Reviews

The Risk of Us by Rachel Howard

bract4813mypacksnet's review

5.0

This is the story of a couple’s struggle to adopt a foster child. It comes as no surprise that the child the narrator and her husband Sebastian choose to foster is a troubled child, Marisa. Having worked with such damaged children I fully understand the difficulties in handling such a child. There is no sentimentality here, just hard truths. The couple falls in love with the Maresa because she has a huge voice (her “opera voice”) and is an excellent artist, giving them—and her—some commonalities. She is also physically active and boisterous. Parenting is hard enough, but raising a troubled child is even harder, and Howard writes unflinchingly of these challenges. Sebastian and his wife are artists, and becoming parents affords them little time to be creative. Not only do adoptive parents have to care for the child, they must learn to navigate the arcane workings of the foster care system, find an appropriate therapist, and negotiate with clueless caseworkers who are promoting a book written by a man who has been shown to be unqualified. This book isn’t simply about adoption, it also looks at parenting itself and how a child can warp the structure of the most stable marriage. An excellent read.

dilema's review

4.0

Oh man, this was very well done. Very short, but to the point, and I loved loved loved the "you" voice (

though the piece at the end kind of was a slap over the head in case we'd missed it

.)

Really takes a hard look at how much we can teach kids, and what they really understand, and how they can communicate through trauma. And the love that's shown and how everything is to an extent both conditional and unconditional was touching.