Loved the premise for this book and immediately felt sympathy for the main character and her struggles as a mother. Though this dystopian school is exaggerated, it exemplifies the way motherhood is scrutinized and dehumanized. You are expected to be 100% perfect all the time or be seen as a terrible human being, thus you have to give up everything and let your whole life revolve around your child. There’s also some brief, interesting points the book makes with the main character’s upbringing and...

Hurray! Happy book birthday to my 900th review on NG! Welcome to dystopian new world which turned into worst nightmares of mothers where their children are taken to the reform schools as their motherhood skills are scrutinized by being put under microscope of government. Any wrongdoings, misbehaves, faults are punished by not being able to see your child for a long time! The story is centered on Frida, whose worst day results with her child’s taken by reform school. She’s cheated by her husband...

“The School for Good Mothers” is a dystopian look at the government’s far reach into child welfare and social services. This story kept me enraged; it’s a cautionary tale in allowing over-zealous government control.Frida Liu is an exhausted 39-year-old single mother of an 18-month-old daughter at the start of the novel. Her husband left her while she was pregnant; he took up with an independently wealthy 28-year-old Pilates instructor. Frida had a very bad day. After many nights of insomnia and

Female dystopian that doesn’t hold up against the competitionFrida Liu has a very bad parenting day resulting in The State sentencing her to a one-year school to become a better mother. What will the school be like and will Frida be reunited with her daughter?The School for Good Mothers is Jessamine Chan’s debut novel, and it was a solid first draft in a very competitive subgenre. This book is intended to be an updated The Handmaid’s Tale; however, The Handmaid’s Tale it is not. Most important:

I’m sorry guys—I’m bailing out!!I only got about a third of the way through, but I don’t think this is the ~vibe~ for me right now. Clearly I’m not going to be a great resource for why you should or should not read this but some of the feedback from my book club chat was—“repetitive in the middle”, “stressful & boring” and just kind of……I don’t know, weird?There’s for sure some interesting concepts here, with commentary on the surveillance state, racism, sexism, authoritarianism, etc., so I woul...

After leaving her toddler daughter alone for two hours, Frida Liu is deemed to be a bad mother. The court has started a new program for parents that need to be "fixed". Frida along with almost 200 other women are sent to the program to learn how to be a proper mother. She has to complete the program or face losing her child. She has to attend the dumbest classes I have heard of to learn how to properly speak, bathe, care, and feed her child. Frida also has to learn to coexist with other women an...

So much build up; so much promise. What a crying shame. This dystopian novel is conceptually strong, addressing the invasive nature of facial recognition software and government access to what should be private digital communication, but the execution is abysmal. I received a review copy from Net Galley and Simon and Schuster. Frida Liu is a new mother, and she’s got problems. She has severe postpartum depression, and she’s home alone with her baby, all day and all night, trying to work from hom...

At first, I didn't know where this was going. It was like The Handmaid's Tale in some ways. A future in the United States in which women and men who have been negligent or abusive to their children are taken away to an institution that teaches them how to be a "good" parent is the main aspect of this world. I can see that this could be become an actual reality. The world Jessamine Chan has her characters inhabit is our world, but with this added vicious treatment of "bad" mothers and fathers.It

As a mother myself, being separated from my children would be a living nightmare so I found the premise of this story frightening. As a parent myself, I don't claim to be a perfect parent whatsoever and admittingly I've made a mountain of mistakes at parenting but...I would never have left my child home alone, unattended for 2 hours! I think what Frida did was selfish but I also didn't believe she deserved to be away for an entire year. When it comes to the social commentary on how harshly we ju...

This is a dystopian new world story. Not my usual read however, it was pretty understandable even for me!So here’s a Mother with a young child left to bring her child up alone. Her husband went off with a younger woman. He still takes time for his child and her but, Frida is trying to work, look after her child, come to grips with dealing with her family and her Chinese inheritance with they’re ways and rituals of “doing things”, and still being accepted on both sides of her life. We learn of Fr...

*** 3.5 Stars***What makes a bad Mother?This is the question that Frida and other women will have to ask at a school to learn to be better. Frida's offense? She left her toddler daughter home alone on one very bad day.I struggled while reading this. I never really liked Frida. She made a conscious decision to leave her daughter home alone. It did not sit well with me.Mothers are judged harshly every day. Women are blamed each day for accidents. Your baby falls, why were you not watching them? Wh...

Wow, this book just left me in a little trance, unable to think of much else all day. This dystopian society was a little too close to the way our society seems to be heading regarding motherhood. The unrealistic self-expectations and the expectations that society puts on mothers to hold everything together while making it look easy. Frida, in the midst of a broken marriage and an unfulfilling career has one very bad day (as she terms it). Frida, a middle class, Chinese leaves her not yet 2-year...

“Now, repeat after me: I am a bad mother, but I am learning to be good.”Thanks to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for sending me an ARC of The School for Good Mothers in exchange for an honest review.The School for Good Mothers is the story of Frida, a 39-year-old mother of a toddler, Harriet. She struggles with co-parenting after her ex-husband ran off with his mistress. So, at the height of what she will relentlessly think of as her “very bad day,” Frida leaves Harriet alone in an exersaucer in...

I was really excited to read this book and had super high hopes going in. It sounded intriguing. The book started off super interesting and then it just got too dark and creepy for me. The surveillance cameras to watch Frida in her home and then the school was just too over the top extreme for me. It was hard to read, especially I think being a mother myself. I was satisfied with the ending however, I had to push myself to finish the book to get there. This one was just not for me. This book wil...

Gutting and terrifying. Vivid and exquisite. I hate that this book isn’t out yet — I want to give it to everyone I know, make them all read it, and then talk about it together forever. There’s so much to say. What a sharp, anxiety-provoking, superb book. “Unputdownable” is too faint praise. What a novel.

I am struggling with how to review this one because the writing and the premise of this book are good, but I didn't enjoy it? I don't know, just hear me out! I was really excited to read Jessamine Chan's debut dystopian novel, The School for Good Mothers because I was hearing that it had Handmaid's Tale vibes. In today's current political climate, these types of books are great self reflections on how we need to keep in mind what is happening in our society. When Frida Liu leaves her daughte...

Published in the UK htoday 3-3-22This book is a future dystopian novel (albeit set in almost the immediate present and not requiring much of a leap of imagination or significant extrapolation from current societal practices) about the rights of parents (particularly mothers) to raise their own children versus the rights of society to teach and effectively impose minimum and agreed standards of parenting for the protection of the children and of their role in society in future.The close third par...

QUICK TAKE: as a new parent, this book was ROUGH. A woman is sentenced to a 1-year prison reform program for "bad" mothers, where they are forced to go through various parenting classes in order to win back custody of their kids. It reminded me a lot of Joanne Ramos's book THE FARM, but is so sad and traumatic and anxiety-inducing that I struggled to finish. The book is also told in a very clinical way, and I'm not sure if that's on purpose. I'm going to read some additional reviews for some add...