Love Forms by Claire Adam

In 1980, 16 year old Dawn Bishop travels from Trinidad to Venezuela to give birth to her baby girl who she leaves with the nuns to be adopted. Now aged 58 and living in London, Dawn has been married and has two adult sons, but still yearns to find her daughter. When a woman from an internet forum gets in touch, it seems she may finally have succeeded, but she's been disappointed before.

I absolutely loved this book and am bereft now that it's over. Dawn herself is the narrator and her voice/personality are so vivid and real that I felt as though I'd met her in real life, perhaps randomly in a coffee shop, and got to know all about her and her life... so much so that I felt genuine loss on finishing the book. I loved the settings of Trinidad and Tobago, descriptions of Dawn's family, the details of her life in London, the ending... all of it! Very VERY highly recommended.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book.

In 1980 in Trinidad, 16 year old Dawn Bishop falls pregnant. She is sent away to Venezuela to have the child and gives birth to a girl who is given up for adoption. Dawn goes on to move to England, train in medicine, get married and have two sons. But she never forgets her daughter and has made several unsuccessful attempts to find her. When another woman gets in touch claiming to be her daughter, Dawn has hugely mixed feelings but is desperate to find out the truth. The book is written from Dawn’s perspective and we find out about her, her family and ultimately, how her experience at 16 impacted her life and relationships. But you’ll have to read the book to find out if she is successful with her search.

This is a beautifully written book that I feel is ultimately about family and mothers and the love that many have for their children. I am often guilty of trying to guess the purpose of a book as I’m reading it and trying to work out where it will end. With this, it was difficult to do either and that made the book more compelling. However, I don’t feel (even with the subject matter) that I emotionally engaged with the book as much as I thought I would and that there was some repeated information, That being said, I thought the characters, particularly Dawn, were wonderful and I thought the story ended in a really good way.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this book.

3.5

Love Forms tells an all-too-common tale of a woman, Dawn Bishop, who finds herself "ketch" (pregnant) after a one night stand with a tourist to Trinidad's Carnival. As the daughter of a rich family Dawn is taken to a convent where she gives birth and then gives up her daughter.

Years later, now a divorcee with two grown sons and living in London, Dawn is still searching for the baby girl who she gave up for adoption.

The story follows Dawn's journey and her efforts to be reunited with the child despite not remembering much from that time and encountering resistance from her parents and brothers.

I confess to being a little disappointed with this novel. It seems to sort of meander along in a circular motion with Dawn being thwarted at every turn. However it's well written and the characters are sympathetic. I'm not sure what I wanted from the book but something with more impact perhaps. And, at times, it felt a little more like a travel guide for Trinidad and Venezuela.

Thankyou to Netgalley and Faber & Faber for the advance review copy.

A beautifully written very descriptive novel.

My thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book.

Dawn lives in the UK having been brought up in Trinidad and has had a very emotional 58 years with its ups and serious downs. She sets off on. Journey to fulfil her anxiety over what happened to the baby she had as a sixteen year old when she was despatched to Venezuela for the birth.
She conveys well her conflicted life and her complex familial relationships

this book depicts the lingering sadness of a mother who never got to be her babies mother. that sadness i felt in my own heart. i cannot imagine the very real situation some woman find themselves in. the courage it must take to even blink the next day after having your child either taken or forced to give them up.
this is the story of Dawn Bishop. when she was 16 she is scurried away in shame over being pregnant. she is to wait until the birth, with the nuns, and then hand over her child. she then has to return. she then has to carry on with life. but she never does. well,not completely anyway.
but she is now older, she is now 58, she is now needing answers. she needs to know how to fill the whole her lost daughter took out of her.
she knows shes not had the worst life. she has a home, shes been married now divorce and she does have two sons although they are now grown up.
but she knows she must search for what happened to her child.
we are then taken on a journey of her search. not only learning of what she is having to go through now but also of her life and just how that one event has rippled through everything.
i thoroughly enjoyed this book. i was swept up in the feeling of a main character and wanted to both cheer her on and cheer her soul up.

Beautifully written novel which moves along at a good pace. When you pick up a book you want to be transported into that world and Love Forms achieves just this. Motherhood, family, relationships, youth and the passing of time were the themes that came to the surface, but I felt especially the idea of taking control of your life. As the key character is a girl, then a woman, that life-ownership for her thoughts, decisions and actions is something that time has definitely affected. She's grown and we learn along with her. The power and confusion of retrospection! I enjoyed reading it and would look out for another by the same author.

At 16 years old Dawn Bishop, is sent from Trinidad to Venezuela to give birth, and leave her child with nuns to be given up for adoption. It's now forty years later, and Dawn lives in England, has two grown-up sons, and is newly divorced when a woman from an internet forum gets in touch with her, claiming she might be her long-lost daughter.

The story is very intriguing from the very start; the beginning almost carries an air of mystery as it sets up, which I really enjoyed, and I feel like it did a lot to hook me. The characters felt very real, and the story itself was very interesting, which made it so easy to follow along Dawn's experiences. I do think the core of the story is the political, social, and relational conditions of Trinidad and Venezuela, which is incredibly interesting, but I also feel like it sometimes took you out of the story, which is a shame, because it truly is such a beautiful plot to follow. Overall, it is such a heart warming, delightful read, and I would love to read more from this author in the future.

'Love Forms' follows the experiences of Dawn, a 58-year-old Trinidadian woman living in Britain and recently divorced, as she attempts to trace the daughter she left in an orphanage in Venezuela after a teenage pregnancy. This is a beautifully crafted novel which moves between Dawn's memories of the past and how these have shaped the rest of her life, particularly her relationship with her two sons (now adults), her husband and her family back in Trinidad, all of whom believe that she should abandon this search. There is genuine suspense as we wait to discover whether the woman with whom she has made contact via an online forum (the fourth to do so) will turn out to be a DNA match - but the novel is about much more than this question, and more about how Dawn makes sense of who she is and the choices she made in the past.

Like Adam's previous novel 'Golden Child', the novel also gives us an insight into life in Trinidad and how this changes over several decades - we first meet her affluent family during the oil boom of the 1980s, but we see how they must adapt to the nation's changing fortunes. Much is made of the contrast between English and Trinidadian attitudes.

Overall, I found this a moving and compelling read - many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an ARC to review.

Love Forms is a poignant exploration of motherhood, identity, and the enduring impact of past decisions. The narrative follows Dawn Bishop, a 58-year-old woman who, decades after giving up her newborn daughter for adoption, embarks on a journey to reconnect with the child she never knew. Her quest takes her from Trinidad to Venezuela and finally to London, mirroring her internal journey of self-discovery and reconciliation. 

Claire Adam’s prose is both lyrical and evocative, capturing the emotional complexity of Dawn’s experiences. The novel delves into themes of regret, longing, and the societal pressures that shape our choices. Through Dawn’s reflections, readers are invited to consider the multifaceted nature of love and the ways it can both wound and heal. 

While the pacing is deliberate, allowing for deep character development and introspection, i found the narrative’s momentum slower than I expected. Nevertheless, the emotional depth and cultural richness of the story offer a rewarding reading experience.

Love Forms is a heartfelt and introspective novel that examines the complexities of maternal love and the enduring quest for personal redemption. It’s a compelling read for those who appreciate character-driven stories that resonate with emotional truth.

We are introduced to Dawn at a pivotal moment in her life, taken away from her native Trinidad as a frightened sixteen year old to Venezuela, birthing and giving up her child. Feelings of regret and sadness follow her through marriage and divorce, and an inability to give up searching for this lost daughter, despite having had two sons, who are grown but distant. Disappointments seem to follow her through life, and the minutiae of everyday life just emphasise that she is going through the motions of a life without meaning. A wider story exists of the unrest and difficulties of drug smuggling and poverty in Venezuela at the time, adding to the difficulties she faces in her search. A very sad story of family trauma and unwanted pregnancy and how this was covered up at the time.

Trinidad born and raised, now London based Claire Adam’s debut novel “Golden Child” won the 2019 Desmond Elliot Prize, the 2020 Author’s Best First Novel Award and the 2020 McKitterick Prize.
 
It was also included in the BBC’s List of “100 Novels that Shaped our World” in the Coming of Age Section alongside Margaret Atwood, Edna O’Brien, JK Rowling, Sue Townsend and Stephanie Meyer.
 
In the UK it was published by Faber and Faber – but in the US it was the second book for the then new SJP imprint of Hogarth – SJP being Sarah Jessica Parker who is of course a Booker judge this year. Just saying.
 
The story of the book is superficially very straightforward – but takes its depth from decades of complex and conflicted family relationships all stemming from an incident in the English-based narrator’s late childhood some forty years earlier and combined with an excellent portrait of Trinidad and its own complex and conflicted societal developments over the same period.
 
The narrator – Dawn Wilson (but real name Bishop from the famous Bishop’s Fruit Juices a family owned business which at one time extended to an conglomerate) is now fifty eight and living in a small terraced house Brockley in South London, divorced from her Doctor ex-husband (their larger family home in Wandsworth sold in the settlement) and with two adult children (one a Junior Doctor, the other a Post Doc in the US).  When she was sixteen we learn in an opening section she fell pregnant in her first sexual encounter (the usual Literary Fecundity Fallacy) and was smuggled off (almost literally) by her family to Venezuela to a nun-run house for pregnant girls where the babies are immediately given up for adoption, before returning to Trinidad where her family take a pact never to mention the incident again.
 
Now – from an online site she has joined which seeks to match adopted children with their birth mothers – an Italian lady of the right age reaches out to say that she was herself adopted as a bady when her parents were working in Venezuela and this prompts her to revisit the memories of her childhood and tell her story.
 
One of the most impressive aspects of the novel is the authentic way these memories are presented – often fragmentary with in many cases Dawn unsure if she is inventing or conflating some of the images and incidents that come back to her from decades earlier.  
 
I also enjoyed the way that further depths to Dawn’s emotional journey are revealed, as well as the nuances of her relationship with her children, ex-husband, mother, father and brothers and how she sees that the incidents of her childhood have influenced them all. 
 
And the economic and societal fortunes of Trinidad with its oil boom and bust, its interplay with Venezuela (with an even more pronounced economic and political roller coaster) form an important and well crafted backdrop to the fortunes of the Bishop family and the interplay of the family members.
 
The story Dawn tells is at other times very deliberately expository – we are told for example in asides how Derby is pronounced, how South London terraces are set up or some of the detail of the Carnival in a way which is very conscious and very much as told to a third party rather than simply to a journal (or internal memories). But I was left at the end of the book unclear exactly who this third party might be – and this for me was the weakest and most surprising element of the novel.
 
The novel culminates in a family reunion in the Tobagan villa they have owned for years and in a well-rendered sub-trip which gives Dawn and the novel a fitting sense of closure
  
Overall this was a novel I enjoyed and one I suspect will appear on some prize lists in the year ahead.

Born into a wealthy, middle-class white Trinidadian family, aged sixteen and smart, with dreams of becoming a doctor, Dawn Bishop has the world at her feet. It’s the 1980s, a time of picnics and parties for Dawn, when one hot sultry evening, a charming tourist invites her to join him on the beach – a decision that creates waves that last a lifetime.

Single and pregnant, her family arranges for Dawn to make the perilous crossing by small boat, with only the moon as lamplight, towards the dark coast of Venezuela, where she gives birth to a baby girl whom she leaves with nuns for adoption.

This is a tender, heart-breaking tale of a ‘plight’ that has befallen so many young girls, but the unique dangers and beauty of its Caribbean setting sets Love Forms apart.
As narrator, Dawn shares her story in a wonderful straightforward style. The descriptions of life in Trinidad and Tobago – the lush countryside, healing power of the ocean, increase in criminality and violence – are all done with a lightness of touch that draws the reader in.

Tides rise and fall, decades come and go, but the implications of an impulsive teenage decision follow Dawn and her baby daughter, her parents, siblings, husband and sons.

I received an Advanced Reader Copy from Netgalley in return for my honest opinion.

The writing was very good but the story is sad. The mother has two sons but has never forgotten the baby girl that she was forced to give up. Forty years later she searches for her which has various twists and turns. The ending? Well I leave you to work it out. A very powerful book and thanks to NetGalley for ARC.

Taking the reader on a mothers search for the daughter she left behind a lifetime ago.. A gobble-it-all-up-in-one-sitting kind of book

A really intriguing start which had me completely hooked. The information on Trinidad was fascinating but when the story moved to London it seemed to lose momentum and Dawn's unhappiness made the story drag; plus her relationship with her sons seemed so stilted and formal. I would have liked to have heard more about her marriage but her husband hardly featured. Overall an interesting but not riveting read.

This is one of the most powerful literary portrayals about motherhood I have ever read, and I wish to start off this review by thanking the publishers and NetGalley for my complimentary ARC that allowed me to read this novel, culminating in the unbiased book review that now follows.

From the start, it is clear this is going to be a unique novel, as its plot oscillates between Trinidad and Tobago on the one hand and London, England on the other hand. The heroine is Dawn, born into a white Trinidadian family of industrialists. In 1980, and at the age of sixteen, she unexpectedly falls pregnant, and her family send her to Venezuela where she gives birth to the little girl that is subsequently placed or adoption. This momentously traumatic experience continues to influence Dawn as she moves to England, builds a career, gets married and then divorced, and gives birth to two subsequent children. It is easy to empathise with this woman, who despite her privileged start in a wonderful Caribbean setting, has been through so much, and who continues to suffer from the forced separation of a baby many decades earlier. Along with Dawn, the reader is left wondering what happened to Dawn’s daughter – and suspense heightens when, in the early 2020s, a woman gets in touch with Dawn through an internet forum, claiming she might be the daughter that Dawn has been searching for all of these years. It is all credit to the author that she sensitively manages to combine so many different threads and themes – those of societal injustices, cultural change, gendered notions, the complications of motherhood, and personal dilemmas – into the nuanced novel that we now have in front of us. Highly recommended, I hope this novel that, as the title hints, shows love in all its myriad forms, attracts as large a readership as possible.

I absolutely loved this book. I wasn't sure what to expect and requested on the basis of the rubrik. Very glad I did. A wonderful read. I was really invested in Dawn and her story. I felt I was with her all the way. The author's writing style just flowed and made it easy to read. Dawn is a great character and I felt that we really got to know her. A whole mixture of emotions as I read this book. Wonderful

Reviewed on Bluesky, TV Book Club on FB, Amazon when able

I very much enjoyed this novel. Which is mostly set in Trinidad and tells the story of Dawn who age 16 in find yourself I’m happily pregnant after a one night stand during carnival with a holiday maker. Her family Centre across the sea to Venezuela to stay in a mother and baby home run by nuns and the baby is immediately taken away and put up for adoption. We meet again at 58 when she starts actively searching for the Child his birth has been something that has not been talked about at all in the family since it happened.
Although do you want us to move to the UK in adulthood the majority of this novel is set in the Caribbean which adds an an extra element to the story
The author has a clear easily read writing style which is a pleasure to read. She has the ability to describe character as well and the people in her novel seem completely three-dimensional real people. It’s interesting to watch Dawn grow and see how her experiences have affected her throughout her life .

Originally copy of the novel on NetGalley UK in return for Non by his review. The book is published in the UK on the 19th of June 2025 by Faber and Faber Ltd.
This review will appear on NetGalley UK, StoryGraph, Goodreads, and my book blog bionicSarahSbooks.wordpress.com. After publication will also appear on Amazon UK.

A teacher once told me: good storytelling is building a wall with bricks, without anyone noticing the construction and/or the individual bricks. That's this story. It never feels constructed.

A beautiful book, told from the perspective of Dawn Bishop, born and raised in Trinidad where her family has worked hard and has become a household name. A teenage pregnancy after an encounter not even worthy of the name one night stand, is not in the family’s books and so Dawn travels the perilous sea to Venezuela to grow big and give birth there.
Life goes on as was, afterwards. So it seems, but not for Dawn.
We meet teenage Dawn through the eyes of 58 y/o Dawn, living in the UK, now divorced, two sons. It’s her voice, her memories that take us through her past and current. At 16 Dawn didn’t focus on any details that might, at 40, or at 58, help her find her daughter.

I loved the voice, the change of times, the growing up, how all characters evolved throughout time.

I received an eARC from NetGalley in return for my honest opinion