A Very Inconvenient Scandal
A novel
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
From #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, and they’re getting married with a baby on the way. That’s the moment her father makes his own jaw-dropping announcement: at sixty, he’s getting married as well, to Frankie’s best friend, Ariel, who is also pregnant, and due soon.
As Frankie and Ariel struggle to adjust to their new relationship, Ariel’s estranged mother, Carlotta, returns after a decade-long absence. She claims to be a changed woman—but is she really? And where has she been all these years? Frankie is suspicious, and as Carlotta’s unpredictable behavior intensifies, Frankie must untangle the threads of the past to protect Ariel’s future—and her own.
"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."—Publishers Weekly
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.
