The School for Good Mothers (by Jessamine Chan)

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Publication date: 4 January 2022 

I'll be honest, this was not the book that I was expecting, but it was the one that I have been wanting for a long time.  I genuinely really loved this book. 

Chan has this really amazing way to tell Frida's story in a way that made me miss her after I had finished the book... and it's not super often that I miss characters after I'm done with their story.  Frida is a complex character with many layers, but she is very concrete in what she wants - her daughter.  As anyone would in her situation, Frida struggles.  She's angry, she's confused, and she's receiving a punishment that does not match her mistake - it's horrifying.  I felt Frida's sorrows and joy, her fear and her love, her anger and her loneliness.

Chan's voice, her world-building, and the way that we were able to enter Frida's world in such a deep and intense way is done so masterfully.  Frida's reality, memories, and thoughts are all written carefully and purposefully.

I was reminded of The Handmaid's Tale in so many ways while I read this book.  The calmness of Chan's writing was almost eerie - such a horrific thing to go through, yet the style of writing almost "normalized" this world, which makes it even more shocking.  The School was so similar to The Rachel and Leah Centre from The Handmaid's Tale, and the experiences there - the training, the degradation, the control, the watching - this is really an excellent dystopia novel.  There isn't a ton of action in this book, but there's so much character development.  You will experience Frida's new reality with her.

One of my favourite things about this book was that Chan wrote cultural and racial/ethnic identities into her characters so seamlessly and naturally.  She made it so that the entire character's identity and race are as important as any other detail about their physical appearance - this is so refreshing, appreciated, and it makes me want to tell the author how much she rocks for this.  She doesn't make any assumptions about her readers' racial identities and this is pretty powerful.

I loved this book so much that I bought a paperback copy so that I can have the physical book on my bookshelf.  I can't wait to read it again.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Simon and Schuster for providing me with a free copy in exchange for an honest review.