Reviews with content warning for Violence - Somebody's Daughter: A Memoir

- I've been following Ford's writing online for many years, so I knew this book would be good. If you need further proof, though, I listened to the entire audiobook while stuck in traffic for ten hours and was riveted the whole time.
- SOMEBODY'S DAUGHTER is an exploration of not only growing up and finding yourself, but finding your parents, too - the good and the bad parts of them. It's a book about loving difficult people, and holding conflicting parts of yourself and your loved ones at the same time.
- One thing that really stuck out to me is the way Ford illustrates how confusing childhood can be, when you're often punished for breaking rules you didn't know existed and the adults don't give any further explanation.

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emzireads's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad tense fast-paced

5.0

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ebonyrose's review against another edition

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emotional reflective tense slow-paced

This will be a tough one to review, because it just did not quite work for me, and there are a couple main reasons why.

I've admired Ashley C. Ford's writing and social media presence for a while, and I was very excited about this book. I'll start with the good: the writing here is strong, and compelling. Ashley writes unflinchingly about her experiences, and there is an emotional quality to the writing that I found brave.

In terms of what didn't work, there were two major issues for me. Firstly, I think this book is inaccurately advertised. The description/synopsis of the book leads you to believe the book is mostly about Ashley's relationship with her absent father, who is incarcerated for a crime that she doesn't learn the details of until she's a near-adult. However, the book actually *barely* skims that topic. Ashley's father, and her relationship to him, takes up maybe 15% of the book. Somebody's Daughter is actually much more about Ashley's childhood, her fraught relationship with her mother, and her experience with rape/sexual violence. All of that is fine - and interesting on its own, but the book's marketing is misleading, and that's what my issue is. If the book was more accurately described and marketed, I'm not sure I would have picked it up. As someone who grew up with a mostly absent father as well, I thought I would find some solace in this book, some understanding, some validation of what that kind of growing up is like. My father was not incarcerated like Ashley's, but I assumed this book would explore what it is like to have a complicated and absent parent who struggles with complicated and unnamed things. But, this memoir really didn't go there, despite it being the first paragraph of the description. For example, the synopsis says "Still reeling from the rape, which she keeps secret from her family, Ashley finally finds out why her father is in prison. And that's where the story really begins." But - that is actually not true at all? Her story starts long before that. And, when she finds out her father's crime, the book barely explores its implications. Barely.

Secondly, though well written, the memoir is lacking a narrative thread, something to tie the chapters and stories together. Each chapter kind of floats on its own, and very few of them work to tell a singular story, and I found the lack of cohesion to be disorienting and it worked to pull me out of the memoir, rather than drawing me in.

Overall, I would say this book is worth a read if you go into it with a clear understanding of what it's actually about. Ashley C. Ford lived a difficult life, and she explores those difficulties with tenderness and honesty, and that is always something to be commended - I just wish I knew what exactly I was in for before diving into this one.

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