"What We Carry" by Kalyn Fogarty is a deeply emotional and poignant exploration of loss, grief, and the human capacity to heal and find meaning in the face of tragedy.

The story revolves around Cassidy Morgan, who experiences the heartbreaking loss of her child at twenty weeks of pregnancy. The narrative is skillfully woven through alternating points of view, allowing the reader to gain insight into the perspectives of Cassidy, her husband Owen, her sister Claire, and their mother, Joan. This multi-perspective approach enriches the storytelling and offers a profound exploration of the profound impact of grief on familial relationships.

Fogarty's writing is both heartfelt and authentic, drawing from the author's own experiences and wisdom gained from personal tragedy. The novel delves into the complex emotions surrounding the loss of a child, touching on themes of guilt, love, and the transformative power of grief. The book doesn't shy away from addressing difficult subjects, making it a powerful and necessary story.

The characters are well-drawn and relatable, with each offering a unique perspective on how they cope with the loss and navigate the turbulent waters of grief. Cassidy's journey is at the heart of the novel, and her struggle to come to terms with her loss is both heart-wrenching and moving. Owen's character represents the helpless but well-intentioned partner, adding depth to the story. Cassidy's relationship with her sister, Claire, and her mother, Joan, is portrayed with authenticity and complexity, shedding light on the dynamics of a family dealing with grief.

The book provides a much-needed voice to the often-overlooked subject of miscarriage and stillbirth, offering a raw and honest portrayal of the emotions that accompany these experiences. Fogarty emphasizes the importance of acknowledging and discussing these topics, as one in four women will face pregnancy loss in their lifetime.

While the book is emotionally heavy and may be a challenging read for some due to its themes of loss and grief, it also serves as a source of healing and understanding. "What We Carry" is a beautifully written, thought-provoking, and essential story that touches the heart and encourages reflection on the profound impact of loss and the resilience of the human spirit. It provides a valuable perspective on the journey of healing, hope, and the importance of communication within a family dealing with tragedy.

This was such an emotional read! It was definitely a tear-jerker. Its hard to believe this is a debut novel. I look forward to more by this author in the future.

I was unable to finish this one and had to DNF. I just could not get in to the storyline. If I attempt to read in the future, I will update my feedback.

A heartbreaking story of grief and change that I feel no one truly understand until having experienced the pain themselves. This story was so good, and showed the struggles of experiencing this pain in a relationship. Such a helpless situation.

I respect the vulnerability that it took the author to write this. I think it is a unique fiction book in that it can be very comparable to a memoir. Unfortunately I highly disliked the main character because although she was sad and greiving, I found it difficult to empathize with her as she repeatedly hurt and alienated everyone in her life, so that’s why I gave 3 stars.

What We Carry is an emotional, yet powerful read. I haven't experienced a loss to this nature before but I felt every pain with each page written.

Kalyn Fogarty takes on a journey with Cassidy Morgan, who is reeling after losing her child at twenty-weeks pregnant. The story is told through alternating points of view from Cassidy, her husband Owen, her sister Claire, and their mother, which the author uses deftly to present a clever and thoughtful study on the destructive impact of grief. Written, clearly, from the author’s own pain and wisdom brought from the experience, Fogarty delves into how it feels to lose a child and the impact on all of Cassidy’s relationships. I'm so thankful Fogarty shared this story for the world to read. I can imagine how much of an impact it's going to have on mothers whom experienced this type of loss. Even if someone reading this well-written novel isn't a mother, it's a filled with grief, love and life in general that anyone can learn and heal from. I hope to read more from her soon.

Thank you NetGalley and Kalyn Fogarty for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

This is a deeply moving and invaluable depiction of the realities of infertility and the pain of recurrent miscarriage. What We Carry by Kalyn Fogarty is a novel but it reads like a true story, like a memoir or autobiography. There are multiple points of view that give the story a depth and breadth that is unusual for this type of story. As someone who has experienced similar devastating losses, I truly appreciated the raw nature of this story. I highly recommend this book and especially for anyone wanting to learn more about how to help others grieve.

TW: miscarriage, stillbirth
A very emotion packed book full of sadness, grief, love, a fraught mother-daughter relationship and personal growth that sometimes seemed too much for my heart. It was however a beautiful and necessary story that should be told. So little is written about miscarriage and stillbirths (my mother had 2) and the very complex emotions surrounding them. What stood out about this is the author has a connection to the experiences in the book as it was written after her own miscarriage. She noted that 1 in 4 woman will experience pregnancy loss in their lifetime and uses the book to focus on the heart shattering that occurs when it happens. It was not a light, easy read but it is written in a beautiful style with mostly likeable characters that one can easily relate to.
Thanks to NetGalley, the publisher and the author for the ARC.
4*

Title: What We Carry
Author: Kalyn Fogarty
Genre: Fiction
Rating: 4 out of 5

Cassidy Morgan's life has always followed a carefully laid track: top education, fulfilling career, and marriage to the love of her life, Owen. The next logical step was starting a family. But when a late-term miscarriage threatens to derail everything she's worked so hard for, she finds herself questioning her identity, particularly what it means to be a mother. Unable to move past her guilt and shame, she realizes there's more to fix than a broken heart. Grief illuminates the weaknesses in her marriage and forces her to deal with her tumultuous relationship with her own mother.

Cassidy hopes her work as a veterinarian specializing in equine reproduction will distract her from the pain but instead finds that one of the cases she's working on shines a spotlight on the memory of her unborn son. For once in her life, Cassidy is left untethered and wondering why she wanted to become a mother in the first place.

Then the unexpected happens when Cassidy becomes pregnant again. But the joy over her baby is tempered by her fear of another loss as well as her increasingly troubled marriage. Now, she must decide whether to let her pain hold her back or trust that there's still something to live for.

I have to confess, I almost stopped reading this about 25% of the way through. Cassidy and her mother were some of the most selfish and oblivious people I’ve encountered, and they (especially the mother) were extremely off-putting to read. This family has issues. So much passive-aggressiveness in every interaction.

Cassidy’s loss and what she went through were well-done, although her hatefulness to people made her hard to sympathize with at times. Grief and loss are explored on the page, as well as healing, although Cassidy did not “deal with her tumultuous relationship” with her mother as the blurb says. There was very little of that.

Kalyn Fogarty is a professional horseback rider and an author. What We Carry is her newest novel.

(Galley courtesy of Alcove Press in exchange for an honest review.)

Sometimes you desperately want to love a novel simply for its storyline. But whether you love a novel or not depends on so many factors, including your state of mind while reading it. I think I picked up this book at the wrong time. It has a lot going for it, but I couldn’t connect with it as much as I had expected.

Story:
Cassidy’s life is perfectly on track: great education, successful career, happy marriage. When time comes to begin a family, she gets into the act with the same planning and determination as always. But a late-term miscarriage shatters her more than she expected. The story depicts her struggles to accept the loss of her baby. Will she be able to go beyond her grief? Can she ever consider having a child without feeling guilty over the one she lost? Her husband Owen meanwhile is torn between his own dual feelings of loss: that of his baby’s passing and his wife’s enclosing herself in her cocoon of sorrow. Will their marriage be able to survive this tragedy?
The story comes to us from two broad timelines: before the miscarriage and after. It is narrated from four first person perspectives: Cassidy, Owen, Cassidy’s mother Joan with whom she has a love-hate relationship, and Cassidy’s sister Claire who has her own busy and happy family.

For me, this book was a win in terms of its storyline and theme but it lost in terms of its plot structuring, characters and writing style. It’s a complex novel exploring multiple types of parenting, multiple levels of grief, and multiple ways of acceptance. The title is quite significant; ‘what we carry’ can mean so many things. We carry expectations of family and self, we carry (and miscarry) babies, we carry memories, we carry pain, we carry guilt. And all these ideas come out in the story somewhere or the other. It’s an appropriate title for this work.

I have never read a book that deals with miscarriage and the pain thereafter in such a layered way. You will feel Cassidy’s pain in your heart. You will find yourself feeling sorry for Owen who is lost about what to do. As Cassidy has always been the stronger partner in their marriage, Owen finds himself without an anchor to guide his emotions. Everything to do with the miscarriage and their lives thereafter is written well. Cassidy works as an equine veterinarian and the way one of the horse’s pregnancies ties in with her own story is also a nice touch.

Usually I'm a fan of books with multiple perspectives but in this book, somehow it felt like too much. This problem is worsened because the chapters are quite short and all perspectives are in first person. It would have worked wonderfully coming just from Cassidy and Owen’s perspectives. Having four voices diluted the impact of the story for me. There are also many rambling descriptions in the book about trivial content such as Owen’s landscaping work or Cassidy’s equine customers.

Of the four main characters, Joan was written very well as the mother who tries her best to connect to her daughter but simply doesn’t know how to. I loved how her character is portrayed so realistically rather than being the picture-perfect mother as in most books. But her arc is not essential to the main storyline and just serves as a confrontation point for Cassidy. Claire as a character is fantastic. How she copes with the hustle-bustle of her life and still finds time to be the mediator between her sister and her mother is incredible. I loved her presence in the story, but again, she hardly had any role to play. The focus should have been on Cassidy and Owen. And I’m sorry to say but I couldn’t get Cassidy’s character. I understood how she felt after her miscarriage but some of her reactions seemed over the top. Yes, she was dealing with an intense grief, but she was acting as if it was her grief alone, and I simply didn’t get this, especially considering her initial closeness to Owen. Why couldn’t she see that Owen had lost a child too? Surely there was a better connect between the two of them. I think I might have liked the book a lot better had I felt close to Cassidy. But I just found her very self-oriented and irritating.

I remember having a conversation with a friend about social media comments and I had told her that sometimes, intent is more important than content, and that we must understand why something is written rather than what is written. I think my statement applies to this book too. So maybe you could give this book a try for a glimpse into how great tragedy a miscarriage can be for the expectant parents and ignore the unsatisfactory character sketches and writing. Read it as a story about love and loss and hope. But don’t pick it up when you’re in an emotionally low phase. You might not be able to complete it.

Thank you to NetGalley and Alcove Press for the ARC of the book in exchange for an honest review.

Such an important book. A real, intimate, much-needed story exploring miscarriage and its effect on relationships and life.

Cassidy and Owen have been trying for a baby and they think have finally hit the jackpot. Then tragedy strikes and they are both left reeling. Cassidy withdraws into herself, Owen tries to reach out but gets no response as she buries herself in grief and her job as a Vet. Meanwhile Cassidy’s mum struggles with tact and Cassidy’s sister Claire is trying to see if she is more than just a mum. Then the family experiences a ray of sunshine that brings them together. A beautifully written story about love and loss and how what we carry inside us is the sum of all of our experiences.

You will ache for Cassidy and for her husband Owen as they navigate life after a later term miscarriage. That Cassidy is an equine vet whose speciality is reproduction only makes things more poignant. Told primarily from her viewpoint, but also from Owen's, her sister Claire, and her mother Joan, this is about how a family copes with both grief and hope after Cassidy unexpectedly becomes pregnant again. It's a very close novel- close in the sense that you can feel the emotions. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. While tough to read in spots, this one will resonate.

An amazing book, I couldn't stop reading it. It was such an emotional read. Throughout the book we follow Cassidy and her family as they all find it difficult to communicate with each other after Cassidy's miscarriage at the beginning of the book. We follow Cassidy and her husband Owen and we see them struggle to get through this difficult time together. I think that the thing which I liked most about this book is the ability of it to make you feel all the pain that all of the family is going through and the strength that they have. It was also nice to read about how the family is not the perfect family and that they fight all the time, for some reason I appreciated the story even more.
A definite MUST READ. I really want to get the physical copy of this book now.

A very emotional and heart-wrenching story, and the topic of miscarriage makes for difficult reading at times. The author uses her own personal experience with miscarriage to tell the fictional tale of veterinarian Cassidy who suffers a late term miscarriage and begins to question many aspects of her life.

What We Carry is a thought-provoking response to the author's own miscarriage and lack of fiction surrounding the topic, that she and other women in her situation crave. At times I want to stop reading, but I was so drawn to the story I couldn’t until I was done.

I could really relate to this novel, initially when I started it, I thought it was going to be triggering as I am sure it potentially could be to many who have been through pregnancy lose. But the more I got into the story the more I found myself completely relating to some of the situations that Cassidy was experiencing. I am so glad I continued!

I like how the book was written from different perspectives and how that individual was dealing with life following the miscarriage.

This is a topic that doesn’t really get spoken about and often people suffer quietly as not to make other uncomfortable.

What We Carry is a heart wrench story, its complex, its hopeful, all in all it was a really good read.

Thank you to Netgalley & Alcove Press for kindly gifting me an E-ARC of this novel.

A moving, heart wrenching novel of loss and grief. Kalyn did a fantastic job using her own experiences to put into words what many women will know in their lifetimes. I enjoyed the characters, the family dynamics, and the raw emotions of this novel.

I have been reading a lot of thrillers lately so this book was a complete different tone for me. Maybe its because of so many thrillers that when I read this one, I sobbed.
I related all to Cassidy who lost her baby at twenty weeks. While I haven't lost a baby that far into a pregnancy, I have had three misscariages and I take story lines like this to heart (Bawled when Kate miscarried on the TV show "This is Us:)

Its a heartbreaking but still beautiful look at a couple dealing with this lost and trying to keep their marriage set. Cassidy is falling apart and its affecting all of her relationships but none at much as her marriage. Her husband Owen is not a jerk and try as you might to hate him, you will not be able too. Especially when you see him handling his grief. I think we forget when we experience miscarraiges, that the fathers are in just as much pain as the mothers. We also don't realize that when a rainbow baby comes into play, fathers are just as nervous as mothers are in celebrating a new pregnancy also.

This was such an emotional book and I couldn't help but root for them to make it

Thank you so much to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

This book tackles a topic we still don't talk enough about: miscarriage. With grace and poise and wonderful prose, Fogarty brings the story of Cassidy alive. Both thought-provoking and heart wrenching, I felt for these authentic characters all the way through the book. I applaud the writer for writing a book she couldn't find, and I know this book will help so many others who have experienced the same grief with the loss of a child.

An intimate and emotional character-driven saga that works it’s way deep inside your heart - “What we carry” is a heart-wrenching story of grief, of loss, and of the patterns we learn early in life to manage our pain that can distort and warp our line-of-sight to healing.

Sometimes, a character in a book is so well-crafted, so nuanced, and so thoughtfully layered that you feel you know her. You don’t always like her, - you may in fact dislike her much of the time - but she is authentic and she is hurting and you understand her and find her story deeply touching.

Cassidy, our main protagonist, is such a character. Cassidy is a veterinarian, a wife, a daughter and a sister. She is a bundle of want, of desire, of control, of science, and of intelligence. The oldest child of a mother with alarmingly narcissistic traits, Cassidy has learned to wind up her pain into tight little packets of safety - each painful wound guarded by layers of anger, rejection, or sarcasm - targeted to deflect, dehumanize, and head off any possibility of human approach (evil or life-affirming) with one fell swoop.

Owen, Cassidy’s husband, is a sweet and simple man, raised in a “big old farmhouse” in Kansas by plain-speaking, agenda-less, conscientious parents. Owen has learned to wear his heart on his sleeve and only wants to love and support and make Cassidy’s life better. “If I could take her pain away and make it my own, I would’. It’s not surprising that Cassidy fell in love with Owen - surviving as a couple though, is another matter entirely.

It takes a terrible tragedy to turn Cassidy and Owen’s life inside out, and as the drama plays out it is not at all certain that a full emotional recovery for their family unit is possible. As we follow the twists and turns of each of their well-primed reactions, their struggles, and the questions that remain, it’s impossible not to read on, with a lump in your throat, hoping for the very best, yet fearing the worst, until the final dramatic and harrowing resolution.

(No spoilers here). I will leave it to you to read the book, but let me just say, I loved the time I spent with these special people, (some of them more so than others), and long after the story ended, found myself remembering, and thinking about, - motherhood, love, loss, and the pain we reveal.

A great big thank you to the author for an advance review copy of this wonderful book. All thoughts presented are my own.