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danilanglie 's review for:
Family Family
by Laurie Frankel
This was a really... readable book, the story carried me through and the sequence of events had a good amount of momentum so I kept wanting to find out how things were going to turn out. But honestly... it's hard to give this a higher rating than three stars because it was just so trite. Like, the big, oft-repeated "point" of this book is that too many stories about adoption are stories about trauma, and shouldn't we also represent the good, happy adoption scenarios in fiction?
And like... okay, yeah. I can get on board with that. But I also just don't feel like India Allwood's story is "good representation" of what adoption usually is like, either. It's way too hokey and picture-perfect, and as much as you say that this is a story about how "messy" family can be, it's also just incredibly emotionally neat and tidy the whole way through. Yes, Fig has trauma about her birth mother, but she always snaps out of it quickly and is loving and loved. Yes, India's two ex-boyfriends had complicated feelings about India's decisions with her pregnancy, but both of them were good, loving men who wanted what was best for her. Honestly, Team Robbie personally, if India's going to get back with one of her two exes as the ending seems to imply, I'm much more about the high school boyfriend, he had more of a personality.
I enjoyed the process of reading this book, but I came out of it thinking that it was just a bit too cheesy to really cement itself as something for me to truly love.
And like... okay, yeah. I can get on board with that. But I also just don't feel like India Allwood's story is "good representation" of what adoption usually is like, either. It's way too hokey and picture-perfect, and as much as you say that this is a story about how "messy" family can be, it's also just incredibly emotionally neat and tidy the whole way through. Yes, Fig has trauma about her birth mother, but she always snaps out of it quickly and is loving and loved. Yes, India's two ex-boyfriends had complicated feelings about India's decisions with her pregnancy, but both of them were good, loving men who wanted what was best for her. Honestly, Team Robbie personally, if India's going to get back with one of her two exes as the ending seems to imply, I'm much more about the high school boyfriend, he had more of a personality.
I enjoyed the process of reading this book, but I came out of it thinking that it was just a bit too cheesy to really cement itself as something for me to truly love.