Chick Lit Plus Blog Tour Review: Chosen by: Chandra Hoffman

GoodReads Summary:

In 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 nothing—except 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.

My Review: 

ReadingNook Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Chosen is one of those books whose topic is extrememly powerful and real, and many people can relate to the reality of it. Adoption and trying to concieve is a topic that many couples deal with on a regular basis, and while personally I don't have any experience with this topic as of yet, I still can understand the emotional connection that people feel with children and babies. 

The main character Chloe Pinter is a case worker for an adoption program that she feels truely passionate about. Being able to help familys that can't concieve on their own and are desperate for a baby that joy, and to comfort parents that are about to have a child that they cannot finacially or mentally support. Parts of this book were extremely graphic, but personally I felt like it added to the vivid picture that Hoffman was trying to create to show the severe circumstances that these babies could potentially be brought into. 

Adoption is not an easy process, it's very expensive and mentally draining, who has the right to choose whether your fit to be parents, and who should be allowed to have that much power and control? 

This book wasn't chick-lit at all in my opinion and I would have catagorized it as Women's Fiction and felt similar to the writing style of Jodi Picoult. I did enjoy the topic of this story, but the characters for a while confused me, I felt like too many characters were thrown at me too quickly, and I couldn't really form an emotional connection to any of them. That could be in part because at this time i'm not a parent, but i am at the age and circumstances where that could be in my near future. 

I feel like many people can relate to this book, but I also feel that it's not a book for the faint of heart, Like i stated earlier parts of this story are a bit graphic and explicit. Overall, if you like a story with a lot of hard-hitting topics, and drama then you should give this book a try.