A review by mishale1
He Gets That From Me by Jacqueline Friedland

emotional fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

Definitely makes you think about what makes a family a family. We know it’s not always dna.

About ten years ago, Maggie was a young woman with a toddler at home. She wanted to get her life in order, she wanted to go back to school. She has barely talked to her parents since she dropped out of college a few years earlier. She definitely does not want to ask them for help. She also does not want to ask her boyfriend Nick, he is her son’s father but she’s definitely not sure about whether she’ll wind up with him.

Donovan and Chip are a happily married couple. They decide to look for a surrogate to carry children for them. After a talk with the specialists, they are convinced that the smartest thing to do is to take a sample from each of them and implant multiple donor eggs in a gestational carrier. She says it makes sense financially, and time wise, to try to have two babies at once rather than go through the whole surrogacy process twice. She encouraged them not to dna test the babies unless they had to for medical reasons. Knowing both men donated samples means they could just both picture themselves as the biological father of atleast one child.

Of course both men couldn’t help picking up on subtle cues about which child was biologically theirs. Chip can see his appearance mirrored back in Teddy and Donovan has always seen his traits in Kai.

Then one day the boys do a dna related project in school and everything explodes.

I would love to say more about what happened but it’s not on the book cover’s description so I feel like it would be a spoiler.
Let’s just leave it at this: Maggie is contacted by the fertility clinic.

There were a lot of surprises in store. I thought Nick was awful many a time throughout this book but I was surprised sometimes by how he handled the situation. I guess you can’t really predict how anyone would act in this situation.

Very compelling story!