“Regardless of how they get made, family is a force to be reckoned with.”

This is a story of adoption as a choice and not as a last resort. We learn India’s story in alternating timelines - now she is a celebrated actress, then she was a teen in love and pregnant - until the two stories meet. Throughout we see through her dealing with what love looks like and what adoption can look like when not stereotypical and traumatic.

Laurie Frankel and her husband adopted and she has insights and opinions that she shares in this fictional story centered on India, the fathers, and the children. Frankel is a good writer of diverse families and the complications that are true for every family, through adoption or not. She writes about parenting realities in a beautiful way. 

Frankel delivers on what she promises which makes this a well written novel. And her right to write an alternative view of adoption is admirable. I struggled with believing that India was altruistic and not selfish (she didn’t choose pregnancy or surrogacy). She got pregnant and made the best out of the situation. Maybe I missed Frankel’s point. Her writing about parenting rings true, often poetic as she compares parenting to an acting role. I do recommend the book AND highly recommend conversations about adoption, parenting, love, and family. 

“There was no workshopping with parenting. You said the wrong thing, and you couldn’t go back and give a different read, try it again smiling instead of glowering, gently instead of shouting, with a deep breath before delivery. You had to live with your first read, even though it was often appalling. There was no rehearsal, either. You were live onstage from the moment you got the part.”

“This is what parenting is, India. Solving impossible-to-solve problems while also experiencing deep crises of faith while also being kind of annoyed while also never getting enough rest. These problems only ever go away by changing into different equally impossible problems. This is how it always is for all parents, no matter how you came by your children.”

“Look, it’s a hard topic,” Ajax hedged—fudged, really—“which too many people know too little about. You want a real conversation about adoption? This will start it. It’s not the whole conversation, so it doesn’t need to say everything. It’s not the end of the conversation, so it doesn’t need to wrap up. It’s the start. Who better to fire the opening salvo than you?”