Just okay....

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imabibliophile Avatar

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Right off the bat, I want to say that I am not a huge fan of the Memoir genre of books. Most of the time, I end up wanting to hear more information about a certain thing (that the author doesn’t delve into) and don’t really care about other things that they take a lot of time to talk about. I have never been really impressed with a memoir. That includes those of famous and not so famous people.

The topic seems interesting enough (an adoptee places her first child for adoption at 16… I can get on board with that kind of drama!) So here is the basic story… A young Marylee gets pregnant with her first child at 16, by her slightly (at 18) older boyfriend. While she desperately wants to get married, he has more that he wants to do with his life (attend West Point, etc.) so they place the child for adoption. Straightforward enough, right?
Well, while I thought this would be a book detailing her search for her first child, it ended up being really all about her. The details of her finding and meeting her first son were a fraction of the book. Most of the book detailed her journey, from adolescence to pregnant, and the afterwards. Very little had to do with the here and now, and if she was able to establish and maintain a relationship with her first child.

I really liked some of her descriptions of things, and her writing style was easy to read and absorb. She did jump around a little bit (first starting in the end, discussing a move later in life to Phoenix, then talking about the reunion with her son and finally going to the beginning) but I didn’t mind that, and generally things were in (backwards) chronological order.

What I didn’t like… First, I found all the “characters” in her life (including Marylee herself) difficult to like. Marylee seems self-absorbed and someone that I have difficulty relating to — Maybe because I’m generations younger than she is?? I found her first husband (father of her first baby, who she ends up finally marrying after the adoption) to be portrayed very poorly. He seems like an uncaring, sex crazed young man who has little regard for Marylee and what she wants. I’m assuming he is “better” than that, since she goes on to marry him eventually, but he doesn’t seem like a real winner to me…
Marylee’s parents were not portrayed in a great light either. She writes about her mother as an ugly, emotionally distant woman that forced her to place her child for adoption. Her father she portrays as an abusive man that her mother eventually divorces, but both Marylee and her mother live in fear that he will find them…

Overall, this was an eye opening read. I definitely got into knowing her story, but ultimately it ended up where all other memoirs are for me… I don’t hear enough about what interests me, and too much about things that don’t. I think that some people (adoptees, possibly?) may really connect with her story and may find it to be a great story. For me, it just fell a little flat.