OTHER PEOPLE'S CHILDREN

A well-to-do Chicagoland couple’s dreams of having a child are finally fulfilled when a barely scraping by teen picks them as the parents-to-be of her unborn child. But after the baby arrives and joins her new family, things become much more complicated.

How far would you go to keep your family together? After a number of miscarriages, Gail and Jon Durbin are willing to put it all on the line to keep their newborn, Maya, with them. The fact that her teen birth mother, Carli, can’t sign the final consent form for the adoption until 72 hours past the birth is a detail that they do not pay enough attention to, particularly in light of the ferocity of Carli’s mother, Marla, in the hospital when she meets Maya and realizes she is losing her first grandchild to strangers. But family is everything, and after an idyllic few days Gail simply cannot comprehend a world where her daughter—her and Jon’s daughter—can simply be taken away. This book deals with weighty, emotional relationships. What makes a mother? A family? Debut author Hoffmann has done a good job of looking at the unseemly corners as well as the bright spots of married and family life—the fights, the anger, the love, the willingness to put it all on the line to support the person you love when they fall down, and the damage that you can cause with your own failings. So often books elide the consequences of fictional characters’ illegal choices. Kudos to Hoffmann for holding his characters to account for their choices and actions while still leaving the reader with a hopeful ending.

A can’t-put-it-down novel that will live in readers' thoughts long after they finish reading.