Family Size Synopsis: Jessica loves being the mom of an ever-expanding family, but when an ultrasound throws her a curve, can she adapt with grace?
Dragged away from home, Maya feels deserted by her workaholic husband in a land of confusing accents and church cliques. What will it take to acclimate and save her marriage—or does she even want to?
Sloane is an algebra teacher and runner who would give up both to be a mom, but no matter what she does, pregnancy remains elusive. Can she adjust her thinking and find purpose in her life?
As their lives intertwine, can friendship and faith help these women hurdle expectations of an ideal family size?
My Review:
I loved this book! It's about 3 women who know each other from being in the same ward, and they all have really different challenges when it comes to their family size. Jessica has 4 vivacious and loving children, including a new baby, when she realizes she's pregnant yet again, she's not really sure how to handle it. She'd really just like to have a break. Maya is new to the ward, her family moved from vibrant Chicago and she's not sure how to fit in in more laid back Texas. Sure she will eventually, if only people would stop asking her why she only has the 2 boys. Sloane's greatest desire is to be a mom, unfortunately, nothing is working for her that way. She's not sure why she can't get pregnant, but she just can't.
I really enjoyed how you see things from each of their perspectives, I enjoyed how it shows that you really can't judge anyone around you, because you just don't know what their situation is, or why they are the way they are. I like that it shows that we should all be there for each other, no matter the situation. I liked the characters, the plot and the ending of the book. This was a quick and fun read for me.
I was given a free e-copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
About the author: If Maria Hoagland added up the places she has lived in her life, she wouldn't be able to count them all on two hands. She's even managed to live in more places as an adult than she did as a child--exotic places like Ohio, Missouri, Utah, Texas, and Idaho. You never know if there's another move coming, especially since she hasn't lived anywhere tropical in a while--unless you count the flat desert of West Texas, which she doesn't as there's no palm trees or water.
After earning a BA in English at Brigham Young University, Maria moved to St. Louis, Missouri. There her husband attended graduate school and Maria started raising their children. Although she dabbled in short stories and poetry in high school and took almost every writing course at BYU (both in the Communications and English departments), Maria didn't get serious about creative writing until her youngest child started kindergarten. Her work experience ranges from teaching writing classes to freelance publishing in newsletters, editing, and ghost writing.
Through the years, Maria has spent most of her time raising children, running to playgroups and church meetings, cleaning her house and taxi-ing her children from place to place--and she wouldn't have it any other way. (Where else would she have gotten fodder for her books?) Even now with her children as teenagers, she finds her time eaten up with errands and housekeeping issues that keep her from writing as often as she would like, though she finds time to squeeze in a little writing here and there. Her favorite places to write are in playground and parks, and when the weather's bad, a squashy armchair at Barnes & Noble. Though she's become proficient in her ability to justifiably procrastinate, have no fear, she is avidly working on the next novel as we speak.
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Labels: LDS fiction, Maria Hoagland
