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

4.0

This book is about a woman named Frida who one day makes a mistake while looking after her toddler leading to her child being taken away and her being sent to a new school for bad mothers to be "re-educated". This book was so good. It is wonderfully written and the events of the story are disturbingly plausible. I did struggle a little with connecting to Frida emotionally at the start of the book but this did change somewhere about the middle of the story and I nearly cried at the ending. The conversations this book has about motherhood and what it means to be a "good" mother where also really touching and thought-provoking though I would have liked a little more on how the expectations of being a 'good parent' can differ across cultures as this was only touched on a few times. I will also say that this is a very depressing book and the main character contemplates suicide multiple times and a couple of side characters do actually commit suicide (not on page) so if that might be triggering to you I would recommend staying away from this book. Overall, I thought that this was a beautiful little book that deserves to be talked about for years to come.