This is another one of those situations where the book is perfectly adequate, the writing is above average, the story is engaging enough and completely readable, there’s not much overtly wrong with the book other than it being & feeling really derivative. The characters were complex and likable & the storyline was compelling enough to keep me from being bored. I was invested in the character’s lives and was never bored while I was reading this. But even with all those positives, my reading experience was still very mid just bc it feels very much like a book I’ve read many times over. It was still moving, & it managed to get a good grip on my heart but it’s fatal flaw was that it lacked anything that makes it stand out from all the other books with similar storylines and themes. There are 1 million books out there about family history, dysfunction and healing, this one is a rather decent one, but it’s not the very best of them, but still all in all it was a pleasant reading experience and I don’t feel that I wasted my time in reading it.

Adam Haslett's Mothers and Sons tells the story of Peter and his mother. Peter is an immigration lawyer and the novel confronts trauma and how long lasting the impacts can be. I enjoyed Peter's story but was especially interested in the background of his work in immigration law.

Haslett is a great story teller who involves you with his characters and their inner lives.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance copy fo Mothers and Sons in exchange for an honest review. Mothers and Sons is available now.

Mothers and Sons is a masterful, emotionally incisive collection that showcases Adam Haslett’s rare ability to cut straight to the heart of human connection—and disconnection. With remarkable precision and empathy, Haslett explores the fragile threads that tie families together, particularly the complicated dynamics between mothers and sons. Each story is a quiet storm, offering glimpses into lives marked by longing, misunderstanding, mental illness, and unspoken love. The emotional clarity is striking, and even the subtlest moments carry enormous weight.

What sets Haslett apart is his restraint. He doesn’t lean on dramatic twists or overwrought sentiment; instead, he trusts the reader to sit with discomfort and ambiguity. His prose is elegant, pared down, and deeply observant, allowing character interiority to bloom in unexpected ways. The collection spans different voices and circumstances, but there’s a shared emotional intelligence throughout—an understanding of the quiet ache that often defines our most intimate relationships.

Some stories resonate more powerfully than others, and a few may feel understated to the point of slipping past without leaving as strong a mark. But that ebb and flow feels natural in a collection like this, and it ultimately underscores the book’s quiet brilliance. Mothers and Sons is an unassuming but deeply affecting work—one that lingers not because it shouts, but because it whispers truths we often try to ignore.

This was way too slow for me. I did not care for the mother or the son. The relationship was estranged yes, but the arguments and conflict just did not appeal to me at all.

This novel follows Peter, a gay lawyer representing asylum seekers, and his complex relationship with his estranged lesbian mother. It powerfully explores themes of family, acceptance, and the deep bond between mothers and their gay sons, delivering a compelling and thought-provoking story that lingers long after reading.

Mothers and Sons was a not-altogether-unpleasant exploration of family, trauma, and the lasting effects of past wounds. Haslett's blunt style captured the emotional intensity of the characters’ inner struggles, but you definitely have to brace yourself while reading. I also found the sections about Peter's immigration work dry and perhaps unnecessary. While these moments were thematically relevant, they sometimes felt like a detour from the more personal aspects of the story.

The character arcs of Peter and Ann develop separately, and I did appreciate the nuance in their growth, though at times, their relationship shifts felt a bit forced or disconnected. The quieter moments in Haslett's prose really shone, especially when diving into the characters' personal grief and regrets. Overall, I found this book to be a solid, though imperfect read. It offered a lot of insight into family dynamics and unresolved trauma, but its pacing and structure didn’t fully land for me.

Thank you to Netgalley and the Publisher for this Advanced Readers Copy of Mothers and Sons by Adam Haslett!

Mothers and Sons was an excellent read. I loved the writing and it was propulsive. Great character study. I would read more from this author.

This is definitely a slow burn. Told from alternating points of view from Peter and his mother, watching Peter's downward spiral was heartbreaking because the reader is living it.
The novel is also a social commentary on our broken immigration system and those who get trapped in the paperwork and court system.
Thank you to NetGalley for the advanced copy.

I would like to thank NetGalley and Little, Brown and Company for providing me with an advance e-galley of this book in exchange for an honest review. Look for it now in your local and online bookstores and libraries.

I found this story to be a bit disjointed and couldn’t get completely engrossed in this one. The description was a bit misleading.

It turned around by the end, but I wanted it to be more.

Thank you Netgalley for this ARC of Mothers and Sons by Adam Haslett.

There was a lot to appreciate about this book. I especially liked getting a glimpse into what the life of an immigration attorney would look like. Exhausting, hopeless, numbing. To hear tragic stories, day in and out. And for the protagonist to then go and fill the numbness with occasional, casual romantic encounters, there was definitely a feeling of bleakness to be felt for main character.

What I couldn't really get into was his relationship with his mother, or how they lost each other in the first place. It almost felt more an issue of complacency and being too busy and overwhelmed to reach out. I could never really get into his mom's alternative living situation, it seemed very commune/polyamorous-like, and something about it felt culty and turned me off.

In short, I appreciated the idea, I just couldn't get into the execution.

After reading the first chapter of this novel, I couldn’t understand how anyone chose to read on. There wasn’t anything intriguing about it. It was bland; the prologue captured my interest, but the next section of words took it away. It was bland.

I was intrigued by the premise of this book but unfortunately I was expecting one thing from the synopsis and title and the story delivered something totally different.

Mothers and Sons promised to be a story about a gay immigration lawyer unable to emotionally connect with his lover who is still troubled by the loss of his first love, who is estranged from his mother, a gay female minister who runs a progressive religious retreat in Vermont.

I thought it was going to be a moving literary story full of interiority about a man representing a sexual orientation case as he reconciles with his mother.

Instead they seemed to operate two completely separate orbits as they were uninteresting, self-absorbed workaholics who each found their only fulfillment in their jobs to the detriment of their relationships, with a reconciliation scene at the end. The first half of the book was very slow and went into a mundane deep dive on the day to day practice of being a lawyer (though the duties described were more paralegal work - lawyers don't format footnotes!) and as I am a legal assistant for a day job, I quickly became bored without any emotional dimension. It was interesting to see the day to day life of an immigration lawyer, but it was portrayed in such a sterile way that I felt like I was at work. Accurate, sure, but not engaging, unless you don't know the legal profession at all and think the procedural nitty gritty is glamorous.

Mother and son barely reflected on their relationship and I felt like I didn't care to know their history after awhile because I developed such a strong dislike to each of them. It was well-written with very blunt prose; I just was not the right reader for this book at all. It was like a series of bare-bones portraits about unlikable and dysfunctional mothers and sons without much reflection or deeper themes or transformation.

I then skimmed the last half of the book because I got so bored with the story.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance review copy. I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Peter's an asylum lawyer in NYC and his life is all wrapped up in his job. We quickly learn that he's gay, has very few relationships outside of work, and is estranged from his mother -- all elements to make for an interesting novel on its own. A new client, a young man from Albania, brings Peter back to his youth and a life altering event he's buried, and his story becomes even more interesting.
While I immediately was immersed in Peter's stories of his clients trying to escape the horrors of their pasts, it takes a while for his own story to unfold. There were two elements of this novel that were especially unique. There are many novels about lawyers, but immigration law isn't typically the specialty that's featured. This is an especially timely focus and the clients' stories are interesting, and also disturbing in many cases. There are also lots of novels about the mother/daughter relationship but not as many about mothers and sons. Mr. Haslett's writing is beautiful and I especially liked his hauntingly written introduction.
Thanks to Netgalley and Little, Brown and Company for the opportunity to read Mothers and Sons. I received a complimentary copy of this book and opinions expressed are completely my own.

Delighted to include this title in the January edition of Novel Encounters, my column highlighting the month’s most anticipated fiction for the Books section of Zoomer, Canada’s national lifestyle and culture magazine. (see column and mini-review at link)

Another great novel to start the year off and one that could not be more timely. It's a novel about a gay lawyer Peter who represents asylum seekers and who has a mom who is a lesbian and runs a woman's center. They have been estranged from each other due to an incident when Peter was younger. I don't mean to give too much away but how the author takes those points and layers into a compelling story is what makes this novel so great and not something that could have easyly become a pretentious novel. Relationships between gay men and their mothers is something that can be wonderful, cruel, or distant. Trust me as a gay man I know. The title is perfect because our mothers are the closest thing we have as proetction from a cruel wordl. If our father's accept it's great and if thye don't it can be traumatic. So our mothers are the only hope we have growing up. We rely on them or we have to look elsewhere. So at the point in the novel where that bond is broken it haunts Peter. I obviusly won't tell you how it ends but just know you'll be thinking about this novel days after you've read it. Thank you to Little Brown and Netgally for the ARC. Read it!!

MOTHERS AND SONS is the newest addition to Adam Haslett’s writing that offers up feelings of secrets, abandonment and what might have been.

Peter Fischer is an immigration asylum lawyer, estranged from his mother for twenty years after an act of violence ended a relationship that could have been. His mother, Ann, along with two others, Claire and Roberta, operate a women’s retreat center. And while his mother is content with where her life has taken her, Peter is in an ever revolving Groundhog Day situation of work, home and occasional hookups with a man who wants more from Peter that he is either unwilling or unable to give. As mother and son move through their lives, the ever present memories linger.

I found this to be a novel of facing the past, learning forgiveness and moving forward. I did find a tear or two rolling down my cheek. The only problem I had was that there was quite a bit of foreign language. Too much for me anyway and at times it was distracting. I would be interested to see if this is in the author’s other works.

Thank you to NetGalley and Little, Brown and Company for this ARC opportunity. All opinions are my own and given voluntarily.

Imagine me gone was one of the best books I’ve read and I was excited to receive the arc of this long anticipated follow-up. Mothers and sons is the story of Peter, a gay immigration lawyer who has a strained relationship with his sister, Liz and their mother, Ann. Through trying to help
An undocumented immigrant, vasal, Peter begins to question his own concepts of family and his relationships. An incident occurred when Peter was 15 that set the course of his life in motion and helps explain the distance between him and his mother. Peter spends the rest of his adult life running from the incident and his family, but has he reached the point where it’s time to face the past?

Told in 3 parts (Peter’s first person present day, Ann’s past through an omniscient narrator, and the incident 25 years ago), the story is driven by Peter and Ann. Like imagine me gone, the novel is about family and relationships and the prose is seamless and beautiful. I admit that for some reason the shifts in time and pov was jarring to me, but in retrospect, it is necessary for this novel and adds to the understanding of Peter and Ann. Not as good as imagine me gone, but a worthy follow- up.

Thanks to the publisher for the arc via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Little, Brown and Company for gifting me a digital ARC of the latest by Adam Haslett. All opinions expressed in this review are my own - 4 stars!

Peter is an asylum lawyer in New York City, overworked and isolated. He spends his days immersed in the struggles of his clients only to return to an empty apartment and occasional hook-ups. But when the asylum case of a young gay man pierces Peter's numbness, the event that he has avoided for twenty years returns to haunt him. Peter is mostly estranged from his mother, Ann, who runs a women's retreat center she founded after leaving his father. The secret that both mother and son share is the one that they can't talk about and has torn them apart.

The story plays out in the present, alternating between Peter and Ann, as well as gradually revealing the past incident that has caused their rift. It's interesting to see how these family dynamics played out - and there were a lot of issues in this family. Even though Ann spent her life listening to people's problems, she often failed at that in her own life. This looks at how traumatic events carry over in our lives, especially when they are hidden. There were a lot of heartbreaking immigration stories, highlighting this issue, I did feel that they tended to slow the book down, especially in the beginning, but the last part of the book tied everything together perfectly and kept me glued.