While the plot of this book sounded so intriguing, and it started really well, I found it so hard to get through. I kept reading because I thought there was going to be some big twist or it was revealed the ‘School’ was not all it seemed, but no, it just plodded on and at times it made little sense. So disappointing because the idea was so original.

Wow, what a bold debut! The School for Bad Mothers is skilfully written, dark & rich in social commentary. I really admired what the author was trying to do & she managed to explore a lot of important themes within a relatively small novel.
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We follow Frida, a divorced Chinese American woman who had, as she describes it, a very bad day. The result? The immediate removal of her baby daughter & enrolment in a new government scheme - The production of Good Mothers.

I loved the first third of this book - the sense of helplessness & desperation was palpable & it all felt chillingly plausible, however I found that the middle lacked focus & became quite repetitive. There was a strong cycle of - bad things happen, Frida feels awful but tries to persevere, bad things happen again. It ate up a good 200 pages of the story & after a while, I started to feel as despondent & numb as our main character!

The ending was very open & ambiguous. I don’t usually mind that but after crawling through the trauma portion of this book, I really wanted more payoff & instead just had the hugest lump in my throat & a kind of gut punch feeling in my stomach - not necessarily a critique, as that was probably the intended reaction!

It’s for you if you like introspective, character driven & quietly sinister novels with timely social commentary. Probably not your bag if stories about the government ruining your life feel a little too close to home in our current climate!

I’m definitely interested in reading more from this author & based on this, I’d say she’s one to watch!

The School for Good Mothers is a thought-provoking dystopian novel about motherhood.

If you've read The Handmaid's Tale, there are a lot of story beats you will recognise here. The school is a fantastic concept, allowing Chan to explore the pressures of parenthood and the impossible standards mothers are expected to meet. The story is overlong but well-structured, with emotional peaks and troughs in all the right places, and Frida is a believable protagonist, desperate and flawed and trying her absolute best.

The ending might be inevitable, but it's heartbreaking all the same.

This would be a great book club book. I want it to be released now so I can discuss it with people I know. It made me think and feel lots of things about motherhood, parenting and family.

This is such a fun relatable reads especially for those dealing with mom guilt and pressure. Very interesting storyline.

Frida Liu is a struggling mother. She remembers taking Harriet from her cot and changing her nappy. She remembers giving her a morning bottle. They'd been up since four am.

Frida just had to finish the article in front of her. But she'd left a file on her desk at work. What would happen if she retrieved it and came back in an hour? She was so sure it would be okay.

Now, the state has decided that Frida is not fit to care for her daughter. That she must be re-trained. Soon, mothers everywhere will be re-educated. Will their mistakes cost them everything?

The School for Good Mothers is an explosive and thrilling novel about love and the pressures of perfectionism, parenthood and privilege.

I loved the idea for this book but the reality just didn't work for me. It's meant to be some dystopian near future but I just refuse to believe that these extreme measures could have come in in secret and nobody protested. I also don't notice there wasn't one nice / slightly human "warder" at the school. I really had to force myself to finish this book and I only did it for netgalley.

I thought this book was extraordinary and couldn't put it down. A bit like Orange is the New Black, the book uses frustrated single mother Frida Liu as a Trojan horse into a world of incarceration and trauma. When Frida has a bad day and leaves her baby daughter alone, she finds herself sentenced to taking part in a social experiment - a nail-biting thriller as well as a great satire on the impossible pressures placed on today's mothers, while the men (including Frida's ex-husband, who she is trying to have an amicable divorce with) have it easier. Weird, wonderful and thought-provoking.

(I've docked one star because it is confusing in the middle and not clear how Frida's relationship with a male inmate at the nearby facility puts her so far down the ranks in her mothering skills, and also the cover isn't quite right - I'd rethink the pink)!

A stark and shocking look into a dystopian future social care system, where small infractions are made the same as horrific abuse, and mothers that are caught being "bad" to their children are sent away and punished, until they are seen as fit to raise their child again.
This book was gripping and terrifying, it made me reconsider my views on the current social care system and how it treats particularly women of colour and single mothers.
I wish the problem of predjudice had been explored more deeply, as well as the counselling storyline, however these did not take away much from the gripping narrative.
4/5 stars

A very exciting premise, and a book with a very different feel. I don't often read dystopian fiction - however this was an absolutely fantastic read. Whilst the premise itself required a lot of suspension of disbelief, the characters themselves did not, and it is them which carried the story forward so well.

Very well written, and a solid, quick read. A real page turner.

A disturbing yet brilliant dystopian novel.
A mothers stupid (pretty bad!!) mistake leads to her being basically institutionalised in a type of reform school to ‘teach’ perfect mothering so as to be able to see her child again.
In the beginning it is hard to sympathise with Freda in relation to leaving her child alone, but the tiredness, work juggling and co parenting will mean some readers will definitely some correlation or at least feel as though they are on an emotional rollercoaster. Later in the book once she is in the institution I felt more empathy towards her as a character.
The cover of this book is like an oxymoron, giving you a sense of a happy book and future which is not the case at all!
Good read, especially if you like dystopian books which can be hard to find.

What makes a good mother? That's the question at the heart of this disturbing original novel in which, as always, mothers are held to an impossibly high standard.

Frida is having a bad day and as a result does a truly terrible thing - she leaves her baby daughter alone for several hours. It's out of character and there are exenuating circumstances but as a result she finds herself enrolled in a new programme, she has to spend a year of her life proving that she's a good mother. There is no such judgement on her ex husband who had an affair during her pregnancy and left her to be a single mother against her will. Instead he and his new girlfriend are given full custody of her daughter while Frida surrenders her freedom and child in a bid to hold onto her parental rights. But good motherhood in the eye of the state is held to an unobtainable standard and Frida and her fellow mothers are tested beyond human endurance.

This is a chilling, intriguing concept darkly explored in which we can be horrified both by Frida's shocking lapse of judgement and her even more shocking punishment. Interesting and thought provoking.

The cover of this is pretty but the story is not. It is a dystopian novel where parents who have been abusive, neglectful , or just a bit careless with their children are sent to a correction facility where they are treated to months of training which is supposed to make them better parents and better people. This is done with the aid of robot children and acting out scenarios to improve them along with a regime of rewards and sanctions. At the end of their time a court decides whether they are allowed to have contact with their children again. There is no appeal. It is quite horrific. The author has taken great delight in thinking up bizarre and punitive "training" situations for these poor people and I just wanted it to stop. I did like the main character though. To bring it back to reality, no state could afford this. The prison system of any country costs an enormous amount and to have an additional program like this which does not seem to have any real value; the running costs and personal costs to families and displaced children would be prohibiting. In addition, the methods are suspect and the results arbitrary.

Frida is a single mother working from home and trying to bring up her toddler daughter. One day she makes a mistake. She leaves her daughter alone for two hours while she goes into work. When she comes home her daughter has been taken into care. Before she can even think of getting her back she has to attend the school for bad mothers. If she fails the course she will lose her daughter.

This is a dark, disturbing story of what might happen in a dystopian future. Every transgression in parenting can lead to a child being taken away. The 'perfect' parenting that is promoted at the school is oppressive and makes 'helicopter parenting' look lax. Mothers are there because their child has fallen off a swing (mother not paying enough attention) and no differentiation is made between them and those who have deliberately harmed their child.

I don't normally have much to say about the cover of a book but in this case I think it is misleading and might make you think you are picking up a light read. This is far from that. I can't say I enjoyed the book but it is thought provoking. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

This is such a unique and absorbing book! I wasn’t sure what to expect from the blurb, but it gripped me from the start. It’s a dystopian novel about a school designed to teach good parenting. It has strong resemblances to Never Let Me Go and The Handmaid’s Tale, so it’s not a comfortable read, but it’s truly gripping - the kind of book that will stay with you for a long time after you finish reading.

This was such an interesting premise for a storyline that was delivered really well, I really enjoyed it. I was on the edge of my seat for some of it and heartbroken for some of it, it was raw, intense and unpredictable and I could not put it down, I really enjoyed it