I wanted to like this book so much. But the truth is it fell flat for me. The plot had so much potential, overstepping government with their watchful eyes, brainwashing, experimental programs, robotic children, camaraderie and betrayal within their “prison,” but overall I was just not able to root for the whiny main character. The book dragged on and on, and felt repetitive. And I think what was most disappointing was the ending itself. That could have easily been in the middle of the book and the story developed more...or why didn’t she just choose to do that in the first place? It just could have been more.

I do appreciate the ARC copy I received from
NetGalley and Simon & Schuster Publishing for the opportunity to read an advance copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

This dystopian novel about motherhood, mental illness, and ultimately what it means to be a woman today left such an impression on me - I still cannot stop thinking about Frida and Harriet. That being said, I didn’t feel like the dystopian elements were used enough so they felt a little forced. Absolutely worth a read and absorbing the stories of the mothers (and fathers).
Thank you to Simon and Schuster and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Thank you to Simon and Schuster and Netgalley for the chance to read this ARC. This is my honest review.

This book was an absolute page turner. The ideas of this book haunted me and made me wonder what our entire world really could end up being. The idea of being to loving to a child being seen as neglect did throw me a little bit. But regardless of some of the ideas in the book, I literally couldn't put it down. It wasn't something I would put at the top of my list of favorite books but it was still very interesting to read. I think this book has some ideas of what is happening in present day when it comes to be a mother within this society. Mothers get judged on a harder scale than others do.

I won't be reading it again because it was a very strong book with a lot of dark issues but I will say that I am glad to have read it at all.

Thank you to Simon and Schuster and Netgalley for the opportunity to read this ARC. This is my honest review.

Frida is a recently divorced, 39 year old, Chinese-American single mom. Frida has what is known throughout the book as a “very bad day”. She makes a poor parenting decision and is sentenced to one year in a school for bad mothers. And that’s where things begin to get crazy!

Throughout the novel we see what an extreme society is like when it does not believe or value women. Even though this book made me so angry almost the entire time I read it, I loved the perspective.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who has enjoyed books like “The Handmaid’s Tale” or “The Grace year”

It will definitely strike up some amazing book club conversations!

4.5/5

Frida Liu had a very bad day. Recently divorced after her husband’s affair, Frida is struggling with raising her one year old daughter. Like everyone else, she makes a mistake. This mistake lands her in front of a family court judge who sentences her to a year at a Big Brother-esque institution, where she will learn how to be a “good mother”. She must survive the year at this school for even a chance of being reunited with her daughter.

I absolutely loved this book. Frida is such an amazing character and Chan wrote her beautifully. I felt and understood everything that Frida was going through, even as someone without children. The novel touches on some excellent themes, such as racial equity and how society (and often other women) harshly judge mothers and hold them to a much higher standard than fathers. The novel asks “What is a good mother anyway? And who the hell gets to decide that?” I really loved how Chan examined different cultural parenting styles and validated them equally. I highly recommend this one!

As much as the ideas in this book creeped me out, I could not stop reading. Frida is a single, working mom in a harsh and unforgiving society. She is reported to CPS and sent to a training school for parents where she encounters an almost tyrannical environment and wildly disturbing teaching methods that use AI technology. The mothers at the school are harshly judged and graded on their ability to love and nurture a child, which they're told can be measured by cameras, heart rate, tone of voice, etc. The development that Frida's character goes through is striking. You can see the impact that the school has on her perceptions of her own mothering abilities as well as the events that led her here. The position that Frida is put in is basically inescapable and as much as I wanted her to fight the system, there's not much she can do except endure it. This book is so realistic it makes you question how close we are to this level of surveillance and control. I do think the last few months that Frida is at the school are both repetitive and rushed at the same time, but overall this book is worth reading.

Interesting speculative fiction / dystopian novel about the child care system. As other reviewers mentioned, the pacing was a little off for me; the middle section of the book definitely started to feel repetitive with the units that the mothers were going through, though maybe that was the point as well.

I thought this raised a lot of fascinating questions about parenting, especially given the cultural differences of white / Asian American / Latinx / Black cultures in the US.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review!

THIS book. From the first pages, I knew it would be one of my favorite books I've read in a long time. After reading the Handmaid's Tale over a decade ago I've been searching for a dystopian novel that addresses women's issues with the same blunt rawness through amazing storytelling. The School for Good Mothers did exactly that. The stories are so completely different, but the emotional journey was similar. This book ripped the curtain back on something every mom experiences almost daily from other mothers and society: mom judgment Living under constant scrutiny, where nothing is good enough. I loved how this book addressed that while also dealing with the other very real issue of child neglect and abuse. The only bad thing about reading this book is I have to wait until January until I can make every single person I know read it.

I had high hopes for this book, but unfortunately the dystopian approach didn't work for me. The first 35% of the book was all right, but the rest really dragged on and I had to force myself to get through it. 60% of the book is spent running circles around the same situation that just slowly becomes more and more ridiculous. I appreciate the issues Chan is attempting to address, but because the rest of the world remained normal beyond the school, that tension just made the dystopian aspects seem overdone and ridiculous rather than believable. Chan also attempts to address racial stereotypes, but this is done with a heavy hand that instead drew too much attention. I appreciate Chan's writing and it did fit the tone of the book, but the rhythm was too consistent/not enough variation, especially given the slow pacing of the story.

That said, while this didn't work for me as a piece of literature, I do think this story has great cinematic qualities and would be an awesome movie.

One bad day changes everything.

"The School for Good Mothers" by Jessamine Chan follows Frida, a Chinese-American mother who has shared custody over her young daughter Harriet with her ex-husband. After "the bad day", when Frida left Harriet alone in her home with no supervision, she is reported to CPS and forced to go to a reform school for bad mothers.

This book falls in my personal favorite genre of the literary speculative fiction. The book really tries to come at the question of what makes a good mother from every angle. In theory everything about parenting can be taught and standardized to clear-cut curriculum. However the experience the mothers go through at the school really proves otherwise.

Though the beginning chapters were excruciating and uncomfortable to get through, I really enjoyed deep diving into each curriculum at the school and the ridiculousness of lessons like the correct sequence and timing of a hug, "motherese", and how to rescue their children from wild situations. While the plot was entertaining, the bigger messages about the expectations of parenting were done a bit clumsily. The explorations into how parenting differs between races and genders was brought up, but seemed to fall more comfortably into stereotypes rather than critique. Some parts of the curriculum were so unbelievable against the backdrop of a world that's pretty much current day, it seemed hard to believe that a "reformed" program would be so blatantly ignorant. By the end, I was hoping to see change in Frida's attitudes towards parenting compared to the beginning or even Frida learning her own lessons (the "true" lessons) from being in the program...and I don't think there was a clear difference, which was a bit disappointing.

Hey Jessamine- I'll give you 4 out of 5 birds for The School for Good Mothers. I love books that are messed up, I will admit that this one did cause me a lot of anxiety- probably because I am a mom of three young kids. Overall, I liked the concept and how the author showed how much of our parenting is being watched and critiqued. This book made me think.... And also made me scared lol, but thats fine, right? I also raged about the inconsistencies in the mothers and fathers- but realize that's the point. So Jessamine nailed that. I loved that this book featured a women of asian dissent and showed the racism happening at the school and that is faced in parenting. Overall, I thought it was well-written, fear driven, and very much so like a Handmaiden's Tale. If you like that book/show then you would LOVE this book. It does have swearing and more than I wanted/needed to know about the character's sex lives. I want to thank NetGalley for the advanced copy in return for my honest review and Jessamine Chan for her unique perspective.

This book is so relevant to today. We may not have any official institutions for "bad mothers," but we definitely have a lot of biased sentencing based on gender roles.

Notable lines:

"The mothers aren't supposed to celebrate their birthdays. They can only talk about themselves in relation to their children."

" . . . what it means to age, how her body would change if she were real, what society expects of mothers and daughters, how they're expected to fight, how she fought with her own mother and now regrets every cruel word."

"Parents aren't supposed to feel lonely."

Thank you to NetGalley for giving me an ARC of this book!

“Fix the home,” she says, “and fix society.”

This book is a painful read. We are vividly shown the extent that a mother would go through to get their child back. We are also shown the cold, clinical extent that the government will go to prevent that from happening.

I enjoyed this book, but once we got to the second half, it felt repetitive and boring. While still uncomfortable, I feel this book sat on the edge of either being a contemporary or a thriller. Never deciding which one it wanted to be. Despite the somewhat lull in the second half, the ending was satisfying and interesting. This is truly a fantastic debut, and I can’t wait to read more from Jessamine Chan.

First, thank you to NetGalley, Jessamine Chan, and Simon & Schuster for providing an ARC in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.

This book. THIS BOOK. Easily the best I've read in many months, and that includes many of the Women's Prize in Fiction long listers. It follows Frida, a somewhat floundering middle-aged single mother in Philadelphia, through one "very bad day" that alters the course of her life and results in her child being taken from her. But it's more than that. It's searing, biting, funny, but punch-you-in-the-gut commentary on middle class parenting standards that are impossible to meet, on the demands of motherhood in particular, on female scrappiness and complexity, on love, on the balance between child safety advocacy and state domination. I can't seem to stay away from cliches here, but my heart was in my throat the entire novel. I'm a mom, and I don't think I'm alone (Chan doesn't seem to think so either) in the feeling that I just can't master motherhood the way social pressure dictates-- that even though I'm a good mom who loves her kids, I wouldn't pass state muster, I wouldn't pass the School for Good Mothers. Because that school-- the school that's "speculative" in Chan's fictional world-- intentionally hits close to the reality that mothers are often judged by unreachable standards that tap into latent sexism, that seek to translate subjective aspects of love and care into objective rubrics. Good God, it's good.

It's unputdownable, it's smart, it's beautiful. Read it.

DNF around 30% of the way through. Great writing, really compelling plot and world building, but the content is too dark and depressing for me right now. I’m sure this book will get lots of great reviews when it’s published though. I might finish it someday when I’m in a better headspace.

The School for Good Mothers tackles complex questions related to modern-day motherhood and femininity, as well as the intersection of race in how motherhood is viewed. I applaud the author for taking on this topic, as I think we don’t actually have enough blunt conversations about some of the expectations for parents. The feeling that mothers must lose their entire identities for their children, to sacrifice their own emotional well-being, is something that I thought was very well illustrated here.

That being said, the book is a little out there. While the author aimed for tackling these complicated discussions, the execution was a bit too out of this world for my taste. I believe that dystopia can be believable, and this wasn’t entirely believable. Some of the decisions related to family court were especially not aligned with traditional practice in the USA, and I think added an element to the story that made it no longer relatable.

The protagonist also has an incredible support system, including the support of her ex-husband and her parents both emotionally and financially. I almost feel that the downfall of this book was making the mothers TOO sympathetic, because the more they appeared to be doing everything right, and the more their support system helped them, the more the central conflict with the school and the court system seemed to be far-fetched. The first half of the book was believable, the second half was not.

I enjoyed the writing and would read more by this author, but this book just missed the mark a bit for my taste.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for providing me with an Advanced Reader’s Copy in exchange for an honest review.

It's important to remember this is a work of dystopian fiction.

It purposefully uses over-exaggeration and unrealistic situations to highlight the endless criticism, judgment, and condescension mothers face. The worst of which often coming from other mothers. In a world of constant surveillance, this book goes one step further to show how it can be used to govern women's actions, thoughts, words, and feelings. And how this control differs between race, socio-class, age, etc. It's speculative but not completely implausible. The author uses hyperbole to make a pretty obvious point but somehow it seems people still missed it. It's infuriating, thought-provoking, and an all-around interesting read.

Thank you to Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for an arc of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I struggled with getting into this book from the beginning. The characters fall a bit flat and I had a hard time picking back up the book to continue my reading, I really needed to push myself to get through each next chapter. The plot lines surrounding the investigation were so exaggerated to me that it was difficult to keep reading. I’m sure that it will be a great read for those with broader imaginations, I just could not get myself there. I appreciated the overall commentary on parenting, but the delivery was not enjoyable.

•A R C•B O O K•R E V I E W•
2021 Book #58 out of 80
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THE SCHOOL FOR GOOD MOTHERS
by JESSAMINE CHAN
Publication date January 4, 2022
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ out of 5 stars
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Content Warnings: Loss of Child, Child Abuse and Neglect, Reference to Drugs and Alcohol

QUICK SYNOPSIS:
Frida Liu describes the day of her losing custody as a "very bad day." From her mistake, Frida has to do whatever it takes to get her baby back, even if it requires her to join an experimental Reformation Bootcamp practicing skills and treatments to become a "Good Mother." Frida is forced to participate in the dreaded parenting classes, parenting skills and practices, and evening talking circles to determine whether or not she passes to become a "Good Mother" so she can rejoin her baby.

STORYLINE & THOUGHTS:
~ Chan breaks down the barriers and addresses racism, sexism, and parenting expectations through this dystopian novel that gave me all the Black Mirror and The Handmaid's Tale feels.
~ The pacing of the book was well created, especially since the book had heavy topics and issues discussed to match the storyline.
~ My emotions were frequently twisted and turned to fit various situations and losses happening throughout the book. Although it was quite a roller coaster of a novel, these emotional pushes and pulls only drew me into reading more of the book.
~ Overall, this book is by far my favorite dystopian read for 2021!
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Thank you to @netgalley and @SimonandSchuster for this ARC Ebook. All reviews are fair and honest reviews. All opinions are my own.
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Thanks to Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for this ARC. The plot of this novel was super intriguing and unique, and it made me reflect on a lot of important questions which I think come up more and more often in our society, like what is the role of a mother? How does society judge mothers for mistakes? When does imperfection become a danger to the child? When is a child better off without their birth parent, and who can make those kinds of decisions? Why do we judge mothers so much more harshly than fathers? It reminded me a little of the movie "Gone Baby Gone" in that way. There's so much judgment of parents, especially in our age of social media. The book was a little repetitive to me, and I felt like a lot of the plot points could have been cut down. I got a little bored during the middle. It was an over-the-top concept, but I liked it because it is dystopian, though I feel there could have been a richer world developed which justified the crazy state of things.