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emilyisreading2024's review
3.0
I didn't like the main character very much, or the rambling style of the story.
emjay24's review against another edition
2.0
This is a random book that I took out from the library. At first I thought i might not like it, and was pleasantly surprised at how interested i was, but then as soon as I moved away from the first couple of chapters, it went downhill. The book is about a pediatrician who mainly works with kids from social services, something she feels strongly about because she was a foster child/adopted herself. she has a husband and two kids, but kind of ignores the husband half the time, and she blatantly dislikes her daughter, favoring her son. Her daughter knows this. Poor thing. She also looked down on her patients. The main woman was just so distasteful to me that it ruined the whole book. Stories of different families were interesting, as were the chapters narrated by the daughter.
bartendm's review
3.0
This book is not really a novel with a connected story and narrative arc so much as a collection of short stories about one particular family. It's a family I found a hard time relating to, as they were upper class professionals living in a wealthy community near Boston with two children in an expensive private school. The main character is a pediatrician who works with foster care children because she was once one herself. She brings a passion to it, but a sort of disconnected passion, as she does to her family. I had a hard time relating to her and didn't really want to be in her hectic mind for most of the story.
I like that she also dealt with the issue of an autistic child and the negative effects labeling could have and how domestic abuse and neglect can happen in both the most wealthy and the poorest, but not much of the book focused on the poor. There were two stories within the book that I thought were masterful: "Unaccompanied Minors" and "About Me." The second is from the POV of a 5th grader and I felt like the author totally captured the worries, fears, misinterpretations and mixture of immaturity and maturity seen at that age. The book is worth getting just to read those stories.
I like that she also dealt with the issue of an autistic child and the negative effects labeling could have and how domestic abuse and neglect can happen in both the most wealthy and the poorest, but not much of the book focused on the poor. There were two stories within the book that I thought were masterful: "Unaccompanied Minors" and "About Me." The second is from the POV of a 5th grader and I felt like the author totally captured the worries, fears, misinterpretations and mixture of immaturity and maturity seen at that age. The book is worth getting just to read those stories.
dreesreads's review
3.0
I wanted to give this one 3.5 stars.
Kind of slow, but excellent depictions of life as mom.
Kind of slow, but excellent depictions of life as mom.
ckporier's review against another edition
from Parenting magazine: "The story of a pediatrician-mom who looks after at-risk families is totally on the money about being a mom today (the struggles and the good stuff)."
mgeryk's review against another edition
4.0
An excellent meditation on what it is to be a parent and to be parented.
abookishaffair's review
2.0
The writing of this book was very good but the story kind of meanders a little bit too much for my taste. The story follows a woman who was adopted as young teen and has now become a pediatrician and has a family of her own. There seems to be too many unfulfilled plots in the book that really took away from the writing.
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