Blurb:

As a young mother with a toddler and a live-in boyfriend, Maggie Fisher’s job at a checkout counter in downtown Phoenix doesn’t afford her much financial flexibility. She dreams of going to college and becoming a teacher, options she squandered when she fled her family home as a teenager. When Maggie stumbles onto an ad offering thousands of dollars to women who are willing to gestate other people’s babies, she at first finds the concept laughable. Before long, however, she’s been seduced by all the ways the extra money could improve her life. Once she decides to go for it, it’s only a matter of months before she’s chosen as a gestational carrier by Chip and Donovan Rigsdale, a married couple from New York.

After delivering twin babies and proudly handing them off to the Rigsdales, Maggie finally gets her life on a positive trajectory: she earns her degree, lands a great job, and builds a family of her own. She can’t fathom why, ten years after the fact, the fertility clinic is calling to ask for a follow-up DNA test.

High-energy and immensely readable, He Gets That from Me explores what it really means to be part of a family.

Review:

Jacqueline Friedland: He Gets That From Me

He Gets That From Me isn’t a book I would have chosen to read myself, but nevertheless I enjoyed it. It’s easy to read and I read it quite quickly, but it did give me pause for thought about what I would do in a similar situation. It’s not a situation I’ve ever read about before and I enjoyed the unique premise of the novel.

The novel is set across different time frames and narrated mostly by Maggie and Donovan. Whilst I appreciated being able to see the situation from two different points of view, I sometimes found it difficult to follow the timeline as it moved back and forth.

Jacqueline Friedland raises a lot of moral issues and themes in He Gets That From Me which give the novel am extra layer. I read the novel as a book club read and I believe it will provoke lots of discussion. Throughout the novel, I wondered how the issues would be resolved and whilst I didn’t find the characters particularly likeable, I did feel invested in their situation.

He Gets That From Me is available from Amazon.