#18 of 2022: The School for Good Mothers- I think this book might be for some people, but that person just wasn’t me. I did like the concept of the book- a sort of dystopian society, 1984-esque novel that centers on mothers and government overreach. Being a mother, I think that a lot of this book just didn’t sit right with me. I also really wasn’t a fan of the vulgar language/sex scenes- it felt unnecessary and out of place. I almost DNF this- but powered through. Unfortunately was a miss for me.

2 ⭐️

Synopsis: “Frida Liu is struggling. She doesn’t have a career worthy of her Chinese immigrant parents’ sacrifices. She can’t persuade her husband, Gust, to give up his wellness-obsessed younger mistress. Only with Harriet, their cherubic daughter, does Frida finally attain the perfection expected of her. Harriet may be all she has, but she is just enough.

Until Frida has a very bad day.

The state has its eyes on mothers like Frida. The ones who check their phones, letting their children get injured on the playground; who let their children walk home alone. Because of one moment of poor judgment, a host of government officials will now determine if Frida is a candidate for a Big Brother-like institution that measures the success or failure of a mother’s devotion.

Faced with the possibility of losing Harriet, Frida must prove that a bad mother can be redeemed. That she can learn to be good.”

Thanks to @netgalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Intense book from the very first page. I couldn't help but feel anguish for the mother and her one lapsed moment, then fighting for custody of her child.

Oh my goodness!!! At times tearful and then horrific (could not think of another word)!!! Had me angry & scared! Almost like Handmaids Tale? But s very interesting read! Thank you for the ARC!

This book was rough to read at times and truly made you hate social workers throughout most of the book. The whole concept and storyline was wild, but still very creative. As it escalated, it started to feel like I was reading an Ayn Rand novel or started to feel very The Giver-ish. The entire concept of The School for Good Mothers is mind blowing and a truly scary concept. Overall, I give it 4 stars because I felt I needed more from the ending after such a long, gut wrenching story.

One of my best books of the past year. It is a story of a mother who makes the mistake of leaving her toddler alone for a few hours and then has to be incarcerated and “re-trained” to win back her parental rights. Very uncomfortable to read because I could actually see this happening in the future. Highly recommend .

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon and Schuster as well as Jessamine Chan for this ARC in exchange for my unbiased review.
#NetGalley #SimonandSchuster #JessamineChan
Wow, this one was disturbing! Can you imagine not being allowed to see your child because you made a parenting mistake??!! All of you parents out there that aren’t perfect,,guess what?
You will be subjected to a reform school that is more akin to boot camp. Parents are subjected to classes, counseling sessions and other things designed to create a perfect parent.
Single mother Frieda leaves her toddler alone for two hours and is reported by a neighbor. She spends much of the book under the scrutiny of the government as they try to improve her mothering skills.
This book speaks to the culture we live in today in which a parents’ every move is scrutinized and blown up for all the world to see and judge. There’s also some sexism and racism commentary here. This is a powerful and disturbing book. I’m removing one star because I felt that this book could have used some editing and focus.

The School for Good Mothers succeeds at many things. It takes a searing look at the cult of motherhood that persists in our society, at how mothers are held to impossibly high standards, while fathers only have to exert minimal effort to garner high praise. It looks at the increased double standard that minority women face. It’s a gripping story. For me, however, it ultimately overshot the mark, coming across as a fever dream of paranoia, at best a heavy-handed satire.

Frida Liu is a young mother whose life feels insurmountable. I have to tell you that she is a very sympathetic character. She’s a single mother, one whose husband started an affair with a much younger woman while she was pregnant, and left her and the baby for his “one true love” when the child was tiny, although he has continued to be involved in her life. His new partner has money, so the pair of them live in a beautiful house while Frida can barely afford an apartment. She’s struggling with work, lack of sleep, and a fairly deep depression, something she’s wrestled with most of her life. She also lacks a support system, because she moved for her husband’s work not that long before becoming pregnant. Laid on thick enough yet? Of course this poor woman is ripe for a lapse in judgement, and she makes it–leaving her toddler home alone while she runs out for an iced coffee, then stops by work to pick up some documents, then comes home to be arrested for child neglect and abandonment.

I didn’t have a problem with the story up to this point. It’s all too possible, and naturally she should be held accountable and receive the help she needs. However, from this moment on, Frida can never catch a break. She’s held to impossible standards, including the fact that her Chinese heritage is held against her–her own parents were distant, as hard-working first generation immigrants, therefore Frida’s own parenting style is suspect. She also cannot show any interest in any man, as that would be choosing him over her baby. The state examines her life minutely, and she is found wanting and labeled a “bad mother.” But there is hope! Frida can attend a year-long residential program, a school to teach bad mothers to be good. Desperate, she agrees.

The School for Good Mothers is well-written and thought-provoking. However, like I said, it was too heavy-handed for me. I wanted there to be at least one person in authority who had even a tiny clue about parenting, about cultural norms, about the trauma inflicted on children by taking them from their mothers, but to no avail. Even the smallest variation from the highest of standards is unforgivable, and Frida fails again and again. A painful read, one that would have benefited from dialing it down just a little bit.

“I am a bad mother, but I am learning to be good.”

How many mothers have had a bad day? It is safe to say that all moms have had, at minimum, at least one day where their parenting wasn’t up to snuff. A day where they didn’t follow baby book guidance. A day where they let their child consume too much sugar. A day where they ignored their baby while attending to another task. But do these mishaps make these women “bad mothers?” Is the only good mother a perfect mother? Such is the question raised in Jessamine Chan’s unsettling debut novel, The School for Good Mothers, a cautionary dystopian tale of government overreach in a world that only sees black and white, good and bad.

When Frida Liu, worn out by the demands of raising her young daughter Harriet as a newly single parent, has a bad day, it is fated to haunt her for the rest of her life. Frida lives in an America that looks deceptively similar to our own, but with one startling difference. Parents who are reported to Child Protective Services find themselves enrolled in a special school where they learn to be “good mothers and fathers.” Frida is court-ordered to attend the School for Good Mothers after her very bad day, and now must learn how to be good.

The School for Good Mothers is one of the most disturbing, unconventional, and heartbreaking novels I have read in some time. Frida Liu’s America could be our America with expanded government and regulation. An America where parents are never given a chance to mess up. An America where punishing mothers and fathers for the slightest neglect takes precedence over what is best for their child.

This novel is quietly horrifying, while at the same time, blood-boiling infuriating. The School for Good Mothers employs unorthodox methods to teach moms and dads how to parent, and is run as if learning how to be a good parent is textbook. Its strict adherence to what a good parent looks like leaves little room for what actual children are like, and doesn’t take into consideration all the ways that kids surprise us and test our love, boundaries, and expectations. This book highlights everything that is wrong with big government, and should read as a warning against allowing so much outside interference and influence into our lives.

Prepare to be equal parts horrified and heartbroken while reading The School for Good Mothers. This story is ugly, tragic, and terrifying, and will give readers much to contemplate long after closing its covers.

I had trouble getting into the pacing of The School for Good Mothers. While I think it had something important to say and I certainly want to hear it, it took a long time to get to that point, or it at least felt like it dragged on for longer than expected. The writing is excellent and the dystopian setting is unsettling, which is to say it’s done well, but unfortunately something just didn’t click with me and it felt more middle-of-the-road despite having a lot of potential.

I enjoyed this read but wanted more. I found it a little bland. The cover of the book was also a little boring. I hope they went with a different alternative

This book made me feel like a tightly-wound spring. It was intense and about unimaginable circumstances, and yet realistic. I struggled with some of the character development, but enjoyed the writing overall. I think it is similar to books like Followers by Megan Angelo and The Farm by Joanne Ramos, in that it takes the current world of 2022 and fast-tracks some of society's worst impulses into action, to see the repercussions.

In this story, the main character, Frida Lu leaves her toddler daughter alone for 2 hours. She is then punished for doing so and sent to the court's newly instituted year long reform program for "bad" mothers, so to speak which is extremely harsh and strict. This is a dystopian society where a mother's parenting skills are scrutinized. Frida is thrust into this touch situation where she has to work extra hard and score more points just for visitation with her daughter. Frida has a hard time with all that she must do to get her daughter back.
As a mother of 5, I did not really enjoy this book because the thought of being away from any of my kids for a year is absolutely unbearable. The story moves slowly and I kept waiting for more to happen... I did like the ending, however. Thanks so much for the ARC!!

This book was infuriating to read in the best way possible. I would definitely recommend. I live in Philly and loved the accurate representation of the city. I was absolutely hooked from the very beginning until the very shocking end.

While an incredibly fascinating premise, I found this book to be difficult to get through. I actually put down around the 70% mark, as I found so much of the writing to be repetitive and there was little going on in terms of action to drive the story.

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for providing me with a copy of Jessamine Chan’s The School for Good Mothers.

Frida is beyond exhausted. She is newly divorced and struggling to achieve perfectionism, while caring for her eighteen-month old daughter and working full-time. Her mind is preoccupied with her ex-husband Gust, who has moved on to a new life with his much younger new wife. Not only is the new wife the woman Gust cheated on Frida with, but now Frida must share custody of Harriet with them.

During one of Frida’s weeks caring for Harriet, Frida makes a life-altering decision. While Harriet is napping, Frida decides to go on a quick errand to her office, where she is feeling the pressure of deadlines and trying to not have single-motherhood impact her career. Harriet will never even know that her mother was gone. Frida’s exhaustion makes her forgetful and the quick trip takes longer than she originally planned. By the time she returns home, the police have been notified about her neglect.

The consequences are severe. If Frida would like to maintain a relationship with her daughter, she must attend a year-long education camp, where mothers who have been neglectful, abusive or otherwise “unmotherly” are trained to be “good mothers.” They mothers are psychologically punished for their bad choices and must pass a series of tests where the odds of passing are low. Even if they survive the year at camp, if they do not pass the tests, their parental rights will be severed. During her time at the camp, she has limited contact with Harriet and during those calls, Frida is tormented to see her daughter increasingly look towards Gust’s new wife, as a mother figure.

The stakes are raised when realistic robots, robots that mimic the features of the mother’s own children, are assigned to each mother. The robots are new and experimental, but have been designed to calculate the emotions, including the range of love and tenderness in which each mother is capable. The mothers will be evaluated not only by their harsh human guards, but also by these previously untested robots.

The School for Good Mothers is a phenomenal debut novel. I was hooked from the first chapter and horrified by the content. It’s very much in the vein of Margaret Atwood or the television show Black Mirror. It has strong feminist themes, taking a deep dive at how women are carry unfair burdens in society and how expectations of how women should behave, especially stereotypes of motherhood, can be very detrimental.

I read this book a few months ago and I think it is especially timely with the latest threats to Roe v. Wade. Both the recent court news and this book, highlight the ways in which American society does not support women, even when women have children and need help. The School for Good Mothers shows the contrast in which women and men are treated. Gust behaves poorly, but is treated like a saint. He can leave his former wife struggling and move forward with zero repercussions. The women in the school know that there is a nearby school for fathers, but they learn that the fathers are not given the same level of punishment that the mothers are given. Women should know better and a woman who is not judged to be appropriately motherly is damaged. The men are allowed freedoms and access that the women are not permitted and their tests are not are dire. The women are facing judgement, while the men are biding their time.

The School for Good Mothers is a powerful and gut-wrenching read that I recommend to everyone. It’s fiction, but it reads like a terrifying, near-future reality.

This is a painful yet achingly true read about the impossible to achieve label of "good mother." This is about a mother's love for a child and how society feels its their role to judge and grade that love. Any mother can relate to this searing novel.

The School for Good Mothers was definitely a thought provoking book. It was disturbing, sad, and had a lot of social commentary. It would be a great discussion starter and it really left me feeling a certain type of way. There were large sections of the book that really made me mad at the situations Frida found herself in and was treated. The book had some really good commentary on some really touch-ey subjects. In those ways Jessamine Chan was really successful and I see what she was trying to do.

I think, for me, the execution just didn’t do it for me. I had a hard time connecting with Frida. Not because I couldn’t relate to her, but because everything I knew about her was surface level. I feel like Chan was relying a little too much on the plot to carry the story. But the whole middle of the plot kind of dragged on. Things were happening, but I honestly had a hard time keeping focus on the book and getting invested. At the beginning I was really interested, but the classes Frida had to take got repetitive.

I have seen a lot of really good reviews on this book, but it just wasn’t for me.

Thank you Simon & Schuster and Netgalley for sending me a digital ARC of this book in return for my honest thoughts.

An almost-too-plausible dystopian story handled with a very dry touch that starts off feeling clinical but utterly sucks you in. It's hard not to feel skeptical about the surrogate child dolls assigned to the parents at the school, but if you can suspend disbelief about their humanlike behaviors, the school itself is totally believable -- from the childless instructors espousing proper parenting techniques to the wave of Sapphic romance that runs through the school once the "bad mothers" have settled in, to the way the "bad fathers" receive significantly more lenience than their female counterparts, to the invasive, persistent focus on whether lonely Frida's attraction to one of the dads undermined her parenting. I loved the ending -- it felt inevitable and true. By the end, Frida, whose natural warmth as a partner and as a parent is always in question (per her judges, herself, and the neutral, distant tone of the third-person narrative), has all our sympathy, not in spite, but because of it.

I started to read this book and I have to admit that there was such an implausible story line that I couldn’t continue on with the book. I am all for liberties taken with reality in all areas, however, this one just went a smidge too far for me. As a mother, I can’t even fathom that this could happen. I do apologize that I couldn’t finish the book, but I just didn’t want to waste my time after already reading 1/4 of the book.

This is a fascinating story--but it was a bit darker than I anticipated. I am excited for others to read. Will recommend!