This started off as a pretty typical adoption story memoir about inter-racial adoption in the PNW, but turned into a really compelling story of family, love, and what-could-have-been.  Instead of a tidy tale about how the early 80's white adoptive parents didn't appreciate how racist small town Southern Oregon was and how they didn't address her cultural heritage, we got something quite different. I wrongly anticipated this was going to be a Holt International-type fraud case that I have read quite a bit around.  I was so surprised to find that while the first part read that way, that is not where the story went at all.  Even the first part, which was almost a stand alone story of childhood longing to belong, was way above average in terms of writing and I found it neither trite, nor self-absorbed. Her compassion for her adoptive parents is evident and complicate and was really moved by the nuance of that relationship--even in the first part of the book.
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As the progresses and she explores connection with her birth family, the story is not what she--nor the reader-- expect. It is both simpler and more complicated, but the ultimate question about whether she was "better off" having been adopted out is never presented as an easy one. The relationships with the birth family unfold in much the same way as the rest of her relationships, with depth and emotional layers that are so often left out of memoirs like this that have an agenda they want to develop.

Recommend.

It would be hard for this book to contain a more stereotypical gay uncle character who ends up the primary caregiver for children without significantly altering his lifestyle  It might have been over-the-top in places, but it was so celebratory of the Guncle's relationship with the children, the way he stepped in to care for them in his own unique, non-traditional way while they were all three grieving the loss of the children's mother that it feels ridiculous to criticize the use of the trope.  I found once I let myself let go of rolling my eyes at the things like wearing the kaftan, having cocktails in the afternoon, the throuple next door, and so on and let myself just enjoy the story of a quirky relative who steps in to care for children in need, I did in fact just enjoy it.  Set against the background of traumatic grief over the death of loved ones, it really is just a sweet story of an unusual family doing what needs to be done to meet the needs of kids. Despite the background, it is mostly funny and light.

​Recommend.

In child abuse prevention work, we often talk about how important it is to teach children that they should not keep secrets. We distinguish between secrets and surprises.  Secrets eat away at you and causes harm, but surprises re something that you share when the time is right, like a birthday gift.  This book really explores how family secrets can tear families apart, ruin relationships, and ruin lives while at the same time recognizing that sometimes big secrets might need to be kept to keep people safe. In a climate where being trans (or an undocumented immigrant or having had an abortion or being a survivor of child sex abuse, for example) can be dangerous, more and more people are keep things secret in a way that was more common in the 1980's and earlier.

The book is about a family with a trans daughter in a town where they decide that isn't safe.  They relocate as a family and decide she is going to be stealth, not telling anyone she is trans and living life as if she was cis-gender, as if she had been identified female at birth.  The entire family is tasked with keeping this secret, including that daughter without fully thinking through the implications of how that would play out, even in a progressive city.  

As a young adult book, it is a decent read.  The ending is both not really an ending, but also too neatly tied things up in a way that seemed both unsatisfying while also too being too clean.  I am not sure how to explain that better, other than to say it left me unimpressed.  

I will say that while there were a variety of things here that fell a bit flat, there are so few narratives about trans kids, particularly in the context of supportive families navigating really tough issues and particularly in stories without a traumatic ending for the trans character, that I am going to give this a soft recommend.

​Recommend.

I will preface this by saying that I am not a fan of horror, either in books or movies, but part of this project is that I read and finish every book and in this case, even though the bottom line is going to be a Not Recommended label, I have to say that I thought and talked about this book a remarkable amount for not recommending it to anyone. 

This book is about truly awful, abusive mothers with borderline personality disorders who torture and haunt their children, even after their death.  The lack of clarity about whether the haunting is real or a shared delusion as a result of the trauma these mothers inflicted on their children, step-children, and children-in-law, is truly horrifying and the book in general was, indeed, horrific. 

That said, the ending was so clever and the cleverness of the ending only adding to the horror of the story.  Although it is a full book, it had the pacing and feel more in line with that of a short story, including the way the ending of the story lands with the slow realization of what is happening having the feel of The Gift of the Magi or The Lottery. 

If you are a fan of horror, then this may very well be for you, but I can't really recommend it otherwise. I did give serious thought to a Not Not Recommendation, but ultimately decided that it really was just too disturbing for that.

Not recommended.

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This was an incredibly painful book to read about the author's struggle with is son's addiction. 
How many rock bottoms can one family survive?  The writing is elegant and the author's love for his child permeates every word as he begins his decent into addiction, struggling with recovery and relapse. The book is a heartache from beginning to end, told from the perspective of a parent desperate to help, but powerless over their child's choices, but also over his own drive to provide comfort and protection for an addict caught in the narcissism and criminality of active addiction. Prepare to have your heart broken, over and over, and make sure you have the pace to reflect on everyone you ever loved who has known addiction. 

I also want to point out that this book also alludes to the unpopular and often ignored topic of how bad parenting plans impact the children who have to live them out--a very real reminder for separated parents and the professionals so write those plans for them.

Recommend.
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This memoir was written by one of the co-authors of The Courage To Heal, which is perhaps the book that has impacted me the most in my life. Written in 1994 originally, I read this first in 1988 when it was first released and many of the passages framed how I think about child sex abuse.  That book is quite dated now, though sections of it are as relevant to survivors now as it was then.  The Burning Light of Two Stars is the story of the complex relationship between the author and her mother. That complexity is bound up in their experiences of child sex abuse, the mother's failure to protect her, and the work they did, although primarily the author did, to try to find a way to reconnect as adults, if not exactly to repair the relationship.  I found the read insightful and appreciated that it did not suggest that this approach is always or even often possible and that it did not shy away from the pain that reengaging in the relationship caused.  Highly dysfunctional families so often are portrayed in two-dimensional ways that I think harm survivors of abuse.  This book addressed her choice to remain engaged head on in a unique and powerful way.

Recommend.

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I do love a self-help book that is filled with useful suggestions that are neither judgey, nor self-aggrandizing.  So often, the authors come across as having figured out some magic solution to life and relationships that they are sure could help everyone, but in reality just piss me off.  I was expecting no less from this one, with its too-long-title.  In fact, I figured the book wouldn't offer anything more useful than what it told us in the title.  I, however, was quite surprised that you don't have to identify as a push-over or people pleaser for this book to provide some helpful tips on how to better to determine what boundaries you want, how to convey your feelings, and to live life more in line with how you want.  I read parts of it twice and the whole book made me think about some new strategies and approaches I can use in my life.  I will definitely be recommending this to folks.

​Recommend.

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I couldn't stop reading this book. It drew me in on so many levels.  The characters, the plot, the writing...all captivating in their nuance.  The complexity of trying to live a life consistent with hold values while navigating traumatic grief, discrimination, and parenting without role models for how best to do that.  This book feels especially timely again, amidst the renewed conflict in the Middle East and the slow, subtle erosion of protections for Queer parents here at home.  My kid was reading this as part of a college course and I always particularly love getting to share in a story he is reading. Over the two decades I have been parenting, they have been assigned a lot of crappy, problematic literature, so it was a real treat to read something this good.  

Highly recommend.

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Written by a physician at the center of the work to bring the concept of ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences) to the forefront of medical care, there was a lot of really interesting material in this book.  I liked many of the parts where she talks about how she talks to patients and other medical providers about ACEs and the importance of understanding their role in long term health outcomes, but I have to say that I did not love her writing style.  I feel bad even saying that, to some extent, since I imagine she is a fabulous physician and it is clear from the subtext in the book that she has done amazing work, not only for individual patients and their families, but also for the community where she works.  Beyond that, her work has impact widespread policy changes and helped normalized ACE screening across settings.  The other issue I had with the book is that I think it is already due for an update, as the work being done on ACEs since 2018, has expanded the knowledge based in such a way that some of what is here feels outdated.  

I am torn about a recommendation, because there is so much in this book I want everyone to know about, but the writing and the age of the book make me hesitant to recommend it.  Additionally, I did not love the author as narrator here, although in fairness, it is rare that I like the author of a book as the narrator.  

Finally, although I do not mean to pile on to make it seem like I liked it less than I did, I found the book in general to be fairly depressing.  I know the idea is to raise awareness about the important of ACES screening, and she did provide examples of specific interventions for individual patients of hers, but the overall tone felt pretty dismal for folks with high ACE scores.  I wish there had been more of an emphasis on systemic approaches to reducing ACE scores in the first place.  I wished for that even though that was clearly outside the range of what could be expected from her given all that she had already been doing.

Ultimately, this is going to be not not recommended.

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I think this book is meant to be a sweet, light read about a couple whose only child dies and who take in the child in their community for a few months while her impoverished and despondent mother births another unwanted child.  However, I was just not impressed with the lack of insight into what it means to care for someone else's child during a time when they cannot.  It is over-romanticized and the entire time, I was certain that the child would be sexually abused by the foster father since there was absolutely no one around who would have been in a position to protect this incredibly vulnerable child.  That this did not happen just made the book even weirder and less in touch with the reality of the lives children in this position actually lead.  The fairytale life the child has during this informal foster care placement was so inconsistent of my experience parenting any child, let alone a vulnerable foster child, that I just could not get into it at all.  On the other hand, some of the writing was quite lovely.

​Do not recommend.

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