- The blurb for this one struck a chord with me.
I also recommend:
- Fathermucker by Greg Olear
- The Financial Lives of the Poets by Jess Walter
Summary from GoodReads:
“Having a baby is . . . complicated. ”
Dimple knows. She’s a successful actress who is turning forty–though her agent and her resume insist she’s only thirty-six–and she figures it’s now or never. Certainly it’s not a good time for an intriguing director to show up at her door with a great script.
Eva, fabulous agent to the stars, doesn’t want kids–and “never” wanted kids. Why is her decision so damned hard for everyone else to accept?
When Maryn was undergoing treatment for cancer, she and her husband both agreed to have embryos frozen. But that was way before their divorce and her remission–and now she’s single and childless, and caught in the middle of a controversy she never saw coming.
The traditional and nontraditional couples desperate for a baby . . . the adoptive parents . . . the single mom . . . the two who want “nothing” to do with parenthood. . . . This is a thoroughly modern story of the pursuit of family in all its forms–and of five very different ways of getting there
My Review:
I remember the day it hit me that I was in my mid-30′s and unmarried with no children on the horizon. It was a blow to me, I’m not going to lie. I’d grown up the eldest of nine and, even as a child, fully expected to be married by 21 and a mother by 22. I envisioned a house filled with childish laughter and a white picket fence out front. Now, at 35, I’m wiser and older (although the two did not happen concurrently) and have accepted the very real likelihood that motherhood is not in the works for me, just as I accepted that marriage was not for me about four years ago.
That’s a very personal thing to put out there for a review, I admit. But that’s how this book affected me. What You Wish For is a novel about unconventional parents. It’s about adoption, IVF, natural pregnancy, birth, death, and life. It’s real, honest, and it does not pull any punches. Kerry Reichs lays the facts out with brutal honesty and follows the natural path when it comes to the story of Maryn, Eva, Julian, Wyatt, and Dimple – even if that brings harm or an “unhappy ending.”
Honestly, I loved and hated this book. I loved it for being so engrossing – I didn’t want to put it down. I hated it for being so real. I hated seeing the facts about being a 35 year old woman put down on the page, and knowing that – if I decide to go the same route as Dimple – I may be facing some of the same difficulties. I hated reading about how difficult it is for a single man to adopt, or seeing what happens when zealots get their hands on information for political gains. What You Wish For is more than a feel-good novel, it’s a contemporary study on what life is like now, what it is like to try to be a parent in a world that says that the “normal” parents are one man and one woman.
This is an important story and Kerry Reichs does a great job of pushing past the limits to deliver it.
About the Author
For more reviews on What You Wish For by Kerry Reichs, please follow the book tour.
