A Very Inconvenient Scandal

September 15, 2023
Best-selling Mitchard's (The Good Son, 2022) latest opens with Frankie Attleboro, 27, returning to her Cape Cod childhood home a year after the death of her beloved mother, Beatrice, only to make a horrifying discovery. Her best friend, Ariel, is in bed with Frankie's 60-year-old father, Mack, and pregnant with his child. Frankie, who is expecting a baby of her own with her fianc�, Gil, is furious with both Ariel, who was practically raised by Beatrice after Carlotta, her fickle mother, fled town when Ariel was a teen, and Mack, a larger-than-life naturalist, in whose footsteps Frankie followed when she pursued a career as an underwater nature photographer. Adding to the complicated family tension is the return of Carlotta, whom Frankie increasingly views with suspicion and mistrust. The tale is high on melodrama, and lovers of literary fiction might wish Mitchard had concentrated a little more on the complex relationship between Frankie and her father, but there's plenty of fraught family dynamics and tension here to keep the pages turning as the story builds to a gratifying conclusion.

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September 25, 2023
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. Agent: Jeff Kleinman, Folio Literary Management.

October 1, 2023
A Cape Cod woman's life is turned upside down by unexpected developments. A year ago, Frankie Attleboro's mother died at age 52 and the family fell apart. Frankie's father, famous scientist Mack Attleboro, who had always been a distant figure in his children's lives, was adrift. Frankie fled the Cape, throwing herself into her work as a nature photographer and leaving her brother, Penn, to hold things together. Now engaged and pregnant, she's excited to share her news when she gets a text from her father asking her to come right away. Worried, she rushes home only to discover that her father is also engaged--to her childhood best friend, Ariel. Who is also heavily pregnant. As Frankie deals with her complicated feelings and her father's complete lack of understanding of them, Ariel's mother, Carlotta, who left when the girls were teenagers, shows up unannounced and ready to ingratiate herself back into Ariel's life. Mitchard's tone walks a fine line: Is everything dramatic because there's actually a sinister edge to affairs, or is Frankie just having trouble dealing with things? Though each plot twist makes everything slightly more ludicrous in a way that would feel silly in another book, Frankie's reactions and emotions ground the story, so the book can focus not on how absolutely absurd things are but on how one person's words and actions can affect everyone around them. The novel's biggest problem is that it doesn't know if it wants to be a thriller or a family drama and never fully commits to one or the other. Mitchard is deft enough to create a rewarding read, but the book could have used a bit more mystery. An intriguing, twisty-turny tale of family secrets that comes just short of the bullseye.

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