The School for Good Mothers: A Novel

As a girl from Philly, I could personally identify with the stereotypes and challenges mothers faced by your “neighborhood”.

3.5 stars. The book was a well thought out satire on parenting in America. As a mom the book had some heart wrenching elements for me. In part of the book it felt like it moved a little slower than needed. The book really reminded me of a Black Mirror episode.

2.5 stars, but I’m rounding up. I have complicated feelings about this book.
If you’re a mother and read this you will probably have a vastly different experience reading it than I did. I mean, I couldn’t sympathize with any of the mothers. I couldn’t. I couldn’t sympathize with abusers and people that abandoned their children, and what the main character did was /wrong/. Full stop. “It was just a bad day.” Okay, but your kid could have died. Is this supposed to be commentary on the struggles middle class mothers face? Commentary on how mothers are treated differently than fathers? Commentary on race, mental illness, class, divorce, politics…there’s too much. It’s like the author pulled up a list of Hot Topics to cram into this book. Sometimes it works! But a lot of times I feel like I’m reading an academic article on how the School for Good Mothers works. It’s repetitive. Also, the whole “romance” thing while at the school was endlessly frustrating. And the ending? Don’t get me started. I’m sure this will be held as “the new Handmaid’s Tale” but y’all, this is not it.

3.5

Meh. I expected this book to be more captivating, a page-turner, and it didn’t do that for me. More of dystopian-like societal read, it was an interesting concept that I just felt missed the mark. It was just reading disappointment after disappointment, which I understand to be the premise to exaggerate the severity of the consequences for Frida. The ending was lackluster and just felt for as short as the book was, the chapters dragged on and was not leaving me eager to turn the page.