A Very Inconvenient Scandal: A novel

by Jacquelyn Mitchard, Caroline Hewitt (Read by)

Overview

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

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798212722094
Publisher:	Harlequin Audio
Publication date:	11/14/2023
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 7.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Jacquelyn Mitchard is the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of twelve novels for adults, seven novels for teenagers, and five children’s books. These include The Deep End of the Ocean, the inaugural selection of the Oprah Winfrey Book Club. She is also a professor of creative writing whose short stories, articles, essays and book reviews have been widely published. A native of Chicago, she now lives on Cape Cod with her family.

Caroline Hewitt loves reading and imagining. Since she couldn’t figure out a way to actually jump inside a novel, acting and adapting are the closest, and most satisfying, ways she has found to inhabit stories—like narrating audiobooks and adapting novels into plays.

Hometown:

Madison, Wisconsin

Place of Birth:

Chicago, Illinois

Education:

B.A. in English, Rockford College, 1973

Website:

http://www.jacquelynmitchard.com

Editorial Reviews

09/25/2023

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. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

To write about those oldest of subjects—families, their secrets, their betrayals—and make them not only new but revelatory, it takes an absolute master of storytelling. How lucky for all of us that we have Jacquelyn Mitchard on the job! She writes, as always, with empathy, humor, and grace. This book is a scandalous delight.”
—Rebecca Makkai, New York Times bestselling author of The Great Believers, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize

“From its astonishing opening to the marvelous, improbable vision of its final pages, A Very Inconvenient Scandal delivers one remarkable revelation after another. Readers will eagerly follow the willful and likeable Frankie as she struggles to accept the transformation of family and friends in the period after the death of her beloved mother, Beatrice. A tale of family skeletons, community secrets, and the enduring power of friendship and love, this delightful novel shows that it is possible to recover from and even triumph after loss.”
—Lan Samantha Chang, author of The Family Chao


“A Very Inconvenient Scandal is that rare mix of beautiful prose and terrifying suspense. I devoured it.”
—Robert Dugoni, New York Times bestselling author of the Terry Crosswhite series


“Only the brilliant Jacquelyn Mitchard could create a novel that’s both heartwarming and heartbreaking: the instantly iconic Attleboro family comes to life with its passions, obsessions, pitched battles, and struggles for love and acceptance. From laugh-out-loud clever to pages that you’ll read through tears, this thematically gorgeous novel will haunt you long after you close the final page. The story is irresistible—so just let the beautiful writing wash over you, heal you, and empower you. I loved it.”
—Hank Phillippi Ryan, USA Today Bestselling author of The House Guest


“The spectacular Jacquelyn Mitchard writes of the complexities of family life with wisdom and a keen eye in the riveting A Very Inconvenient Scandal. Frankie is an underwater photographer who finds the depths on dry land more challenging than those in the deep. This page turner will surprise you at every turn. The mysteries of the natural world and the human heart crescendo in the storytelling of the beloved American master.”
—Adriana Trigiani, author of The Good Left Undone


“A Very Inconvenient Scandal is an intricate story of love found in the entirely unexpected places. Jacquelyn Mitchard’s expert hand guides us through the twists and turns of a family drama that resonates with wit, warmth, and mystery. Is there a keener observer of human nature? I doubt it. Few writers can match Jacquelyn Mitchard when it comes to portraying the complicated layers of the ordinary heart. Love Among the Sea Monsters had me laughing out loud while also feeling the ache of the fragile desire to be loved.”
—Lee Martin, author of The Bright Forever, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize

"Mitchard offers an arresting exploration of a family’s messy relationships. . . . The characters and relationships are all smartly drawn, and the narrative is shot through with plenty of humor and scandal." —Publishers Weekly

“An intriguing, twisty-turny tale of family secrets . . .” —Kirkus reviews

“. . . plenty of fraught family dynamics and tension here to keep the pages turning as the story builds to a gratifying conclusion.” —Booklist

From the Publisher

A Very Inconvenient Scandal is that rare mix of beautiful prose and terrifying suspense. I devoured it.”

New York Times bestselling author of the Tracy Cro Robert Dugoni

2023-09-09
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.

Kirkus Reviews