India Allwood is a recognizable actress, the lead in a popular television show and preparing for the release of her first movie, a tragic prestige drama about adoption and addiction. Amid a social media driven squall about whether the movie portrays adoption properly India stirs up a hurricane by admitting she doesn’t like what the movie has to say either.
Suddenly she’s a trending hashtag and at risk of being cancelled, both publicly and in her career. But what isn’t widely known is she’s intimately acquainted with adoption. From here the story unfolds in two timelines, the week of India’s social/media nightmare and beginning 16 years in the past following a teenaged India into adulthood. You might have preconceived notions of what to expect from this book (I know I did), but you’re likely to be surprised as it unfolds (as I was.)
Family Family {#gifted, thanks @henryholtbooks} is a complicated, sprawling family saga, as all are, about India’s FAMILY family, the people connected to her through blood and choice, those who are drawn to India’s side during her very public crisis. Just as Laurie Frankel offered a nuanced, empathetic look at a family navigating a child’s transgender identity with This is How it Always Is, so too does she offer a similar treatment with adoption in Family Family a story that is challenging (in the best way), authentic, quirky, and heartwarming.
Tell me: if you became a trending hashtag what would it likely be for?
Mine would be something related to a trending aspirational reading lifestyle, obvi #CozyBookHermitChic
That Bookish Life 