Book Review and Giveaway: The Secret Daughter by Shilpi Somaya Gowda

Thanks to the new SITS Book Club, I am happy to bring a great book to you today. It is in it's paperback release this month and we are happy to help promote it!


SITS is also hosting a The Secret Daughter Twitter Book Club Party today, 9/22, from 8-9 pm CST, hashtag #SITSbooks. Shilpi Somaya Gowda (@shilpigowda) on Twitter will be joining us.  


The Secret Daughter cover
Synopsis: Somer's life is everything she imagined it would be — she's newly married and has started her career as a physician in San Francisco — until she makes the devastating discovery she never will be able to have children. The same year in India, a poor mother makes the heartbreaking choice to save her newborn daughter's life by giving her away. It is a decision that will haunt Kavita for the rest of her life, and cause a ripple effect that travels across the world and back again. Asha, adopted out of a Mumbai orphanage, is the child that binds the destinies of these two women. We follow both families, invisibly connected until Asha's journey of self-discovery leads her back to India.

About the AuthorGowda was born and raised in Toronto to parents who migrated there from Mumbai. She holds an MBA from Stanford University, and a Bachelor's Degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A native of Canada, she has lived in New York, North Carolina and Texas. She now makes her home in California with her husband and children. Gowda spent a summer in college as a volunteer in an Indian orphanage, which seeded the idea for SECRET DAUGHTER. For more, visit her website: http://www.shilpigowda.com

Review
: This story is so powerful because of it's many facets- biracial marriage, international adoption, infertility, social chasm or poor versus rich, and the ways in which families are the same, yet different. There is literally something for every reader in this book to relate to. The author does a great job in showing the domino effect of choices we make and how coincidence and fate is more of a series of connections than out of the blue experiences.


While the story is based on adoption, the changing of a marriage from 2 people to child driven is on that most couples can relate to and understand. How the characters adapt and change sends a powerful message to the reader. The author's dealing with the issue of infertility and the character's experiences with miscarriage is so real and moving, that many will need a box of Kleenex to get thru those chapters. The going back and forth between both mothers helps the reader to see connectivity and how the characters are changing. The author doesn't give us the ending you might expect, and that's actually a great thing- real life is never neat and tidy, and by allowing her characters to experience their lives as if they were real, it creates a stronger story that stays with the reader. I also appreciated the author giving the reader a list of Indian words and their definitions. It helped to be able to look at it for the unfamiliar words


I highly recommend this book as the perfect book to read curled up by the fire! 



**
**
Disclosure / Disclaimer: I received this book, free of  charge, from the SITSBook Club, for review purposes on this blog. No other compensation, monetary or in kind, has been received or implied for this post. Nor was I told how to post about it.

Comments

Post a Comment