I first came across this author at the recommendation of a university professor. Gibbs writing is intense and emotional. She is a master of making you feel, and this novel is no different.

4 "thought provoking, well constructed, a tad distant" stars !!

Thank you to Netgalley, the author and Doubleday Canada for an ecopy. This was released March 2021. I am providing an honest review.

Three stories intertwined brought together by a young man who donates sperm for childless people trying to conceive. Our donor, works in community development and gets kidnapped in Somalia. His plight leaves him with physical and psychological injury. A le.sbian couple are at the end of their relationship but want to co-parent their son in a loving and stable fashion. An alcoholic social worker has to contend with serious boundary violations that she engages in a repetitive fashion as she has not dealt with her own impoverished history.

All three stories are fascinating and create many ethical and interesting dilemmas that need to be addressed by these very different but intelligent characters. The author has done her research and the stories zing with authenticity and complexity. The writing is elegant, straightforward and polished.

I strongly feel that this could have been a small masterpiece had the author lengthened the book as well as going a little deeper in relational and emotional depth as I felt at times slightly detached from both difficult and harrowing experiences.

Well done Ms. Gibb and I would certainly read more by this author.

I absolutely loved this book! I found it hard to put down. I highly recommend reading it! You won’t be disappointed.

3.5 (?) stars

This was an interesting little book. Considering how short it is, it took me forever to read, mostly because I found myself losing focus on it at a few points. While there were some good scenes, it wasn’t intensely action-packed at most moments. I had a bit of trouble keeping the storylines straight, but they came together eventually. I liked the ending, for the most part, but it felt a bit abrupt and inconclusive; some questions remained unanswered. I did appreciate the exploration of different ways that families can be created. Overall, I enjoyed the book, but I was expecting (or hoping for) a little bit more from it.

I have started and stopped this book so many times since receiving an advance copy from NetGalley, but I just cannot get into it. The writing style is dry and boring and I did not feel any connection to any of the characters. DNF.

This short, powerful novel alternates between three different characters' point of views. As each characters' story progresses, the reader starts to understand how they are connected. Beautifully written and compelling, as is all of Camilla Gibb's writing.

3.5 rounded up - a really intimate look at the intricacies of one lesbian couple’s journey to parenthood and the complications involved in coparenting after the romantic relationship breaks down. The secondary story of their sperm donor and his captivity in Somalia I found less interesting - it’s obviously a horrible thing people over there are going through I just felt that the two storylines didn’t mesh as well together (for me) - I almost would have preferred two different novels dedicated to each story separately. She did tie it all together in the end but sort of ended it abruptly without a satisfying (for me) resolution. Overall I think I wanted more - the novel is on the shorter side. Her writing is beautiful and I greedily wanted to keep reading about these characters.

I loved this book, but found it ended too abruptly. The three intertwined stories were done in a way that I couldn't put this down—I finished it in a day—and when it ended, I still wanted to know more about Lila and her daughter, and how the different stories were going to intersect in the future.

THE RELATIVES is a powerful story told from three perspectives. The first character we hear from is Lila. She is a social worker with her own troubling issues. Lila is assigned a case involving a young girl who was found homeless and does not speak. Normally Lila stays away from cases that involve children but her boss insists that she take on Robin’s case.
Next we meet Adam who is on assignment trying to gather information about a camp in Ethiopia. Adam is abducted and is being held prisoner in Somalia. Injured and living in deplorable conditions Adam must wait until his captors’ demand for ransom are fulfilled.
Tess and Emily have separated but share custody of their five year old son Max.
The separation was not amicable. They are now fighting over the ownership of the embryos that were planned to be part of their future family.
The more we learn about Lila, Adam and Tess we come to understand their connection.
I loved THE RELATIVES. I thought Camilla Gibb did an amazing job of weaving together the three voices.
THE RELATIVES would make an excellent book club selection. I hope to see it listed for some literary awards this fall.
Thank you to Penguin Random House and NetGalley for allowing access to an advanced e-edition of THE RELATIVES.

This was a good book. I liked the story..and the variety of characters
I would read more of the authors books

The Relatives is – interesting, thought provoking and touching.
The Relatives touches on the realities and struggles of artificial insemination seen through four different families who will find themselves interconnected in extraordinary ways.
The ultimate question? What does family really means to them?
I really enjoyed this book and the idea of the theme. I struggled getting into one particular story until, in the end, when it came together.
Really grateful for the opportunity to read in exchange for my review.

The Relatives is an interesting book given today's many different ways to conceive a child. This book takes you through four different scenarios and how they are all linked. Camillia Gibb gives us lots to think about and it's not just about having a baby! Gender and identity, personality and parenting are not the only criteria in the modern world of having babies. Human rights and just the need to know, also play into this whole new world of parenting. A very thoughtful and interesting book, it does leave you asking a lot of questions. I enjoyed this book very much and find that the subject is quite timely.

Thank you to Netgalley and Penguin Random House Canada for the chance to read this book.

The premise of this book sounded intriguing but I found that each of the stories needed more development and time so it could become a better story. The idea of looking at the different people affected by this man and what adoption or sperm donation can do to a family was a wonderful way to create a book.

If it had been a longer book and it hadn’t of ended so abruptly I would have enjoyed it more.

Lila is on a long, painful journey toward motherhood. Tess and Emily are reeling after their ugly separation and fighting over ownership of the embryos that were supposed to grow their family together. And thousands of miles away, the unknown man who served as anonymous donor to them all is being held in captivity in Somalia. While his life remains in precarious balance, his genetic material is a source of both creation and conflict.

What does it mean to be a family in our rapidly shifting world? What are our responsibilities to each other with increasing options for how to create a family?

Quite simply, Camilla Gibb is a gift. Her writing is original, layered and empathetic. Also apparent is that a book does not have to be long to pack a punch or give its reader much to think about.

The cast of The Relatives is complex, flawed, and unique. With characters that are polarized—some want to become parents while others want no part—Gibb examines how although we are a product of our own families and upbringing, we can make the choice of creating our own families to meet our needs and to find where we belong.

Told from three different perspectives, each storyline is interesting and rich in detail and compassion. The characters in The Relatives, are struggling with life-altering changes—Gibb skillfully connects them while exploring what family means to each of them.

The Relatives is a timely novel about what it means to be family in a modern world.

I found this to be a very intriguing book and I enjoyed the various plot lines. However it felt unfinished to me. The ending was very abrupt and I felt like there was a lot left to be tied up. Or more than I wanted to know, I guess. But it was a quick, easy and interesting read.

I was extremely curious how Lila, Adam and Tess were going to be connected, and I was not disappointed. I did however, feel I needed more depth from the characters, a closer look into their personalities. I got lost along the way and had to go back and re-read some chapters to answer my questions about how the character got from point A to point B (Tess in particular wit Robin). As I neared the end, I felt disconnected from the chapter characters and wanted to know more about the secondary characters. Maybe that was intentional.

I’m really glad I read this book. I didn’t know a lot about it when I started it yesterday, so had no preconceived sense of it. It’s a quick read - about 200 pages. Without going into a lot of detail about the plot, there are three individual stories, told in different chapters, that kind of have a thematic link. The writing seems very ‘real’ - a few times I had to check with myself that I was reading fiction! I believed in the people in the stories, and I wanted to know what happened to all of them. There’s no way you would call these people (I don’t even think of them as characters) perfect, but them seem very human.

The Relatives is about a few groups of people tied together through love or by blood. There were certain characters I really wanted to know more about, but that's not the novel's fault - it's meant to be a shorter read.

I really liked the different ways it showed how people can be considered family, and how blood ties can sometimes mean you aren't at all. I don't want to say too much more because I don't want to spoil anymore, but these characters felt like real people, so it gets 3.5-4 out of 5 stars for me.

Thanks to the author and Penguin Random House.

Three characters, connected - though they are unaware of their connection, grapple with the definition of family.

Lila is a social worker. Adopted as a young child, she knows virtually nothing about her biological parents other than that her mother was a teenaged refugee who committed suicide two years after Lila was born. This experience of being abandoned affects her work with children whom she wants to rescue: “I’d wanted to be a mother to a child who had experienced her deepest injuries elsewhere, rather than be the one responsible for the psychic damage I would undoubtedly cause a child of my own.” Each rescue attempt becomes a “shameful mess” that almost ends her career. However, having lost both of her adoptive parents, she yearns to have a family because “What is the point of a human life unrelated to any other human life?”

Tess has never wanted to be a mother. Her career is her focus and she worries how a child would affect her: “Even in the best circumstances, I’ve seen female colleagues lose their footing on the ladder once they have children.” Tess’s partner Emily pleads, so Tess finally agrees and gives birth to Max. Tess has “no instinct for babies” so Emily does most of the child care; it is only when Max is older that she enjoys spending time with him. Then after Tess and Emily have separated, Emily announces she wants to take one of Emily’s frozen embryos to have a child, though her pregnancy would be difficult. Tess does not want to give Emily an embryo because she does not want “’to be forced to assume the psychosocial burdens that come with being a genetic parent.’” Tess believes that being a parent tore apart her family.

Adam is the anonymous donor whose sperm is used by Tess. When he was young, he donated sperm to help pay his way through graduate school. He has no desire to be a father: “He sees himself as someone who simply went some small way toward helping people who wanted to become parents. And they helped him by paying him for a supply of something he has wasted plenty of in his life.” As the novel opens, Adam is being held captive by al-Shabaab in Somalia. Will the experience lead him “to want something more permanent? A home, a family’”?

The novel examines how lack of a stable family can affect people. Much of Lila, Tess and Adam’s feelings about family are a result of their childhood experiences. Lila’s early years were unstable; she didn’t form “a secure attachment” to her mother and was abandoned. Tess’s mother suffered with severe anxiety and depression so Tess was raised by her father and “protected” from her mother. Adam’s father committed suicide so he doesn’t even think of him as his father because “’A father is a man who is present in your life.’” Adam doesn’t think the world needs more children when so many are not cared for: “China is all over East Africa now, in mining and infrastructure, creating a generation of fatherless half-Chinese Africans who are being neglected and shunned. We’re such sloppy creatures, men, he thinks. What is the point of us? To just keep producing children? But we don’t even take care of the ones we have.”

The message, however, is that people can move past any deficiencies in the families to which they were born and create their own families which meet their needs. A woman who “wanted to be found by a mother. Remembered, longed for, searched for, found” can be a good mother to a child and so heal herself. A person can build “a sense of community” around a child and so create a family of sorts. Even the various children of a common sperm donor can construct a type of family: “children conceived with the same sperm . . . might one day be curious about or even known to each other” so no one knows “the kind of circles that start to form as a result of its dissemination.” I came across a comment by Camilla Gibb in a Chatelaine interview which I think summarizes the theme of this novel: “family is a feeling between people more than it is an arrangement” (https://www.chatelaine.com/living/books/camilla-gibb-heartbreak-family/).

Characterization is outstanding. All the main characters are complex and flawed. There are times when the reader will disapprove or disagree with choices made by Lila, Tess, and Adam, but it is always possible to understand why they behave as they do. I found much of my interest lay in watching these three people learn and grow.

There is much to like about this book. The believable, complicated characters have very different but interesting stories which give the reader much to ponder.

Note: I received an eARC from the publisher via NetGalley.

Thank you to Penguin Random House Canada and NetGalley for an opportunity to read The Relatives

✔️ really interesting concept of exploring three families interconnected through one sperm donor
✔️ always enjoy Camilla Gibbs writing style and this one doesn’t disappoint either
✔️explores some interesting topics like adoption, kidnapping ( not of a child - of a foreign service agent in Africa for ransom etc)

✖️ this book is quite short and I felt a bit rushed- it felt like all the stories weren’t explored fully
✖️an abrupt ending 🤷‍♀️

Book Rating : ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
Cover rating : 🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟