I really enjoy a good dystopian book. This one was ok. I thought that the storyline was very unique and the ideas behind it were very good. I however found it to be rather slow and dragged a little bit in places. But it was ok.

Dystopian is not a genre I would have chosen to venture into until I read The Handmaid's Tale a couple of years ago; and then when I read the blurb for this, Jessamine Chan's debut novel, I was really intrigued.

The story had some similarities to THT with the government always watching, mothers having their children taking away...

And all that had to occur for that to happen was the mother had to take one simple action that could be deemed as bad - although in the MC Frida's case, it was a bit of an extreme - and they had the opportunity to attend a one year government programme to make them "good" again. If they failed - parental rights terminated.

It was a very Big Brother-esque novel, with the women in the programme under constant watch, even down to cameras in the dolls that were their "children" for the duration.

I think it could have been a really good novel but it fell flat in places. I feel the writing was very factual, matter of fact and blunt; it didn't really stir an emotion in me other than the upset of Frida's daughter. And the ending was a bit of let down - I would have liked at least an epilogue.

Although I could see improvements, I would recommend having a read - I think it would make a good book club discussion.

3.5⭐

Frida must learn how to be a good mother again after leaving Harriet at home. The court's order her to learn to become a better mother so she's sent away to learn how to become a better mother.

We feel for Frida as she doesn't live up to her Chinese parents expectations and watch her on this journey to gain her daughter back.

If I could give this book NO STARS for how anxious it made me I would, however it deserves a lot more than that.

I don't understand the negative reviews I have read about this one, yes the past perspective is nausea inducing and the story a little far-fetched and full of questionable actions. But the nausea only adds to Frida's spiralling loss of control of her life and the story rides easily on the pervasive new wave of judging parents and trying to control all aspects of children's lives.

The book has that delicious yet taunting ' Day After Tomorrow' feel, in that some of the measures didn't seem that impossible really in the very near future, same as how the US sleepwalked into Gilead. But I think further comparisons to The Handmaid's Tale don't do this book justice - although I get there are nods to it (Frida/Offred?) - but by keeping the focus so tight on Frida, Harriet and her immediate friends and family this is more a domestic disaster with dystopian overtones. I was expecting some revolutionary manifesto about motherhood but actually it became more of a personal tale of a normal person grappling with things much larger than themselves in order to put their lives back together.

Some details were exquisite, the dolls and sci-fi elements were particularly well worked out, the punishments and control methods suitably cruel and Kafkaesque, and I loved the conversations around race. And of course, the quite obvious narrative around how even normal, loving parents can make mistakes and don't need bashing with big blunt teaching methods to correct them, we could easily read between the lines that Frida was the best parent for Harriet despite constantly failing her tests.

I honestly couldn't see where this one was going to end up and while I was hoping for a big bang finish where everything was put right, where the parents revolted and were reunited, where love and sense prevailed, but it was actually quite downbeat and hopeless. Maybe this is just one of the many stories of what happens BEFORE we get to Gilead?

Big Brother for the Mumsnet generation.

If you like a dystopian novel, you’ll love this. I honestly didn’t know what to expect when I started reading this, but I was drawn into the world created by this writer, very quickly. Whilst we focus on the struggle of the main character to cope with single motherhood and the challenges of bridging cultural differences, the supporting cast is also engaging. Ideal for fans of The Handmaid’s Tale where the rights of the individual are taken away by an unsympathetic and judgmental state. Definitely recommend.

This was an awesome read! Very well thought out, a good story and some very emotional interactions... Ir’s an unusual story that I found gripping at times. I was enthralled with the characters, the ingenuity of thinking behind the characters... Without giving anything away, things are not as would be expected... In some respects it reminded me of The Girl with All The Gifts, a book that you wouldn’t have maybe picked up if you knew the intricacies but so so well written... For a debut book it was brilliant, more like what I would have expected from an established author...Jessamine Chan will be one to watch out for! Many thanks to NetGalley for my copy, this is my unbiased review.

I quit after 60%. It was just too slow for me, and it felt like it was dragging. I absolutely loved (and still love) the premise and I can imagine that someday it will be converted into a really great TV show/movie, but unfortunately, at least at this moment, it wasn't for me.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a free ARC in exchange for an honest opinion.

This is a real mind bender. Unique and brilliant but so twisted and disturbing.
I felt as if I was powerless and helpless reading this, it is so incredibly sad in places. This really leaves the reading with so many things to ponder and weigh up. Where does each of us feel the line is drawn when it comes to bad parenting, what does a " good mother " actually look like on paper.
I finished this with so many emotions to process, and still can't get it out of my head.



I voluntarily read and reviewed this book, all thoughts and opinions are my own.

I was instantly intrigued by this book, as soon as I heard about the premise and read the synopsis. So, I was delighted when I was approved for it on NetGalley and was highly anticipating seeing this story play out.

Frida Liu seems to be failing in all areas of her life. Her career isn’t quite what her Chinese parents wanted for her. Her ex-husband Gust has taken up with a beautiful, young mistress. Just when she thinks that her daughter Harriet is all that she has left, Frida drops that ball too. The world is watching parents like Frida and now it’s down to the government to determine whether she and other neglectful mothers are capable of reform. If they can learn to be good mothers, they’ll regain access to their children. If they fail to meet the standards of a good mother, they’ll lose contact completely.

Frida has a lot in common with the majority of working mothers. She is tired, distracted, stressed but spending time with Harriet is still a top priority. It’s easy to see how one bad day, full of all of these things, could lead to a mistake. It’s also easy to see how this mistake could have catastrophic consequences. I held out hope that someone would give Frida the benefit of the doubt but it quickly became apparent that she was destined for severe judgement and shame.

The school is designed to change ‘bad’ parents on all levels. They’re taught how to raise and care for a child via ultra sophisticated robotic dolls that resemble their own children. Ironically, there probably are some first time parents, who wish they’d had some kind of formal training, but I’m sure none of them would appreciate the rigid structure and harsh treatment at this facility. I was scared for the wellbeing of the mothers and I had no idea how far the process could send them until devastating events occurred. It’s truly chilling and the pace was perfect, which meant that I kept turning the pages to find out everyone’s fates.

Frida has a lot of regrets about her past decisions and even about the woman that she has become. She has a lot of guilt around desire and her craving to be desired, which she no doubt got from her upbringing. She is desperate for Harriet not to inherit her dependence on romantic love and sex in order to feel whole and happy, which in my eyes is a sign that she’d be an excellent mother. However, the watchful eyes on her will only see her behaviour, not her real thoughts on that behaviour.

The mothers are taught that in order to be a ‘good mother’, a woman must be solely focused on her child. She can’t be distracted by factors such as men, a career or dreams for the future beyond what is best for her children. Of course, modern women simply can’t naturally fit into this mould and the effects of being forced into it seem inevitable.

The School For Good Mothers is a unique, eye-opening and incredibly riveting dystopian thriller. The final chapter had my heart in my mouth and I finished it with a strange mixture of nerves and hope. Thought-provoking and heartbreaking with terrifying shades of our own world, The School For Good Mothers is a book that you will struggle to put down.

Don't be mistaken into thinking this is a light-hearted poke at society expecting mothers to be perfect. There is nothing light-hearted about this book.

Think handmaids tale meets squid games.

It is brutal.

It is brilliantly disturbing.

It is heart-breaking.

And it's a stark reminder that we are all human, we all mistakes, and what the world needs is more compassion and less condemnation.

I love a good dystopian novel! I loved the story of how one mistake can change the entirety of your life! Although this didn’t grab me as much as other dystopian novels have (because I think they need to be extremely clever) I still enjoyed it and would recommend.

I want to put this book in the freezer! A very chilling dystopian look at child protection.

As a mother and a social worker I spent a lot of time screaming at this book!

The book follows a mother who leaves her child unattended while she goes for coffee and then to work. What follows is a dystopian nightmare where she is sent to a school for good mothers.

The book is brilliant in its characterisation and how it drags you kicking and screaming into the world of these mothers (and fathers). However it is equally hideous in the flaws in the concept of the program.

This book will make you mad and sad but is still worth a read. Just prepare yourself for the content.

This is grim. Unrelentingly so. With the exception of Will, none of the characters seem to have any redeeming features, although many have vile experiences throughout the plot and obviously in the past which made feel sad for them, angry on their behalf. I found the main body in the school itself dragged but am willing to concede that could be clever writing to make the reader feel how Frida felt. I think this would be a good book thought provoking book club read, but it's not one I enjoyed.

I thank NetGalley and Random House UK, Cornerstone, Hutchinson Heinemann for providing me an ARC copy of this novel, which I freely chose to review.
I heard a lot of comments about this novel, was intrigued by its subject, and I can honestly say this is a book that won’t leave anybody indifferent.
The author is well-known for her short stories, but this is her first novel, and as she explains in the author’s acknowledgments at the end of the book, she had been working on it for many years before it saw the light. It seems that it started as a short story, but at the recommendation of a writing mentor at a workshop, Chan felt encouraged to develop the concept. Readers who are interested in the writing process will enjoy reading the author’s note, as it gives a good sense of what inspired her, which writers influenced her, includes a bibliography for those interested in her sources, and it also gives an account of how many people play a part in the final product, from the author and her family to the institutions providing support of all kinds.
The description of the novel gives a reasonable overview of the plot, although I am not sure everybody who has read it would agree on the way the book is characterized in the last paragraph.
We have all heard stories of neglectful parents, and/or parents doing things that seem unthinkable, like kidnapping their children, harming them, or even killing them. I have often thought that in this day and age when one can hardly do anything without having “training” and holding “a certificate” (at least in most Western societies), it is amazing that one of the most difficult things to do, raising a child, requires no qualification and there is no supervision or education provided to ensure that young people of a certain age know, at least, the very basics. As if the author had read my mind, in this book, the authorities create a School for parents (yes, for the bad mothers of the title, but there is also an equivalent school for bad fathers, although with fewer students and much more lenient), and “dystopic” doesn’t quite make it justice. The action takes place in a world that sounds exactly like ours and in the present (or at least not in a particularly distant future) in the USA, and that increases its impact, because it is not that difficult to imagine something like this happening (although perhaps some of the details are a bit fanciful and stretch credibility slightly, but only slightly).
Frida, the main protagonist, does something that is definitely bad (I am not a mother, so I cannot speak with any inside knowledge, but I think it is understandable although I cannot imagine anybody would condone it), although not, by far, the worst thing we hear about in the novel, and she is not the most sympathetic of characters. And that is, perhaps, what makes it a particularly effective but tough book to read. Because it is very easy to feel sorry for a character who is tender-hearted, kind, and nice, and feel outraged for the way s/he is treated, but here, we not only meet Frida (whose story is narrated in the third person but from her limited point of view), but also some of her peers, and none of them are people most of us would want as friends in normal circumstances, especially once we learn about what landed them at the school. But Frida gets to care for them and we do as well, and we also feel their frustration, their pain, and their desperation. Those of you who are parents, imagine if everything you did when you were with your children (and even when you were not with them) was recorded: every word, every move, every gesture, every look... and all that evidence was judged in comparison to some perfect standard impossible to achieve (and most of the time, impossible to explain by the teachers and impossible to understand by the students).
Apart from motherhood (parenthood), issues such as identity, legacy, family expectations (grandparents, relatives...), cultural differences, prejudice, desire, temptation, mental illness, privacy, mono-parental households, single mothers, the difficult (almost impossible at times) balance between profession and personal life/ work and family life, and big questions like who gets to decide what is the best for a child, and how far can laws and society go to regulate certain aspects of our lives... This is a book of big ideas, and I am sure book clubs would find plenty to discuss here, although I suspect some readers will not feel comfortable reading it and might abandon it before the end.
I enjoyed the writing style, even though I am not a fan of the use of present tense (we follow Frida’s story, chronologically, for over a year, and this is narrated in the present, although there are memories and thoughts about the past or a possible future that also make an appearance), but it suited the tempo of the story, which follows the seasons and the school programme, and it progresses at a slow pace. (I am not sure “page-turner” is a good definition, at least not if it makes us think of non-stop action and a quick pace). One of the strong points of the novel is the way it describes the thoughts of the main protagonist, her doubts, her guilt, her second-guessing herself and others, and also the way it explores her feelings, her efforts to control herself, to be seen to be doing the right thing, however hard it might be (and still failing sometimes). Although the story is poignant and very hard, there are some lighter and witty (even bitchy) comments and moments that make us smile. Yes, I’m not ashamed to confess I cheered when Harriet, Frida’s daughter, bit the horrible social worker, and although I don’t think any fragment can do justice to the novel (and if you want to get a better idea of how well the book would fit your reading taste, I recommend checking a sample of it), I thought I’d share a few brief quotes:
Here, Frida is talking about Susanna, her husband’s new girlfriend:
The girl is on a mission to nice her to death. A war of attrition.

Perhaps, instead of being monitored, a bad mother should be thrown into a ravine.

Harriet is wearing a gray blouse and brown leggings, like a child of the apocalypse.

What little she knows about the lives of saints comes back to her now and she thinks, this year, she might become holy.

“A mother is a shark,” Ms. Russo says. “You’re always moving. Always learning. Always trying to better yourself.” (You’ve probably guessed that’s one of the members of staff at the school).

The ending... I am not sure I’d say I liked it, but I think it fits the novel perfectly, and I cannot imagine any other ending that would work better. Readers seem very divided by it, and some felt it ruined the novel for them, while others loved it. It is open to interpretation, but I like to imagine that it shows Frida has learned a lot about herself and about being a mother in the school, but not perhaps the kind of lessons they had hoped to teach her.

In sum, I enjoyed (although it is not the right descriptor, you know what I mean) this novel, and I am sure I’ll be thinking about it for a long time. I don’t think this is the kind of book to recommend to a young mother, or to somebody struggling with motherhood or thinking about it, but anybody interested in the subject of government control, education, parenthood, and keen on dystopic narrations should check it out. And I will be keeping an eye on the author’s career. I’d love to know what she writes next.

I liked the premise of the book but I just could not get into it - I hate giving a bad review but this was just not for me.

I loved this book, but it was very hard to read, harsh and painful. It broke my heart in a thousand little pieces. There's a special sign Frida and Harriett do to represent the fact that they miss each other: they mime the squeezing of their heart with their hand. That's exactly how I felt the whole time reading their story, as if a hand was squeezing my heart. And I also felt angry and mad, but that's how a dystopian novel is supposed to make you feel, isn't it?
This story, and all I felt reading it, will stay for me for a very long time, I loved it in a heartbreaking way and hated it at the same time. I understand this is a debut novel, I can't wait to read her next work.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an arc in exchange for an honest review.

Wowzers,The School for Good Mothers is a real departure from the books I would normally read. It's one of those books that you have to keep reading, but once you're finished, you stop and think about it and realise quite how scary it actually was. The premise of it is a 're-education' programme for mothers, but for trangressions that wouldn't register as 'bad' in normal society. The programme has only one way of doing things, and you're either on board, or you're on the bad parent register.

What seems like a fantastical concept at first gets more and more realistic as you read further, and it's not a massive step to imagine it actually happening.

The School for Good Mothers is the 1984 for the modern world. It'll scare you, and stay with you for a very long time.

A tired, single mum makes an error of judgement, landing her in a correction centre for mothers who need to improve. If she doesn't meet the standard then she can wave goodbye to her daughter. A thought provoking, debut novel guaranteed to make you panic.

Frida leaves her little girl, Harriet, at home alone for a couple of hours and someone reports her to social services for neglect. She is frazzled as a new mum and her husband Gust has left her for another woman, Susanna.
Frida is sent to 'the school for good mothers', where she will stay for a year with no visitation. Instead, the mothers are given an interactive doll to care for. I found the whole concept a bit creepy and realistically being away from your child for that long would break the bond they have.

I found the read emotional, especially the places when Frida needs to say goodbye to Harriet. I wanted the ending to be more resolved, as I am left wondering how things turned out. I would have done exactly the same thing in Frida's position.

The book is well written and I felt invested in Frida's story.

Thanks indeed to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC.

Reading this made me crampy and hiccupy and nauseous with anxiety, so like. On an emotional level, this was very successful.

On a rational level, I'm a little more ambivalent. I liked the uncanny valley motherhood simulation, the sentient silicone children; I thought the mother-doll relationships should have carried more weight (we spend so much of the novel watching these mothers mother dolls into conscious, feeling, judging, even loving personhood that their disposability feels Weird, even with the gestures towards grief that some of the mothers show on leaving?) I liked the project, the attempt to explore how fraught the relationship between motherhood & the state is; I felt like the conclusions it came to were unsurprising & less challenging than I'd hoped. I also, & this is mostly because I liked one friend's baby photo on instagram & have since had an explore page full of Montessori mothers and baby-proofing hacks, felt particularly inclined to be sympathetic to the overwhelming sense of competition, of frustration and smugness and guilt. But I also noticed, especially early in the book, when characters were being introduced more frequently, just how uncomfortable Frida's judgments of other women's bodies made me? It seems to be a feature of the literary fiction estranged woman voice, the granular scrutiny of breasts and hips and build, the constant monitoring of attractiveness, of comparative sexual appeal, and I find it exhausting. I think its usefulness as shorthand for envy, resentment, desire is limited, and often heavy-handed.

It's stuff like that, the embedded assumptions that aren't prodded at, the implications only half sketched out, that land this book in the middle of the road, because otherwise I think it's a punchy and skin-prickly dystopian drama.