The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan: Book Review

 

The writing was good, and the author does a great job keeping you  hooked in the story, making it difficult to put down. I liked how the futuristic/dystopian nature leaked in; a refreshing change from the modern (stated) requirement that every story reveal it's genre in the first paragraph.  The choice to omit presenting key scenes was similarly against conventional wisdom; I didn't find it worked well..

However, by the 20% mark, things were so bad for the protagonist, and clearly going to get so much worse, that I just couldn't put myself through it.  The worst for me was how the protagonist just ingests all the negativity about herself, and this definitely gets worse and worse. She has a strong character voice, but it was too depressing for me. I skipped to 95% and it was pretty much exactly where I expected. There is, however, a twist at the end which was interestingly late for novel conventions and also suprisingly hopeful.