I received an advance digital copy of this book in exchange for my review.

This is a really solid book. It's not super my thing, but I think it was good in what it was doing.

This is a book about people who make a lot of mistakes while they're thinking mostly about themselves and very little about the people they love. Each character was complicated and made some truly painful (in a satisfying way) choices and a lot of them were genuinely difficult to like for most of the novel, making this an experience less where I was hoping something specific would happen and more where I was watching very messy people ruin things but didn't have to feel guilty about being entertained by the suffering of real people.

The book itself was a pretty fast read and largely easy to digest - the only real stumbling blocks for me were elements where the prose needed another round of edits. There were several mistakes, but I'm reading this book months before release so I don't think they'll all be in the final book.

MOTHERS OF FATE is a deeply emotional novel exploring personal motivations, family connections, and the impact we have on each other's lives. The characters are well-formed with complex intertwining stories. Their stories stick with you and so will this book.

What a beautiful story! This book follows a sapphic couple on their journey to adopt a baby but things don’t go to plan

It touches on some topics that I felt deeply I loved it

Mothers of Fate does an excellent job of exploring the emotional and social impact of adoption. Monica, an attorney, and her wife, Angela, have adopted a baby, and are excited to begin a new chapter of their lives. This is turned upside down when a client approaches Monica with a request to track down her son who she gave up in a closed adoption decades prior. Lynne Hugo relays the complexities of the situation through Angela's experience growing up in the system and going through the adoption process in contrast with the experience of a mother who felt she had no other choice when giving her son up for adoption. Touching on topics such as abuse of power in sexual relationships and the flaws in our systems, Hugo relays this story in beautiful prose, ultimately attempting to answer the age old question of how much control do we truly have in our lives?