he Fourth Child by Jessica Winter. Published March 9th, 2021.
Thanks to NetGalley @netgalley and Harper Audio @harperaudio @harperbooks for letting me listen to the audiobook version of this novel, narrated by Cassandra Campbell.
.
.
.
The story centres around Jane, a devoutly Catholic teenager in Buffalo, NY, who has experienced emotional abuse from her parents and later her high school boyfriend, and is engaging in self-harming and disordered-eating behaviours. When Jane gets pregnant in high-school and marries her jerk boyfriend, however, her religious devotion becomes in tension with her new responsibilities as a mother. Later, when her three children are teenagers, Jane feels a religious calling to adopt a Romanian orphan after seeing news coverage of the conditions of the orphanages. Bringing home this fourth child complicates the family dynamic, particularly creating a rift between Jane and her eldest daughter, Lauren.
.
Winter tackles a whole variety of heavy topics in this novel, including: religion, abortion, adoption, violent pro-life protests, emotional abuse, neglect, disordered eating, teenage pregnancy, and a teacher who is a sexual predator. Despite the heaviness of the topics, The Fourth Child ends up being a pensive family drama about motherhood, attachment, faith, guilt, and bodily autonomy. While the rest of the characters are a bit flat, Winter conducts an empathetic character study of Jane and Lauren.
.
If you're a fan of Ann Patchett and/or Celeste Ng, you'd probably like this book too!
.
.
.
#thefourthchild #netgalley #literaryfiction #recommendedread #recommendedread #2021reading #marchreading #harperaudio #harperbooks #adoption #familydrama #familysaga

The fourth Child is definitely a sprawling story. It spans decades and the lives of mothers and daughters as they navigate different times and expectations. There are times when listening to it that I became very interested in the fates of those girls and women. And then the narrative would drag on, throw in some unnecessarily gross description, or random vulgarities. Don't get me wrong. I'm no prude and I can swear like a sailor at times, but here it felt forced into the story just to remind you that it was there. It took me out of the story. I also couldn't get to attached to the characters because, for all of the longwinded descriptions and explanations, I never really knew them well enough to be invested. I found myself going back and forth on this one and I have come to the conclusion that it is simply not for me. Not a terrible book. An OK book for a different audience.

Very well spoken as an audio book. I greatly enjoyed the story, premise and connected to the book. I liked that it wasn't the typical run of the mill family story and it provided interesting insight. I appreciated being able to listen to the audio.

The Fourth Child by Jessica Winter is a well-written intergenerational family drama told in the perspectives of mother and daughter. We meet mother Jane in high school and follow her journey into motherhood. We meet her daughter, Lauren, in high school as well. So many topics are covered from romantic and familial relationships, parenting, abuse, religion, abortion, etc. I liked the parallels in their lives and pondering how much choices we make when we are young can influence the rest of our lives. We get to know and understand Jane and Lauren very well, but most secondary characters were a little flat and lacked depth, like Lauren's brothers. I also liked how Jane and Lauren both changed and developed over the years. They weren't perfect characters or always that likeable, but were vulnerable and flawed. Cassandra Campbell deftly narrated the audiobook. Her narration really drew me into the story.

Thank you Harper Audio and NetGalley for providing this audiobook ARC.

The synopsis the book presented was really interesting. I found the story to have a really in depth and layered family drama but it lagged a bit at times. But, I stayed interested because I was anxious to see how the relationship between Jane and Lauren developed. Then, once Mirela entered the picture, that added a whole other layer to the story. I wanted to see how Mirela impacted things - both in terms of Jane and Lauren's relationship and Jane and Mirela's relationship. Also, I would note that the content warnings for this book should be front and center as it discusses and explores a lot of sensitive topics.

This book is built around endless multigenerational family drama consisting of mental and emotional abuse, self harm, eating disorders and growing up in spite of all of these issues. It is well written but not an easy read. A darkness weaves itself throughout this novel that made it difficult for me to read for long periods.

Some may find triggers among these pages.

The Fourth Child tells the story of Jane and her family. As a senior in high school, the deeply Catholic Jane finds herself pregnant and choses to marry her boyfriend, Pat, and raise their daughter. The novel then skips ahead to when Lauren, Jane's oldest child, is a freshman in high school. Jane and Pat have since had two more sons and Jane, looking for more meaning in her life, has become active in a Pro-Life ministry at her local parish to protest abortion. Everything is fairly normal until Jane watches a documentary on orphans in Romania and, without consulting anyone, turns her family's life upside down by adopting a toddler from Romania. Due to many traumatic years spent in a poor, overcrowded orphanage, Merela harbors deep attachment issues and throws multiple destructive tantrums a day.

Jessica Winter is an excellent writer and the book was full of rich detail and figurative language. The concept for the novel was quite interesting as well. But ultimately I had many issues with the characters and how themes of abortion, religion, adoption, mental health, sexuality, and abuse were handled. All of the characters were so frustrating and I disagreed with many of their choices. I also felt like the presentation of religion was somewhat negative and not very reflective of the experiences of most people of faith. I hated a part about 3/4's in where Jane turns out to be a massive hypocrite.

Despite many issues in the novel, the story was interesting enough that I kept reading and it wasn't hard to get through. But you might leave wanting to rant about the terrible decisions certain characters make.

Although the first third of the book was interesting and I followed along. Prior to halfway the book lost its flavor for me. I was very interested in the description, but when it came down it I wasn't thrilled with the book in totality.

A lot of crazy family drama happened in here. Unplanned pregnancy. Very religious family. A little too much God and religion for my liking in my reading. It was intense however; a slow burn and it took me a long time to get through. It was not a book I wanted to pick up and keep reading. I didn’t understand all of the decisions that this family made. I struggled to finish this one.

The Fourth Child by Jessica Winter was like listening to a book version of a roller coaster. There were so many twists, turns, and loops that at times I lost perspective of the actual story and characters. At times the difficult subject matter seemed poignant and at other times it felt unnecessary because it was one traumatic thing after another with different characters and in different time periods . There wasn't enough time between events to digest what happened before the next terrible thing occurred. At times it was hard to see how it all tied together.

y Jessica Winter

I’m not even sure what I just read, I mean, whoa! This book is FULL of intense family drama, weird sexual experiences, emotional abuse, self harm, eating disorders, neglect, mental abuse, and adoption with an overall focus on religion and abortion.

With a full cast of complex characters I was surprised that I was unable to connect to even single one. With the timeline jumps, perspective shifts, and intense emotions the extreme situations brought out in each character I think I suffered whiplash.

For me this book tried to pack to much punch and ended up missing the mark. Although I didn’t see the ending coming by the time I got there it was to late for me to care. While others may enjoy the dark and twisted tale woven between Mother and daughter in The Fourth Child it was to disjointed for me.

⭐️⭐️ Two stars with a R rated emotional beat down full of hot topics and trigger warnings

Thanks to @netgalley @harperaudio and the author for this advanced listener copy.

The Fourth Child by Jessica Winter is a saga about intricacies of motherhood, adoption, family bonds, abusive relationship, and mental illness. Heavy story narrated in a beautiful manner.

Jane is a religious woman, stay at home mother of three kids. She gets pregnant in high school which leads into a marriage. Her in-laws provide house and the necessities. Her husband starts college and works for the family business. She is devoted to her kids and her entire life is woven into a single entity – the mother. As her children grow and the need for her is less, she longs for something to fulfill her life. She gets involved in pro-life movement.

Jane adopts a child from Romania adding fourth child to the family. Mirela is difficult child with a troubled past. The child disrupts everyone and everything – Lauren’s school play, her 15th birthday party to name a few.

Lauren, the oldest sibling, has difficulty in adjusting to the arrival of a new daughter. Her bonding with mother also suffers as a result.

The best parts of the novel were places where the characters were forced to reconcile their beliefs with the reality of their lives, perhaps coming to a greater awareness of themselves and others,

The pace of the novel is slow though the theme keeps up the reader's interest.

Thanks for an advanced copy of this book from Netgalley.

Thanks HarperCollins for the copy!

CW: Sexual Assault, Abortion

Wow! This book was quite a journey. I really didn't see where it was going but when we got there, it was powerful. I definitely had to take breaks from listening to the audiobook because there were some very painful moments. I did love the dual narrators. It gave lots of different perspective and as a young woman, I felt very in tune with what both mother and daughter were going through.

The story of Jane, Lauren, and their family is important because it deals with very real, yet not always discussed topics. Definitely a book for readers who are comfortable with heavy and emotional content.

The Fourth Child is a complicated work of fiction. The author wove together strong themes of religion, controversial psychological practices and theories, and nature versus nurture through alternating points of view. It was an ambitious work and clearly well researched. The story as a whole was lacking in focus for me. The Fourth Child as an audiobook was well paced and expertly narrated, but still couldn’t not pull it together for me.

Thank you to NetGalley, author, publisher, and narrator for the chance to listen to this advance audiobook. The opinions in this review are entirely my own.

I have received this ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

The Fourth Child was an interesting story for me to dive into. I will admit that this had a ton of family drama that will take you on it's own wild adventure. Yet, for some odd reason - I couldn't connect with a single character. Okay, maybe odd is the wrong word to use because I know why I couldn't.

First, you meet Jane and yikes. She goes through so much emotional abuse from her own parents and her boyfriend. Then on top of that, she does self harm and has eating disorders due to all of this. It also doesn't help that she is pregnant either.

Enter Lauren. It was actually pretty interesting to see things from her eyes because she has to deal with the sudden adoption and her life changes. For better or not.. that's up for you to decide. All I can say is that diving into every little thing from their own eyes was a bit eye opening in a way.

Since I've been raised catholic.. my family has never been like this. Would they care if I had a baby out of wedlock? Eh no not really but I'm only basing this off of my parents very subtle cues of wanting me grandparents. Would they care if we got married in a church or on the side of the road? Also no. Heck my dad would probably love the cheaper wedding but again.. I'm stating this because he has said it to our faces.

As for the rest of my family? They might care but they didn't raise me.

So, yes, this book was interesting and it dove into some deep and dark things. I'm still not a fan of the coping mechanisms by Jane but I guess I will learn to get over it. Maybe.

This book was hard for me to get through. I requested it because I love the narrator - Cassandra Campbell - but the storyline did not hold my interest. It just seemed to drag. Sorry but this is not a win for me.

A family drama that takes us inside a family and its trials and tribulations when mental illness is not talked about or treated. Jane, a devoutly religious young woman finds herself pregnant in high school and in short time is the stay at home full time mother to 3 children. This is all happening at a time when no one spoke of mental health issues and no one surely ever acknowledged that everything in their life, home and world wasn’t perfect. It was all about showing the world all was picture perfect even when it clearly wasn’t. She is completely wrapped up in being a mother and without that identity has no idea who she is. As her children need her less and less she is adrift and longs for something. To belong, be needed. something to fill her heart and soul and feel useful and of service. She becomes more and more religious and becomes involved in the pro-life movement. Given her beliefs and lack of (self imposed) lack of purpose, she decides to follow her head and heart and adopt and welcome a new child onto their family. Mirela has suffered unspeakable things before she became a part of Janes family. She suffers from what is diagnosed as attachment disorder at a time when no one spoke of mental illness and thought people could “pray away” the problems. This story gives us a view into how a family and far a ripple in the fabric of a family spreads and impacts everyone. It is a deep, emotional, haunting story that is not an easy read, but a beautifully written story that drew me in and truly kept me wanting for things to get better, because isn’t love supposed to make everything okay in the end?