Customer Reviews

Chasing Sophea: A Novel

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Are you ready for a hypnotic read?

Some things are better left unsaid...it's a recurring theme throughout Pina's latest release, Chasing Sophea, but quite the opposite, this gifted author says it all and much more! I loved Pina's first novel, Bliss, and couldn't' wait for Chasing Sophea. As expected, she didn't disappoint her fans, as Chasing Sophea is quite the gripping page-turner, which will leave you addicted to its pages!

In Chasing Sophea, Pina pulls the reader into a fascinating world of a prominent, southern, funeral parlor owning family that is forced to confront a series of deep, hidden secrets involving severe mental illness, love, betrayal, and suspense. A young writer, with a hearty old soul, Pina's depiction of southern folklore is well captured and expressed vividly through her characters, which immediately emotionally connect her readers, as each is that familiar family member.

In Chasing Sophea you'll meet Aunt Baby, the obvious rock of the Culpepper family, blessed with the "gift of healing." It's up to her to save one of her very own from self destructing, while also preserving the Culpepper name.

There's also Percival Tweed, the mysterious, suspicious, but also rather comforting, wise albino who knows all ands sees all, and lives on the Culpepper property.

Others are:
Dahlia, a successful businesswoman, with a dream husband and daughter, but who routinely encounters spells leaving her lost and confused about her present and past.

Lucious Culpepper -Dahlia's proud, handsome, emotionally subdued father who has long buried the seeds of the past, but is suddenly forced to face it at full speed and deal with self-feeding demons of his own.

Phoebe - a longtime friend and foe of Dahlia, who frequently weaves her way in and out of her life for self-fulfilling purposes.

I didn't want to put Chasing Sophea down, and found myself missing and constantly thinking about the characters whenever I did. Pina is a masterful storyteller, who also cleverly intersperses inspirational lessons in her novels for her readers. If you're a keen reader like me, you'll definitely see them and get it! Her writing style reminds me so much of my favorites, J. California Cooper and Octavia Butler. Chasing Sophea is a literary mind twister at best! I'm already looking forward to Pina's next book!

Twenty-five years ago, a mentally ill Reva Culpepper took her three children for an afternoon drive on the cusp of a deadly tornado aptly named Sophea. Eleven-year old, Dahlia, the oldest daughter, would awaken from a coma three weeks later with a self-induced coping mechanism that will wreck havoc in her adult life.

The Culpepper dynasty is forever changed after that fateful event. Luscious Culpepper, a good-looking Creole and successful mortician, forbids mention of his wife, Reva, and the accident. He covers his pain by entering a loveless marriage to a smitten teenager half his age (and seven years older than Dahlia) and throws himself into his work. For years, Dahlia suffers in silence, moves from Dallas to Pasadena immediately after college, marries, and rarely mentions her family again. Seven years into her marriage with Michael, Dahlia's world begins to shatter. She experiences memory and time loss, migraines, and frightening nightmares which eventually lead her to therapy at her husband's insistence. It is here where the past and present collide and the novel gains momentum.

Pina pens a very suspenseful novel that keeps reader turning pages to see how things will play out. Although it appears as if Dahlia and Phoebe's relationship is the center of the story, I found myself more mesmerized with the other eccentric family members. The roots and childhood antics of the supporting characters proved to be born in mystery and a bit of supernatural lore: Aunt Baby Doll's adopted son Dante (who was left as a charred infant on the Culpepper doorstep), the albino Percival Tweed, the grounds caretaker, who instinctually knows how many graves to dig on any given day before the bodies arrive, and even Aunt Baby Doll herself, a half Choctaw Indian beauty who can heal anyone except her great-niece, Dahlia. The author does a wonderful job of tying all the loose ends together and describing how each character played a significant role on that fateful day when Reva ventured into the storm with her children. This is a great sophomoric effort - a wonderful, albeit sometimes sad melodrama filled with haunting symbolism, familial dysfunction, suppressed secrets, and emotional baggage. Fans of her debut, Bliss, will not be disappointed.

Reviewed by Phyllis
APOOO BookClub
Nubian Circle Book Club

In this suspenseful story, Sophea is not your typical character - 'dressed to the nines' with a promising career and family. However, she is an essential character in the story. Sophea is the twister that comes to Dallas County and turns the Culpepper family upside down, inside out.

Sci-fi dramas and TV often tell the stories of storm chasers - scientiests who follow a storm's path, but they never get into the eye of the storm. Chasing Sophea is a novel that goes into the eye of the storm and unveils the remarkable devastation. The story begins decades into the storm's aftermath when life seems relatively normal. Dahlia is married to Michael "Milky" Chang who loves and adores her and their 6-year old daughter, Isabel. The family is admired for their success and prominence in the community.

The Chang family is unaware of the storm brewing in their home in Pasadena, California. There are no weather reports of the storm, but the signs are etched throughout this pageturner... from 'the warm fluid swirling around her leg, quickly fanning into a bright yellow puddle on the floor (p. 18) to the 'water collected around her ankles and slowly inched its way toward her knees' (p. 223). Chasing Sophea is filled with exotic meals and erotic nights in sunny California and stormy twists and moody blues from a basement funeral parlor in Dallas, TX. As the story spills out onto the pages, it fills you with the wonder of a scientist following the mysterious path of Chasing Sophea.

Chasing Sophea is an adventurous read and a wild ride into the stormy life of Dahlia Culpepper Chang. I highly recommend this well-written suspenseful pageturner and other works by Gabrielle Pina!

The basis of this story is written well in other reviews so I will not be redundant. Let me approach this from another avenue..I am a therapist first and formeost because I find people fascinating, and this book was wonderfully full of fascinating people. I enjoyed the colour, the tastes and the music of this book. I have not read her other book, but I certainly plan to. Being a therapist I tend to read between the lines at times, and this lyrical story did not diappoint me. I am not black, and I am not originally American, so as I often peek into other cultures, I was drawn to this book-I was not disappointed. I loved this book and plan to refer it to others. Thank you Gabrielle Pina.

More often than not, a person will find a way to block out painful memories of their past, and avoid the people who are attached to that pain. For Dahlia Chang, the main character in CHASING SOPHEO by Gabrielle Pina, this is the case. She has shut out her past and will not visit her family, nor share what happened with her husband. He knows she's a bit different, has her issues, and mood swings, but when those forces of her past threaten to consume her, he seeks out her family for answers. What he finds out will not only shock him, but it may possibly put his wife in a place emotionally that will shatter her and their marriage.

Pina has crafted a poignant and heart-warming story centered on family and the secrets they try to hide from themselves and others. She clearly brings to light the power of love and understanding, and how necessary it is to truly work through problems, with or without the aid of a professional. In a time when illnesses are rampant in our community, Pina brings forth the dialogue necessary for change. CHASING SOPHEA is a well-written novel which has a message needed for the masses, regardless of ethnic or social backgrounds.

Reviewed by Tee C. Royal
of The RAWSISTAZ Reviewers

Chasing Sophea tells the story of a wealthy southern African American family that made its money through five generations of operating funeral homes. Dahlia, the main character, is married to a wonderful man, has a daughter and a great career. However, her life begins to unravel as she starts having nightmares, the details of which she can never remember after she wakes up. Her nightmares and her unpredictable behavior prompt her husband to insist that she see a psychologist. Reluctantly she agrees to do so.

As the story unfolds we learn that the Culpepper family has had a long history of dysfunction. Hansome Lucius, Dahlia's father, was raised by his grandparents as if he was their son after his own parents went away to Paris, France, and never returned. Although his young wife is beautiful, Lucius acts as if she does not exist and imerses himself into the funeral home business as if his life depended on it. Aunt "Baby" Lucius's Aunt is a healer and clairvoyant who is in love with the albino, Percival, the Culpepper's gravedigger for more than thirty years. All the characters have secret demons.

Dahlia herself was involved in an extremely traumatic event at the age of 11 which has caused her to block out the past as a coping mechanism. Through the efforts of her husband and her Aunt "Baby" Dahlia is eventually forced to deal with her past.

The author frequently uses flashback techniques and switches between time, place and charcters with very little warning, which may be confusing to some readers. some of the charcters were sketchy and could have been more fully developed. Apart from that, this book was a quick and entertaining read.

I enjoyed Bliss but Chasing Sophea was even better! I really appreciate Ms. Pina's ability to connect her readers to such full and colorful characters through the use of such full and colorful language. By the time I got half way through the book, I couldn't put it down. I felt excited and anxious, sad and worried, and through all of that, I laughed...out loud....a lot. That was fun!