My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars
Mystery meets chick lit?
Summary via Goodreads:
Clearfield, Virginia, is a sleepy, idyllic hamlet where residents welcome its comfortable, familiar routines. But when a newcomer arrives in town, long-buried secrets threaten to surface and destroy their haven . . .
Answering a call that summons her to a stranger’s deathbed, a reluctant Sophie Shepard is too late to hear what he was so anxious to tell her. What was so important that a dying man would think of her in his final moments? With the help of Dr. Drew McCarren, Sophie begins to dig into her past, setting off a chain of events that chills the quiet town of Clearfield, Virginia, to its roots.
With part of her wanting nothing more than to put Clearfield behind her and run back home, Sophie knows she won’t rest until she discovers the truth. But growing closer to the residents also means uncovering their dark secrets–secrets about the woman who gave Sophie up for adoption, the mysterious part these strangers played, and the life she never knew she nearly had.
There’s something odd about this book, that gets a little odder the more I think about it. It’s a mismatch between the tone and the events in the book.
The thing is, I like sweet, good-natured women’s fiction. I mentioned this in my recent review of Robyn Carr’s The Wanderer. This book out-nices Carr in many ways, particularly the sweet Kindergarten teacher of a main character. She’s never been curious about her birth parents, because she loves her adoptive parents so much. And now she’s in a small town where everyone knows one another, and she’s making friends fast.
Then there’s the mystery, which starts out much like a cozy mystery– the bad stuff, including a murder, happens off-screen, with vague threats impinging on our heroine’s activities. I like cozy mysteries, so this is good as well. The book is a little more about the character and less about the who-dunnit, and Sophie isn’t all that involved in trying to find the bad guy or guys.
But then the last section of the book happens, and it gets grittier, with more details on much more unpleasant occurrences (yes, even more unpleasant than murder). And that’s fine with me as well, but it seems out of place compared to the rest of the book.
Overall, I liked the characters, even if they all seemed a little cartoonish. I thought the plot was well constructed. The romance was cute, even if I didn’t really see the steam. Overall, I enjoyed reading Something About Sophie.
I read this book as part of a TLC Book Tour. Thank you to TLC for providing me with a copy of this book for review. If you’d like other opinions on Something About Sophie, check out the other tour stops:
- Tuesday, March 26th: Kritters Ramblings
- Wednesday, March 27th: Book of Secrets
- Thursday, March 28th: Under My Apple Tree
- Monday, April 1st: Mom in Love With Fiction
- Tuesday, April 2nd: 5 Minutes for Books
- Wednesday, April 3rd: A Book Geek
- Thursday, April 4th: she treads softly
- Monday, April 8th: Raging Bibliomania
- Tuesday, April 9th: Tiffany’s Bookshelf
- Wednesday, April 10th: Speaking of Books
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