A Trio of Sophies
Eileen Merriman
Penguin Books
pub. 2020

30 March, 2021

Twiggy is the sporty Sophie, Mac is the smartest Sophie and Sophie A is the prettiest Sophie; the missing Sophie.

A Trio of Sophies is a novel written by Eileen Merriman about the mysterious disappearance of Sophie Abercrombie. Sophie Abercrombie, Sophie MacKenzie and Sophie Twiggs have been best friends since they were little; they practically grew up together. The tight knit trio are always seen hanging out and never leave each other’s sides until one piece of the puzzle is lost. When Sophie Abercrombie goes missing, Sophie M (aka Mac) and Sophie T (aka Twiggy) do everything in their power to find their best friend. This book is set in New Zealand and has many important themes.

The story is written from Sophie MacKenzie’s perspective and is set out a little bit differently to other books. It starts 64 days after Sophie Abercrombie goes missing and then counts down the days to 0. After reaching day 0 it then jumps back to day 64 and counts up to day 151. I think this is a very unique way of setting out the book and makes finding out what happened to Sophie that much more interesting. It is set out like this as Mac confides to her diary and has written everything down since the day Sophie went missing.

A Trio of Sophies follows Mac’s life and how she is dealing with the loss. Mac, the smartest Sophie, always does Twiggy’s work for her. Mac last saw Sophie A, the prettiest Sophie, kissing James Beacon, an English teacher, in his car. Or that is what she told the police. Right from the start we can see that Mac is hiding something. We can tell by the way she says things and the way she thinks that she is keeping the secrets all bundled up inside her. This leaves us wanting to know more and on the edge of our seats the whole way through.

One of the important themes in the book is the power of abusive relationships. All three Sophies are involved in relationships where the same person manipulates them by playing the ‘good guy’. Unfortunately this is very common in today’s society. After working up the courage to go to the police, Mac is free and her former boyfriend is locked up.

Another theme in this book is close friendships. After Sophie A goes missing, Twiggy and Mac find that they slowly start to drift apart. They used to know everything about each other and now know nothing. After both dealing with their own battles they realise that they do need each other and they start to rebuild their friendship. I think this is important because friends are great support systems and are always there for you no matter what you are going through. Friends are there to make you laugh and help you get through the tough times. I think if Twiggy and Mac had stuck together then it would have helped them deal with the thought that their best friend had gone missing.

A Trio of Sophies is an action packed, thrilling book.

It is easy to read and once I started I couldn’t put it down. The book was very intriguing and had me wondering and asking myself questions the whole way through. The plot twists and revelations left me on the edge of my seat and forever wondering what would happen next. Having it set in New Zealand, and the mention of many places I have been to made it even more interesting as I could paint a very bold picture in my head of what was going on.

One piece of feedback I have is that I wish we saw more of the three Sophies’ friendship before Sophie A went missing. We saw a bit of Twiggy and Mac’s drifting friendship but we didn’t see much of all three of them. If we saw more of the trios’ friendship then having Sophie go missing would have been more emotional. Ultimately, I enjoyed it and will definitely have to check out Eileen Merriman’s other books.

• Sarah Fenwick is a year 11 student at Napier Girl’s High School.