A memoir about a woman who is in a troubled marriage, in a town she doesn't want to be in, who is financially burdened, and discovers herself with an unwanted 3rd pregnancy in her 40s. She discusses issues with women's health care, employment, and partners that have checked out. All elements of a tough row to hoe for anyone. It feels a bit bleak, but does contain a little light here and there. As the telling moves around through time, I found quite a few holes that I wanted to know a bit more about, and in that sense found it lacking. Thank you NetGalley and publishers for providing a digital ARC for review.

Really enjoyed this read — I work on abortion access issues and found this to be an engaging piece about all of the nuances surrounding reproductive health access.

Sharp, honest and bare portrayal of modern womanhood, choice, love and intuition. Her assessment of West Virginia is both familiar and infuriating (from someone who also used to live there). I felt much of this viscerally. Masterfully written.

Loved and Wanted is a powerhouse of a memoir about living in one of the reddest states in the country (West Virginia), being married and unexpectedly pregnant at 40 with two very young children, and working full-time (and being the family’s main breadwinner) as a college writing professor. When she consults with her ob-gyn about her desire for an abortion, Parravani encounters (and illuminates with visceral prose) the stark, harmful realities of conservative political agendas masquerading as medical regulations, the shameful healthcare disparities from state to state, and the pervasive environmental and economic factors that threaten her family and many others. Heartbreakingly raw, courageous and vitally important.

Below are links to 3 of my blog posts where I've mentioned Loved and Wanted:
http://melissafirman.com/nonfiction-november-be-the-expert/
http://melissafirman.com/nonfiction-november-my-year-in-nonfiction-3/
http://melissafirman.com/what-i-read-in-september/

Christa shares with us her unwanted pregnancy her difficult marriage the decision to carry this pregnancy,There seems to be very little joy in her life her connection with her husband their struggle to survive financially even though they both have careers,in academia he also had a best selling memoir and works on Hollywood series,A raw real honest memoir that many women will relate to.#netgalley #henryholtboojs,

I very recently read another memoir about a different author’s pregnancy, delivery and life with a newborn. My general impression and subsequent review was “Why the hell should we care about something that happens to thousands and thousands of women every day?”
Loved and Wanted is another memoir that focuses on a pregnancy, but unlike the above-mentioned book, this one is worth caring about. This is the book the other author wished she had written.
Christa Parravani has demonstrated, with both this writing and her memoir, Her, that she is willing to strip bare and expose the good, the bad, and the ugly. In this memoir, Parravani chronicles the difficulty and shame that accompanies an unplanned pregnancy in West Virginia and the almost Herculean task of exercising the choice to terminate. Of being married but alone. Of being educated and employed but unable to provide. Of having a baby that was unwanted but is deeply loved.
I found her story heartbreaking and infuriating, yet also surprisingly compassionate, especially for those who aren’t deserving.
Thanks to #netgalley and #henryholtandcompany for this ARC of #lovedandwanted in exchange for an honest review.

Loved and Wanted by Christa Parravani is her memoir of her time when she found herself pregnant with her third child in West Virginia, where abortion, although legal is not really a choice for many women.

I found this book to be difficult to read because it seemed to be more about her difficult marriage and her unhappiness with her husband than it was about her inability to get an abortion in West Virginia...she wanted to keep the baby and she did. It seemed that the book was more of a diatribe about the poor choices her husband made with his jobs, his blaming her for moving them to WV for her work when she was the only one who had a paying job and his unwillingness to help raise their girls or do anything around the house, but this was all couched in the rhetoric of the difficulty women go through to be prochoice and get the appropriate care during an unwanted pregnancy.

I opted to read this book because, as a pro choice woman, I was interested in the subject matter and there was some good information in the book. It just wasn't what I was expecting. I also found it very abrupt that as soon as the baby was born the book ended. That was it. I guess I expected more after saying the child was loved and wanted. Thanks to the author, Henry Holt & Company and NetGalley for an ARC of this book in return for my honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley and Henry Holt & Co. for this advanced reader's copy of Loved and Wanted by Christa Parravani.

Wow, wow, wow. What an amazing memoir. I didn't love just because I love memoirs, I loved this because it really spoke to what it is like to be mother, wife, woman in this country right now. This is the story of a woman who gets pregnant in the deep Red state of West Virginia and realizes that her choices are not what she thought they would be in the year 2020. This is is also the story of woman doing everything she can to keep her family afloat, sometimes on her own while her husband works on the other side of the country and sometimes with him in the same house. It will be a very familiar story to many women, I'm sure.

This is an extremely important book right now. Many of us who live in big, liberal cities forget that there are still plenty of places that make it difficult for woman to choose how to live her life. I am guilty of that. This book was a wake up call for me and it probably will be for most readers. Pick up this book and remind yourself that we keep pushing so that all women can enjoy the freedoms that right now only some of us do.

Christa Parravani wrote a fascinating book about being a woman, the choices we make and why, and the impact of poverty on motherhood.

When Parravani was pregnant with her third child, she decided to have an abortion, but couldn't find anyone in her West Virginia town. Despite being highly educated, her university salary barely gets her and her family by, and she knows the impact a third child will bring.

She goes on to have and love her baby, but his health suffers from the health care she received there. The book is full of statements about what it is to be a woman in the south, the impacts of misogyny and poverty. She is able to draw parallels with the life she leads during the summers she spend in LA where her husband works for TV, and describe the differences (better healthcare.)

This is a great statement on our larger society and makes us think about how we need to continue to advocate for women's rights and the freedom to live the way we want.

Thank you Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for a free review!

Loved and Wanted is an interesting, emotional read. The author struggles with an unintended pregnancy. She tries to end the pregnancy, but through various reasons she doesn't. She explores her emotions throughout the pregnancy, reflecting on her marriage, other pregnancies, and an earlier abortion. It's informative about legislation and options in West Virginia. I was curious if she was still with her husband at the end, but the author doesn't say.

In Loved and Wanted, Christa Parravani casts light on the raw truth bubbling below the sanitized surface of motherhood in America. Without apology, she relates the fullness of her own emotional and practical struggle to navigate the gap between a society's ostensible guarantee of a woman's right to choose and the reality of the systematic barriers put in place to prevent the exercising of that right in certain localities. In faithfully relating her inner debate and motivations, Parravani gives voice to the multitude of women whose complex feelings in weighing the implications of their reproductive choice on theirs and their families' futures do not fit the constrained narrative often forced on the conversation by extremist positions. Far more than a treatise on reproductive rights, however, the book faithfully reflects a mother's real struggle for self-determination more broadly, in a society structured to prioritize a father's right to a career over a mother's, and which so often disregards a mother's perspectives on hers and her children's health needs. Everyone in America should read this book, if for no other reason than the moving way it illustrates that asserting one's right to reproductive choice in no way implies a poverty of maternal affection or capacity for love; on the contrary, it is often a mother's love that informs that choice.

<i>Thank you to NetGalley for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.</i>

I read [book:Her|15794110] shortly after it was released and really enjoyed it, so I was definitely excited to see that the author had put out another book. I am also a staunch supporter of the right to choose, and I will read anything that highlights the difficulties women have obtaining abortions in America and why they should remain safe, legal, and easy to obtain.

First, the things I liked about the book: Parravani did a great job of giving a full picture of just how grim the state of women's health in West Virginia truly is. By juxtaposing it with her experiences in Los Angeles medical facilities, you can see just how drastically subpar WV is. She gave statistics all throughout the book on poverty, maternity leave, good pre-and-post-natal care, education, environmental factors, and -of course- access to safe abortions. It resonates when you have a woman with two children that she very much wanted and desperately loves with all of her heart Googling abortion pills to buy online because medical providers in her state make it nearly impossible to terminate a pregnancy that was unexpected and comes in a time when she feels that she wouldn't be able to best provide for the child. I also thought her descriptions of her children were beautiful. Her absolute and infinite love jumped off the page with every word about them.

The things that weren't so successful: While I appreciate that she wanted to give a full, honest picture of her marriage and her life for the context of the book (and she even admitted that certain things didn't paint her and her husband in the best light), it still felt like the book often became about a terrible marriage rather than a normal marriage with speedbumps. Maybe I am a little too starry-eyed for hyper realistic descriptions of most relationships, but I know that I would have far less tolerance for some of the things she described. Her husband often seemed checked out, bitter, disinterested, or angry over choices that he assisted in making. Parravani shouldered all the blame for moving them to West Virginia for her job, but what else was she supposed to do? Stay in one of the highest cost-of-living areas in the US with no jobs? It just read like a dysfunctional relationship pretty much all the way through, which put a damper on the book. Also, I very much enjoy Parravani's writing (her previous novel got 5 stars from me), but she did veer into purple prose more than once in this book to the point of being slightly wearisome.

With that said, I did still enjoy this book. It served an important purpose to show just how disproportionate women's healthcare is across the US. It reignited my passion for continuing the fight to keep abortions safe and legal. And I would absolutely pick up another book by her!

In loved and Wanted the author takes readers into her life from childhood with a beloved sister and divorced, single mother to her own marriage, her work as a teacher and author, and most importantly, her relationships with her children. Life hasn't always been easy and there are some financial problems, then she discovers she's pregnant with a third child.

This book is about more than just the dilemma of whether or not to get an abortion. It is also an account of the circumstances the author finds herself in as her family moves from California to West Virginia, it's about the tenuous relationship with her husband, the pollution problem and dismal air quality of West Virginia, her sister's death, and the 2016 presidential election, among others. .

The author writes with unadulterated honesty in an almost poetic fashion. Her prose moves around a lot, but I still found it an interesting and engaging read.