Tilda had done the original article in part because she was a big fan of the show about a blended family of cousins, having identified with the character of Mercy, played by Mercy Ashford. Unfortunately, Mercy was the one actor Tilda had been unable to locate. The other actors on the show were easy to locate and two had died, one of a drug overdose and one in a hit and run accident. As a result of the deaths, Tilda's editor entitled the article “The Curse of the Kissing Cousins.” Thus creating the curse, which was quickly embraced by the internet and Vincent, the show's number one obsessive fan. The curse seems to be confirmed when Vincent calls Tilda with news that the actress who played Sherri has been brutally murdered. Death sells, so Tilda has an all expenses paid trip to the actress's funeral to do a follow-up piece. At the funeral she catches up with the surviving actors from the show, including the twins who were brought in during the last season of the show and who are generally seen by the fans of the show as the “Cousin Olivers” of Kissing Cousins. The twins are so eager to recapture what little fame they had that they greet Tilda like a long lost friend and invite her to sit with them during the funeral service. The other actors are also generally eager to talk to her, since all publicity is good publicity. Tilda also meets Lawrence White, a fellow entertainment reporter at the funeral, and being a good reporter, lets him think that she knows more than she actually does.

After the funeral, Tilda returns to Boston and joins her friend Vincent for a virtual memorial service in the chatroom of the website Vincent hosts. One of the anonymous posters to the chat insists that Mercy was not the good person people thought she was and implies that she might be behind the deaths. Tilda does not believe that Mercy is the killer, but she starts to wonder if maybe someone is killing off the cast of the show. The actress who played Sherri was clearly murdered, having been stabbed multiple times, and the hit and run accident that killed one of the other cast members could have been deliberate. Tilda's growing suspicion that someone is killing off the cast of the show is bolstered by the fact that someone broke into her apartment and tried to access her computer files.

But is it the killer trying to track down Mercy Ashford through Tilda, or is Mercy the killer and is she trying to cover her tracks? After all, Tilda's been looking for her for quite a while now and she seems to have vanished from the face of the earth. Why would she do that if she did not have something to hide? As Tilda continues to search for Mercy and the killer, Kelner gives us interesting glimpses of behind the scenes life in the entertainment industry when Tilda starts interviewing people on the production side of Kissing Cousins and the ill-fated movie Mercy was working on after the TV show ended. There are also some amusing set pieces, such as when Tilda writes an article and then proceeds to edit it about six different ways in order to sell essentially the same piece to multiple markets. The story is also enhanced by the little quotes at the start of each chapter which are meant to come from the book's version of magazines such as People and Tiger Beat. Along the way Tilda works her sources and acquires a boyfriend in the form of the son of the owner of the private security firm that guarded Mercy during her appearance at a Thanksgiving Day parade when Kissing Cousins was at the height of its popularity. Having a security expert boyfriend comes in handy when you're stalking a killer.

Ultimately Tilda and her new boyfriend uncover the killer in a suitably dramatic climax and then all is explained in an equally satisfying denouement. This is a light frothy contemporary mystery with an engaging protagonist and it will be interesting to see where Kelner takes Tilda and the series in future books.