Reviewer: Allie
I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Summary:
In Giving Myself Away, divorced mother Adrienne Manning is devastated to find out she’s pregnant after messing around with a guy who’s clearly not boyfriend material.
He’s a lonely mortician with a spiteful daughter, and things just happened late one night after a funeral. When Adrienne meets George Freihoffer in a coffee shop to tell him the news, he asks her to get married and promises to take care of her.
Adrienne hasn’t been single long and she doesn’t trust men so easily after Drew, her high school sweetheart turned husband, left her for a perky soccer mom.
Adrienne and Drew’s two sons don’t like spending weekends with their dad and his new wife, who has three wild boys of her own. They are confused about why Adrienne plans to give up the new baby and they worry she’ll get rid of them too.
Adrienne gives George an ultimatum: agree to the adoption or she won’t talk to him anymore. He accepts, but in the meantime, drifts into a relationship with Carolyn, a woman Adrienne initially set him up with to get him off her back. Adrienne realizes when he’s gone that although she might not have been madly in love with him, George was a good friend and she misses having him around. Being alone causes Adrienne to second-guess her decision about the baby.
Giving Myself Away grabs readers by the heart and guides them through a realistic journey fraught with tough decisions.
Review:
Adrienne is a divorced mother of two, who had an unfortunate one-night stand with her friend George. It’s unfortunate because she isn’t really “into” George and she ends up pregnant – at forty-two! Adrienne tells George, who readily asks her to get married, but she refuses. Adrienne’s still feeling bruised by the failure of her first marriage, to a man she was in love with, so the prospect of marriage to a friend who sometimes annoys her doesn’t seem too promising. She also doesn’t think she’s in the position to start all over again as a mother, especially as a single parent. Should she “take care of it” or give the baby up for adoption? Her best friend Sandra has been trying to have a bay for years, so that’s possibly an option.
Sandra doesn’t react well to the offer, nor do Adrienne’s parents. Nobody can understand how she could give her baby away. When Adrienne finds out that her ex is getting married again, and having a new baby of his own, she realizes that he’s moved on. Why can’t Adrienne? Should she keep the baby? Marry George? Give the baby up for adoption? Could she even go through with the adoption?
Okay, this was a tough book for me to read and I honestly didn’t think I would like it – but I did. As a mother myself, I can’t imagine ever giving up my child for adoption, no matter the circumstances (especially when I already have children). I also find it odd that a woman her age would find herself in such a predicament in the first place. I’m not even sure I like Adrienne, who was a bit cold, but I kept reading to find out what would happen. The plot moves quickly and the author successfully kept me guessing. There are many supporting characters in this book, some of whom are very strange. There’s also a minor funeral home story-line that I didn’t quite understand and found to be a distraction. The ending wasn’t what I hoped for, but over-all I think the book is was sharply written. The story will certainly give you something to think about.
