A review by heynonnynonnie
The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan

challenging dark emotional sad slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

This is such a heartbreaking book. I like sad books and man, this was sometimes hard to keep reading. But there's so many beautiful sentences and hidden nuance here that I couldn't leave the book alone for long. I kept switching between audiobook, hardcover, and ebook, and I kept leaving notes and thoughts all over the three formats because I kept finding things that hit so strongly. 

This book really took the concept of unsympathetic and white dystopians and fkn smashed it into the ground. It doesn't feel like there's distance when reading. It doesn't really feel like an abstraction or like everything is cloaked in layers of metaphor and symbolism. Felt like I was being crushed the whole time. Did I cry? Yup. Did I spend a lot of time thinking about how angry I got when people tried to question the non-white parts of my upbringing? Oh absolutely. 

I love this book as a metaphor for the harm that model minority mentality creates for the individual who follows it and the people it ostracizes. At first, I wasn't a big fan of the ending, but I found there was a lot of depth and satisfaction in it when I explored the model minority metaphor more fully. 
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