So there I was the other day chatting with a friend of mine. I mentioned that I had recently finished reading a book called The Making of Us and briefly told her about it. She asked if I was going to review it so I said “sure, I can do that.” Her response “Good, cause I want to know more.” So here we are, me reviewing a book I read just for fun.
The Basic Details for The Making of Us
Title: The Making of Us
Author: Lisa Jewell
Narrator: Helen Duff (audio)Publisher: Atria Books (print/ebook)/Dreamscape Media (audio)
Pages: 416 pages
Intended Audience: adult
Genre: infertility, coming of age, contemporary women’s fiction, family, friendship, mystery, adult fiction,
Available formats: Paperback, kindle, audio
Format Used: audio
About The Book and Author
Lisa Jewell is a prolific author having written 19 novels. She has been a NY Time bestselling author. Many of her books are thrillers.
The Making of Us focuses in on three individuals. Lydia, Dean and Robyn. Although they don’t know each other, they share a secret. Through the discovery of that secret a new family is created. Infertility is a hard situation and people find different ways to deal with it. This drama draws you into their lives and we see three individuals develop into better people.
Digging a bit Deeper
It’s so odd. I have NEVER been a women’s fiction type of reader. I’ve read some but I tend to get annoyed with the drama and/or the romantic stuff that happens. It’s like I’m either thinking “hurry up and grow up will you” or “romantic love isn’t all sunshine and roses, get real.”. So for me to mostly enjoy a women’s fiction book I’m still finding a bit odd. My tastes are changing just a bit. I still adore fantasy, science fiction, and a good mystery the best. BUT… women’s fiction is definitely finding it’s place in my library.
The Making of us did contain some “hurry up and grow up” elements. I got a tad bit frustrated with how Dean handled things, but in the end he started to get there. Lydia and Robyn both learned and grew, able to put some the difficulties of their lives behind them. They found ways to start onto new paths.
The character development was okay. I felt like I had a pretty good grip on who Lydia and Dean were with Robyn kinda coming in around the edges.
Infertility created issues in three families and how they each handled it was quite different. Ms Jewell could have delved into that a bit deeper but chose not to. It made for a harder secret for some of the characters than others.
So What Did I Think?
Would I recommend that others read this novel? I think so. It’s wasn’t the most “I got to finish this book today” good. But I did want to know how things would turn out in the end. Would they meet the man who helped out their moms? What would they think of him? What would he think of them? How would they effect each others lives? Some of these questions weren’t answered due to how the story flowed.
In some ways this was very disappointing. To not have that closure in how their secret had closure, it was all just about how it affected them each personally. I wanted to know more about how it would affect them as a group as well. Did they all stay in contact? Would they build a new “found family” unit? It kinda felt like too little too late fatalism. On Goodreads I scored it as a three.
The story, The Making of Us, wasn’t bad it just didn’t feel like it went far enough for me.
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