Chosen Family, Madeleine Gray (Review by Jackie Adair)

Rating: 3.0/5 Stars

This book is a dual timeline book about single mother, Eve, who is raising her daughter, Lake, by herself. Her coparent (and friend) Nell walks away from their coparenting arrangement leaving Eve alone without knowing why. The story goes back and forth between timelines detailing when Eve and Nell met in their teenage years to the aftermath of their coparenting relationship. The reader can see how Lake is raised to be a forward-thinker and how she chooses to be different from her classmates. I really enjoyed Lake’s character and her fiery spirit.

In high school, Eve is depicted as a self-confident, defiant girl with a wicked sense of humor. She becomes friends with Nell who is less self-confident and more worried about what others think. They end up going their separate ways only to reconnect again in college. Their communication is horrible, and the lack of dialog made it difficult to understand and connect with their relationship. Nell walks away from the coparenting as a result of a misunderstanding, but I would have enjoyed additional dialog about Nell and Eve’s struggles. In addition, Eve and Nell seem so committed to being good parents, and I find it hard to believe Nell would leave without an emotional bond with her daughter. Eve’s best friends and roommates, Tae and Marcus, bring so much entertainment to the story. I love the author’s choice to bring them into this book. I would have loved additional dialogue between Tae, Marcus, and Eve about Eve’s backstory and struggles being LGBTQ+. I had more empathy for Lake, Tae, and Marcus and really enjoyed the secondary characters.

I appreciated their author’s writing style and the emotional twists and turns of the book. While I would have loved some additional relationship development between the main characters, I was deeply engaged with the side characters. I would be open to reading another title from this author in the future.