Just Jennifer

Something About Sophie by Mary Kay McComas (William Morrow, March 2013)

Sophie Shepard receives a letter from a stranger summoning her to his deathbed in Clearfield, Virginia, the town from which her parents adopted her many years ago.  Sophie has never been interested in finding her birth parents and is reluctant to go to Virginia; Sophie waits too long and finds Arthur Cubeck has died before she arrives.  Sophie decides to stay for Arthur’s funeral and is surprised to hear from Arthur’s attorney that she needs to be present at the reading of Arthur’s will as she is mentioned in it.  Learning that she has inherited Arthur’s family home, she is beyond surprise and wonder s if she wasn’t Arthur’s daughter.  As Sophie stays to sort out Arthur’s affairs and try to make things right for his legitimate children, as well as learn if she was indeed his daughter, she finds herself drawn to Arthur’s doctor, Drew McCarren, and seems to have set off a chain of events as people start to die around her.  Not sure where events will take her, Sophie plans on renouncing her claims on Arthur’s estate and returning to her life as a first grade teacher when one final act changes everything for everyone.

More psychological thriller than anything, the twisted plot is belied by a calm cover showing a young woman wading into water.  The longer Sophie stays in Clearfield, the more entangled she becomes in the town and its past, and the more she feels compelled to set things right and possibly find her birth parents before she returns to her home.  Readers will be caught up in the plot and Sophie’s story before they realize it, rooting for Sophie the entire way.  Several unexpected twists provide for more emotional drama, not just for Sophie, but for the new friends she has met in Clearfield.  Darker than McComas’s previous novel What Happened to Hannah, Something About Sophie delves into just how far people will go to keep their own secrets.