What a disturbingly amazing read this was!

In a dystopian world where 'bad mothers' are scolded, punished and banished for infractions big and small, there exists a pilot program with promises to retrain and rehabilitate those who have lost their parental rights. For Frida Liu, who has lost guardianship of her daughter Harriet after a fatigue-induced very bad day, The School for Good Mothers is her final hope of reuniting. For one year, the thought of her daughter must be enough to prove that she deserves a second chance and that a mother's love truly knows no bounds.

I was intrigued by the premise of this and I love books with a dystopian/ alternate reality vibe. But this? This was so much more. It was gripping, I couldn't stop reading. It gave me all the feelings. The rage, the sadness!

The commentary on the expectations we have of mothers, the difference in what society believes are the responsibilities of a mother vs. a father and the overwhelmed CPS system were relatively accurate and gut-wrenching. This is not a happy book but it's an important one- one that I'd definitely recommend buddy reading or using for book club.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for sending a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I loved this unique, chilling book which raised a lot of questions & was an excellent book to discuss with friends. It’s very original & thought-provoking.

This book was so much fun to read. I was on the edge of my seat wondering what would happen with Harriet the entire time. I was praying for the ending to happen the whole year Frida was away. This book gives off major Handmaid’s Tale vibes and is such a quick read.

I overall liked this book. I think the idea is really strong, and not as far off as a lot of people seem to think. There are parts of THE SCHOOL FOR GOOD MOTHERS that are so tense I couldn’t stop reading. I especially loved the ways certain harms of children were criminalized while others were celebrated, and the ways that gender played into success. I thought overall this one was smart and entertaining way of examining the criminalization of parents.
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The start and end of this book are extremely strong and the middle is too long and repetitive. But for a debut, it’s working on a lot of levels. I will say if you’re a new parent this book might be especially difficult to read.

This book is riveting. My daughter is just a little younger than Harriet is at the beginning of the book, and I found Frida's separation from her gut-wrenching. If someone took my child away, I would really and truly drop dead. I understand the comparisons to Margaret Atwood that this book is getting and a lot of the women at the School remind me of women who I met when I worked in a corrections setting. Some of them really did terrible things, but many of them were just at a crossroads of poverty and a bad decision. I think what works really well is how obvious it is that Frida is a good mother in every way that really matters, but all of these metrics put on her cannot measure the love between her and Harriet. I think that in this way Chan builds a clear, harsh critique of the unbalanced way that children are taken from their parents and put into foster care. Just, in this book, it's bumped up a lot with surveillance, people turning their neighbors in, and even social media posts getting kids taken away. The state does more trauma to Harriet than Frida's "very bad day" ever did. With the lessons at the school, she critiques the unrealistic expectations on mothers that are imposed by just how many voices want to tell mothers exactly how to parent. I think it works better, though, because Frida does something that actually is a pretty unsafe, scary thing to do--under sleep deprivation, yes--so it's not like *nothing* should have happened, but what does happen is so clearly not the right solution.

I appreciated the complexity of Frida's relationship with Gust and Susanna. I could have done without the romantic pairings later in the book. By that point, I was so much more invested in the motherhood story that I just did not have time for Curtis, even as I saw what Chan was trying to do with that thread in her commentary on how all-consuming motherhood is expected to be.

Really enjoyed this one! So a unique premise and honestly felt very real. As a new mother, I related a lot to this book. It’s one that will stay with me for awhile and I find myself thinking about often. Highly recommend!

Thank you to @netgalley and @simonandschuster for my gifted copy of School for Good Mothers, by Jessamine Chan! This book is out now.

I didn’t enjoy this dystopian commentary of parenting. It seemed a little harsh, though that may have been the point. It’s an interesting concept, but I don’t think it was executed well.

I was on the fence on whether to buy this book for my high schoolers but after 9th grade got assigned Handmaid's Tale I figured it would be a good readalike. It's a great read full of interesting conflicts and great characters.

I wish I'd read this in a book club. There's so much to discuss and think about. It's a book I will be thinking about for a long time to come.

In a world very similar to our own, mothers are taken away from their children for years for mistakes that range from very minor to abusive. They are forced into parenting classes with creepy robot children and based on the results of their classes, they are either reunited with their much older children or separated for good.
The reason I rated this book so highly is that I read this book a few months ago and it has really stuck with me. I typically steer clear of books in this genre, but I couldn't put this one down. This is a tough book, but definitely worth a read.

Can a bad mother be redeemed? Is there only one way to parent? These questions and more are the focus of this dystopian debut novel. Frida's very bad day with her daughter Harriet lands her in a government reform program where bad mothers use robot children to improve their parenting skills. If they fail to pass the program their parental rights are terminated. This book made me feel anger, frustration, and pity all great emotions to share in a book club.

This book kept me on my toes the whole time. It was futuristic, but close enough to present to send chills up my spine!

Although the premise of this book sounded amazing, I was slightly disappointed. Of course, as a reader, you have sympathy for the main character and the struggles of motherhood. The dystopian school is extremely exaggerated and felt not very “human like”. No individual is perfect ALL the time, but here you are expected to be or else. I felt like the book was a constant repeat of itself, and although I had high hopes for this one—I ended up disappointed.

This was a great novel that propelled nicely through discussions on pertinent and timely topics. However, the internal meat of the book was quite slow-paced. The first chapter and the last chapter were great, but it was kind of a slog to get through the middle bit.

This was a well written book with a good premise. I am not a mother so it was a bit hard for me to relate to. In the end it was a DNF for me. I could not get into the book. I feel others would enjoy the book, but it was not for me.

Loved the premise for this book and immediately felt sympathy for the main character and her struggles as a mother. Though this dystopian school is exaggerated, it exemplifies the way motherhood is scrutinized and dehumanized. You are expected to be 100% perfect all the time or be seen as a terrible human being, thus you have to give up everything and let your whole life revolve around your child. There’s also some brief, interesting points the book makes with the main character’s upbringing and the way immigrant parenting styles can be viewed as cold/unfeeling VS the way parenthood “should” be — I would’ve liked to see this explored further to give a deeper layer to the story, but felt like we only touched the surface. The execution of the book ended up being quite repetitive and didn’t move the story further, so it felt like there were some missed opportunities for more plot threads, relationship developments, twists, etc.

3.5 // The School for Good Mothers is an imaginative and heartbreaking/infuriating novel that portrays the immense pressure on mothers from society. (It seems as though everyone has opinions on how you should raise your children, and the smallest of mistakes you make are blown out of proportion.) Frida Liu is not a bad mother, but the dystopian penal system she ends up in is horrendous. Chan did an excellent job of communicating dread, fear, and anguish through the setting and interactions with the instructional dolls. Ultimately, I didn’t love this book, as I thought the pacing for the first half was slow and certain aspects of Frida’s character / relationships could’ve been further explored, but I’ll certainly be watching Chan’s career going forward. A good debut.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the review copy.

Whoaaaaaa this book. These days, so many dystopian novels can feel like they could happen in real life, and this one hits just enough close to home that it knocked me on my heels for weeks. The world that Frida, the main character, lives in is unforgiving to women, especially mothers. She's taken away from her child and faces a nearly impossible uphill battle to get her back. What ensues in Frida's journey to get her child back is heartbreaking and revealing of the ways we treat mothers in the real world.

This one was so hard to get through. I picked it up many times (even after the ARC deadline) and just couldn't do it. I'd get to about 25% and give up.

This book is absolutely crazy! The concept is so original and really makes you think about what it takes to be a mother. You can tell the author spent a lot of time researching and building what the school would look like and entail. Is the main character actually a bad mother? This book will make you question what she has actually done and how bad is she in comparison to the other mothers. I would recommend this book to someone who wants to think or enjoyed titles like The Push or Verity!