the fact that Jen has work to do (even though she isn’t doing it). At one point, I actually thought the story of the movie was that Nora was actually the supposedly dead twin, and that she killed Nora and somehow Jen was going to put the pieces together and solve a crime. But no, Nora was Nora and it was at least a bit of a surprise when she got bumped off. Juliette Cecile tries to bring a bit of off-kilter goofiness to the role of Susannah, but she just becomes weird especially when she goes off on Jen about her relationship with Payson. Rob Mayes plays Logan like he’s always up to something, so we don’t know whether to trust him or not. Is he working with whoever is terrorizing Jen, or is he just trying to make the best of his not-that=great dialog? Colton Tapp is also fine as Roman, showing some of his conflicted feelings toward Jen. Rachel Turner did a nice job at playing the sort-of ‘dumb blonde’ when Roman and Jen have to meet with the potential homebuyer, and she really shows up when it’s revealed she is behind all of Jen’s torment. Her scenes during the climax are the most fun and the shot of her going backwards over the side of the boat is (unintentionally?) hilarious.
The Beach Read Murders (for some reason retitled from the original A Beach Read Murder, which makes more sense since only one person was murdered) is really convoluted and tries your patience to the point that it really isn’t all that enjoyable despite some of the elements that do work and some performances that elevate the material. Unfortunately, LMN did not save the best for the last of its ‘Sizzling Summer Nights’ series, but we have hope that the Fall’s ‘Stranger Danger’ films will have some winners.
The Beach Read Murders has a run time of 1 hour 27 minutes, and is rated TV-14.