It's a Summer of Love & Murder! The Thorntons expect it to be a summer of change and change it does! Joshua's eldest son, Joshua Thornton Jr. (J.J.) has graduated at the top of his class from law school and returns home to spend the summer studying for the bar exam. However, to Joshua's and Cameron's shock and dismay, J.J. moves into the main house at Russell Ridge Farm and Orchards, the largest dairy farm in the Ohio Valley, to rekindle a romance with Suellen Russell, the one-time leader of a rock who is twice his age. Quickly, they learn that she has a deep dark secret. The move brings long buried tensions between the father and son to the surface-not the least of which being J.J.'s inexplicable dislike for his stepmother Cameron. But when a brutal killer strikes, the Lovers in Crime must set all differences with Joshua's son aside to solve the crime before J.J. ends up in the cross-hairs of a murderer.