A Very Inconvenient Scandal
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
From No. 1 New York Times bestselling author Jacquelyn Mitchard comes a page-turning family drama that explores the emotional consequences of loyalty, deception and jealousy. Stunned by her recently widowed father’s reckless behavior, a young woman must learn to navigate a new world — where the people she should trust the most have become strangers she cannot trust at all.
Frankie Attleboro returns home to Cape Cod with thrilling news. She’s met the love of her life, they’re getting married and have a baby on the way. Her talented, charismatic father overshadows her with his own announcement: he’s also getting married. To Frankie’s best friend, Ariel, who is also pregnant, and due soon. In an instant, he upends Frankie’s life. Her father’s choices will have profound implications for her, for her family and for her unborn child.
Before Frankie and Ariel can adjust to this new reality, Ariel’s estranged mother, Carlotta, returns after a decade-long absence. Carlotta’s presence is unsettling — where has she been all these years? Why did she come back now? Ariel is welcoming but Frankie is suspicious. She digs into Carlotta’s past, where she finds multiple identities, unexplained illnesses and a mysterious case of arson that was never solved. As Carlotta’s sinister behavior intensifies, Frankie realises she must untangle the threads of Carlotta’s past to protect Ariel’s future — and her own.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Mitchard (The Good Son) offers an arresting exploration of a family's messy relationships. When 27-year-old underwater photographer Frankie Attleboro returns from an expedition in Canada to her family home on Cape Cod, she's almost five months pregnant and engaged. That news is nothing, though, compared to the surprises in store from Ariel, her best friend from childhood. Ariel has worked for Frankie's parents for years at the Saltwater Foundation, a nonprofit focused on the conservation of marine animals, but following the death of Frankie's mom, Beatrice, a year earlier, Ariel is now nine months pregnant and engaged to Frankie's charismatic but self-centered father, Mack, who styles himself after Jacques Cousteau. As Mack makes plans for the future, he infuriates Frankie and her brother by announcing that he'll be leaving to Ariel the family foundation and his estate, including a house from Beatrice's side of the family. Things get even more complicated with the arrival of Ariel's deadbeat mom and the revelation of Ariel's father's identity. The characters and relationships are all smartly drawn, and the narrative is shot through with plenty of humor and scandal. Mitchard fans will lap this up.