Thank you @NetGalley & @fsgbooks for my eARC copy in exchange for an honest review (sorry for the massive delay I got really behind on my reading).

I’ve tried to collect my thoughts (there were many) as I was reading this book. I probably loved this the most, for being a work of fiction, how much it made me think about my own life.

Started this one thinking it would just be an interesting read about siblings’ relationships (I’m an only child so I obviously have no first-hard experience of that), but it somehow hit me in unexpected ways, specifically on the topic of choosing or not to have children, what that means in the concept of “family”.

On this topic, this quote hit me particularly hard: “Maybe my childlessness had also bound me to our parents; my only concept of family was a nostalgic one. Some days I don%E2%80%99t know what frightens me more, the idea of life without children, or without parents”

I found myself nodding as I was reading certain lines about not wanting/wanting children and all the messy feelings that come with those thoughts. I think the struggle was portrayed beautifully.

I’ve frequently (obviously) read books that included siblings’ relationships, but this was different. It offered a different look at what a siblings’ relationship is made of. An intimate look at siblings’ relationships, what makes them love each other and what the foundations of that relationship is.

Ashley Nelson Levy has such a way with words, I found myself underlying passages multiple times, something I never do for works of fiction and usually exclusively relegate to non fiction pieces. This book was full of poignant quotes, that I just knew I’d love to go back to, so I underlined and highlighted all the way through.

I also particularly enjoyed the discourse in language and language barriers that was scattered throughout this story, not the main theme for sure but something I personally really enjoy.

A short, lovely and moving look at adoption, untraditional families, and growing up in a cultural other than your own. It meandered slightly towards the end, but I really enjoyed my time with these complicated characters.

This was a sweet book. I like reading books about siblings, even complicated ones. The prose was sparse and somber. I would read from this author again.

IMMEDIATE FAMILY by Ashley Nelson Levy is my last read of 2021 and unfortunately I didn’t care for it. It’s about a woman sharing her family’s story of adopting her brother. It was interesting to learn about the adoption process especially from the sisters point of view. But told mostly in second person directly to her brother it felt disconnected. A short quick book that I read in one day the momentum to the writing propelled me to read. I wanted to find out who these characters really were and if there was some plot. I felt it was lacking in emotions and the relationship building. I really didn’t like how throughout the book the narrator would refer to her husband as “my husband” but mostly as “your brother-in-law”.

Thank you to FSG Books via NetGalley for my advance review copy!

As this quiet novel – an extended address to the narrator’s brother, Danny, on his wedding day – unfolds, we learn more about this family’s dynamic. At a time when international/transracial adoption was rarer, her parents brought Danny home to California from Thailand to be her little brother. The narrator remembers the last-minute bureaucracy that preceded their flight, the conditions they discovered at the orphanage, Danny’s tantrums and speech therapy, a trip to Disneyland, their mother’s illness ... all the stories, good and bad, that make up a family’s repertoire. Alongside her reminiscences is her current struggle to conceive. She interrogates both basic plots – adoption as a trope in Victorian novels, and infertility narratives in the Bible – as she works her way towards the present day and the speech she has promised to give to fill in for Danny’s best man. Subtle as it is, the book is somehow lacking in emotional power.

As I plan for my wedding for next July, I cried through this whole short little bug. Wow is this good. How is it a debut? It is so incredibly powerful and moving to read this letter. I highly recommend!

Gorgeous novel written as a letter to a woman’s brother as she writes the speech she’s been asked to give at his wedding. Written in the 2nd person, this novel beautifully addresses the complexity of one’s family and creating a family and relationships therein. I’ve had personal experiences with a few themes in the novel and I found the facts and feelings to be spot on. It reads like a memoir. What a debut novel! I’ll read whatever this talented author writes next. You should too - but start with this one. Heartfelt thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the book. I’m so grateful.

Ashley Nelson Levy’s visceral debut, “Immediate Family” starts out benignly enough – her brother asks if she will make a speech at his imminent wedding. How nice! I guess I can. What will I say?

The complexity and disquiet of the request rolls out slowly. It’s been a while since the siblings last had time to catch up on what’s really going on in their lives. And there’s kind of a lot of catching up to do. And it’s not just recently that there have been a few issues; it’s kind of been that way for a long time, sort of like since the beginning. And it’s not just a few issues.

I look forward to finding out all about Ashley Nelson Levy, the author. I can only say that I am sure that she knows what she is talking about in “Immediate Family”. The insights, dialogue, and images are so spot-on and poignant. Beautifully written and paced.

I was highly moved by the entire narrative, more than expected. It was the opposite of a page-turner, but I mean that in a special way. I was afraid of what I would find out when new elements were introduced. It became a bit of a psychological thriller, but maybe that’s more me than on what Nelson Levy intended.

In summary, a bold, rich, compelling debut. We will hear lots more from Ms. Nelson Levy.

Thank you to Farrar, Straus, and Giroux and NetGalley for the eARC.

This slim novel is a love letter to family and a meditation on both difference and infertility. The unnamed narrator details how her family changed when Danny, then three, joined then after being adopted in Thailand. While things on the surface appeared good, there were dark undercurrents. Danny struggled to adapt to the US and was bullied. Did that lead to his bad behavior as a teen? The narrator, while she clearly loves her brother, has also held back her secrets some of which come out in this soliloquy, written as a toast for Danny's wedding but which wanders far from that. Thanks to netgalley for the ARC. A worthy debut.

Immediate Family by Ashley Nelson Levy Farrer, Strauss & Giroux August 3, 2021
This is a beautiful novel about adoption that reads like a memoir. I had to keep reminding myself that this was a work of fiction and not a memoir. The novel starts with the narrator, an older sister, giving a speech to her younger, adopted brother at his wedding. The novel is addressed in second person, to the brother, which leads to an immediate intensity, a perfect fit for this particular story. The narrator moves through time and memories, from learning that her parents will be adopting to meeting her new brother for the first time, to their ensuing fights and the narrator’s own struggle with infertility. This is a deeply moving book about family relationships that taught me a lot about transracial adoption in America. A beautiful and heartfelt debut. Thank you to Farrer, Strauss & Giroux and to NetGalley for the advanced review copy of the book.

What a beautiful debut! Levy's rendered an incredibly moving portrait of what makes family here; this is a novel about siblinghood and motherhood and friendship and in some ways grief. The way the narrative unfolds is ingenuous as well -- the narrator has been asked to prepare a speech for her brother's wedding, and she directs what proceeds in the novel to him. Consequently, this is written in the second person, and timelines are somewhat collapsed, but this hardly bogs anything down. This is really rich material, insightful too. Levy often pulls from more journalistic/academic sources to broaden the adoption experience, which I did feel worked to the novel's advantage. In any case, a stellar debut.

This novel is told in second person throughout and that point of view just didn't work for me with this story. Difficult to read and find the cadence, I found that the working of the writing took away from the plotline.

I received a copy of this novel from the publisher via NetGalley.

This is a story about adoption and infertility, with the narrator (who is struggling to get pregnant) addressing her adopted brother and talking about the things she might say about him in her speech at his wedding. It is therefore in the second person throughout, which I dislike and which felt contrived in places - the constant references to 'your brother in law' grated every time. There were paragraphs with researched information about adoption or infertility which read as if they had been dropped in so that the reader would understand things better, but which read oddly in the context of the narrator talking to her brother.

The parents were very saintly, although perhaps naive - Danny would only have abused my credit card the one time. This was a thoughtful book, and I can see that other readers might score it more highly, but for me it was a three star read: it dragged a bit by the end and the constant shifting in timeline which now seems compulsory in all new novels didn't help.

Thanks to Netgalley and FSG for the early ebook. This is a smart and really heartfelt first novel. At the start, our narrator is asked by her brother to speak at his upcoming wedding as his best man refuses to do so. As she’s preparing what to say a lifetime of memories come flooding back to her, starting with the drawn out, years long adoption process and then the trip to Thailand when she’s nine to adopt her brother, who is then three. The brother is renamed Danny and the family starts their life in a small town in California, close to San Francisco. The book recounts Danny’s rough adjustment to his new life, the bullying at school, but also the many beautiful memories that she has of growing up with Danny and the family as a whole. As she’s dealing with this wedding speech she also describes the last few years of trying to get pregnant and start her own family with her husband, but all the fertility drugs and procedures don’t seem to be working. This is such a thoughtful book that has a very lived in truth on every page.