Rating: ⭐⭐⭐✨⬜
Title: Any Other Family
Author: Eleanor Brown
Genre: Fiction
Setting: Colorado
Month Read: August 2022
Book Type: E-Arc
Publication: 2022
Publisher: G.P Putnam's Sons
Pages: 368
*Thank you to Netgalley for providing me the E-Arc of this book. They have in no way altered or influenced my review of this book.
*Books and Brews August Book Club Pick
TRIGGER WARNING-
Language / Postpartum Depression / Grief / Infertility Struggles / Miscarriage (not during the book but mentioned significantly) / Adoption / Abandonment
"It is yet another thing she didn't know about parenting, how much she would have to think not about what her child does but about what she does herself, and all the ways we pass on and inherit the things we never mean to."
No Spoiler Summary:
The New York Times bestselling author of The Weird Sisters returns with a striking and intimate new novel about three very different women facing an impossible question: What makes a family?
They look just like any other family. But they aren't a family like any other – not quite. Instead, they are three sets of parents who adopted four biological siblings, committing to keeping the children connected after the death of their grandmother.
Tabitha, who adopted the twins, is the planner of the group, responsible for coordinating playdates and birthdays and Sunday night dinners, insistent that everything happens just so. Quiet and steady Ginger, single mother to the eldest daughter, resists the forced togetherness, her own unsettled childhood leaving her wary of trusting too much. And Elizabeth is still reeling from going directly from failed fertility treatments into adopting a newborn, terrified that her unhappiness means she was not meant to be a mother at all.
But when the three women receive a surprising call from their children’s birth mother, announcing she is pregnant again and wants them to help her find an adoptive family for this child too, the delicate bonds they are still struggling to form threaten to collapse. As tensions rise, the women reckon with their own feelings about what it means to be a mother and what they owe each other as a family.
Set across the span of a family vacation, one full of boisterous laughter and emotional upheaval, Any Other Family is a thought-provoking and poignant look at how families shift and evolve and a striking portrait of motherhood in all its forms.
Review:
I'm really glad we picked this book for book club because I think there is so much to discuss from this book, and I think you really get a feel for the characters which is sometimes lost in such a large cast of characters. Eleanor Brown does a great job giving each Mother, couple, and child their own wants, personalities, dynamics, and more. The Mothers are the main focus, and seeing such different women thrust together in such a weird circumstance was really moving.
One of my favorite parts of the novel were the little vignettes of the prospective adoptive families. At first I didn't really know what they were, but when you realize it really adds a lot to the novel, and I'm really disappointed we don't know who gets chosen in the end. I would have rated this book higher had I had any idea. (I didn't miss something, right?) I also loved that some of the prospective families were LGBTQ, and that no one really cared or disparaged their chances because of their sexual identity.
Some parts of this book, as a newer mom of a Toddler, and pregnant with another child really hit home, and I definitely cried a little a few times. There was a lot of honesty about parenting in this book, and it really didn't gloss over hard parts, and I really appreciated this about the novel. If you are a parent, are looking to become one, are thinking about adoption- I'd defintiely recommend this book for you. It's great.
Recommendation:
Marrying the Ketchups by Jennifer Close
Pachinko by Min-jin Lee
The People We Keep by Allison Larkin
We Are The Brennans by Tracey Lange
Last Summer at the Golden Hotel by Elyssa Friedland
The Gunclye by Steven Rowley
"When they did the ultrasound, the tech asked if we were hoping for a boy or a girl, and we said 'Oh, we just want a healthy baby!' but I was trying hard to pretend that I was not actually hoping for a healthy boy. But when she said 'It's a girl!' it was really hard not to be disappointed. That's horrible, I know. But it is probably one of those things a lot of us think and no one has the courage to say out loud because it is horrible, but it's also true."
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