Disclaimer: I received this e-arc from the publisher. Thanks! All opinions are my own.
Book: A Little Ray of Sunshine
Author: Kristan Higgins
Book Series: Standalone
Rating: 1.5/5
Diversity: FF side characters, Indian side characters, Bisexual character, Queer character, Adopted person characters.
Recommended For…: contemporary readers, romance readers, chick literature readers, adoption story readers
Publication Date: June 6, 2023
Genre: Contemporary Chick Lit
Age Relevance: 17+ (3 HP mentions, language, sexual content mentioned, slight racism, comments on infertility, comments on adoption, comments against adoption, Depression, Christianity, Parentification, Death mentioned, Alcoholism mentioned, PTSD, Suicide mentioned, Cancer mentioned, Drug Use mentioned)
Explanation of Above: There are 3 HP mentions in the book. There is some cursing throughout the book. There is some sexual content in the book, but no sex scenes. There is some slight racism in one part of the book. There are comments on infertility, adoption, and against adoption made by various characters. Depression and PTSD is shown. Christianity is shown throughout the book. There are mentions and scenes of Parentification. Death is mentioned a couple of times, along with Cancer and Alcoholism. There are also one time mentions of Suicide and Drug Use.
Publisher: Berkley Books
Pages: 496
Synopsis: A kid walks into your bookstore and… guess what? He’s your son. The one you put up for adoption eighteen years ago. The one you never told anyone about. Surprise!
And a huge surprise it is.
It’s a huge surprise to his adoptive mother, Monica, who thought she had a close relationship with Matthew, her nearly adult son. Until he secretly arranged a vacation to Cape Cod so he could meet his birth mother… without a word to her.
It’s also a surprise to Harlow, the woman who secretly placed him for adoption so many years ago. She has built a quiet life, running a bookstore with her grandfather, and is happily single… though she can’t help gravitating toward Grady Byrne, an old friend who has moved back to town, three-year-old daughter in tow, and no wife in the picture.
When Matthew walks into Harlow’s store, she faints. Monica panics. And all their assumptions about what being a parent really means explode…
This summer will be full of more surprises as both their families are redefined…and as both women learn that for them, there’s no limit to a mother’s love.
Review: This book was a whirlwind and not in a good manner. Some of the good parts were that I liked the use of the Multi-POV to progress the story but tell it from multiple points. I also liked how the author managed to hit a lot of the highlights and issues that adopted persons face.
However, I absolutely hated this book. There was an immediate switch at the beginning of the book from being a child-free friendly character to over the moon about her son and wanting to be a mother, which was confusing and concerning in its implications on child-free persons. I didn’t like how the author kept implementing problematic books into this book, which a bookish person and book seller should know about as a character. It was kinda telling that the only two main books mentioned in this book were both problematic. It really said something to me about the author’s views and standpoints. There were a lot of stuff in this book about pushing the main character into being a mother and considering she was all child-free in the beginning I didn’t like it. I thought it was a bit problematic and, as a child-free person myself, it came off as “once you have a child your whole world changes for the better and you immediately want and regret not having or raising a child once you have that opportunity again”. The book also started to really discredit the voice of adoptees, especially in the last parts of the book. It kinda gave off this impression that the main adopted person in this book made a mistake finding their mom and that they should have just kept to their adopted family and while that might be some adopted persons stories, it’s a really hard subject to appropriately tackle that I didn’t feel like the author hit exactly right. This coupled with the other adopted person’s story about how they also made mistakes and stuff really kinda gave off this negative impression. Personally, I’m not an adopted person and I will always tell you to default to their voice on this book in particular. This is just the impression I got as a reader.
Verdict: I hated this book, but you might love it! Give it a shot if this sounds like something you’d like.
PopTheButterfly Reads 