Chloe Pinter works at the Chosen Child Adoption Agency as director of its domestic program, matching families with children of birth mothers who don't plan to keep their babies for whatever reason. She has an album of happy pictures of herself with beaming new parents and the babes they've adopted, but one of her adoptions seems to be going off-track. When she visits Jason and Penny, a poor couple giving up their baby for adoption, she finds a crib in their apartment. They have an excuse for the crib, but she warns the adoptive parents, Francie and John McAdoo, setting off events that quickly spiral out of control. The other couple who play an important role in this story are Paul and Eva Nova, former clients of Chloe's who will have a baby of their own once Eva gives birth. Things really heat up when a baby goes missing.
Without giving away too many details, suffice it to say that some people will stop at nothing to get what they want. As the lives of these three families and Chloe become entwined, Chloe is also dealing with her relationship with her surfer bum boyfriend. All the pieces make for a pretty good storyline.
Chandra Hoffman had a great idea for a story when she set out to explore the world of open adoptions. Having worked in a position similar to Chloe's, she clearly knows about what she writes. My quibbles with the novel are that the charactersβ both good and badβ are a bit too far on either end of the spectrum to be entirely believable. That said, Chloe's character is more realistic than some of the others, giving us insight into the stress of her job, and her feelings, emotions, and dreams.
The story shifts viewpoints among a number of characters, but Hoffman tells the reader at the beginning of each chapter from whose viewpoint it comes, so there's no guesswork involved. Among the chapters, Hoffman also includes posts from Francie McAdoo on a local adoption board.
The different viewpoints make the story more interesting, and the element of suspense keeps the pages turning. My quibbles aside, for readers interested in learning more about how adoption works, I recommend picking up this novel.
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Chosen, a young caseworker becomes increasingly entangled in the lives of adoptive and birth parents, with devastating results.
It all begins with a fantasy: the caseworker in her "signing paperwork" charcoal suit standing alongside beaming parents cradling their adopted newborn, set against a fluorescent-lit delivery-room backdrop. It's this blissful picture that keeps Chloe Pinter, director of the Chosen Child's domestic-adoption program, happy while juggling the high demands of her boss and the incessant needs of both adoptive and biological parents.
But the very job that offers her refuge from her turbulent personal life and Portland's winter rains soon becomes a battleground involving three very different couples: the Novas, well-off college sweethearts who suffered fertility problems but are now expecting their own baby; the McAdoos, a wealthy husband and desperate wife for whom adoption is a last chance; and Jason and Penny, an impoverished couple who have nothingβexcept the baby everyone wants. When a child goes missing, dreams dissolve into nightmares, and everyone is forced to examine what he or she really wants and where it all went wrong.
Told from alternating points of view, Chosen reveals the desperate nature of desire across social backgrounds and how far people will go to get the one thing they think will be the answer.
No excerpt available.
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