I was lucky to receive an advance copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review and opinion. This is the first book I've read by this author and I can honestly say this book will stay with me for a long time. I was pulled in from the first page and couldn't put it down until late into the night. I seriously can't wait for this to be published so I can talk to everyone about it. Seriously - read it as soon as you are able to get your hands on a copy!

I’m not okay with the topic: thinking that motherhood can be dictated and taught in schools, that mothers have to be more responsible than fathers, that their mistakes are so unforgivable that even their children were calling out for their name they should be removed from those kids’ lives. I’m not a mother, but I’m sure the process is trial and error and mothers don’t simply get a software update with perfect solution to every problem they might face after giving birth to their kids.

Frida had a bad day and she stepped away for a bit leaving Harriet behind. Of course Harriet missed mummy and started screaming and crying only to get mummy into trouble. I’m not saying what Frida did was correct (which could have ended in tragedy),, but it sounded like she was doing her best to be good mum. With police and social services involved, Frida found herself in front of judge trying to prove that she was a good mother and capable of taking care of her daughter. Yet judge didn’t think so. System sent her to a school for “narcissistic mothers who are danger to their children but trying to be better”.

This story suffocated me. Kudos to author for making me feel that way. Creating a dystopian environment where mothers were kept away from their kids as if they are prisoners only to “practice” being good mothers on AI babies, Chan possibly turned all mothers’ biggest fears into reality. If any new mother who thinks they are not “perfect” can easily be traumatized by this story.

This book is meant to be dystopian, but is disturbing in its accuracy: how one bad day can make you seem like a bad mother, how normal parenting can be pathologized by society, and how all the 'expert' advice about parenting can be warped into something that doesn't resemble the natural mother-child bond at all. What happens when observers interpret maternal actions/reactions outside of their context? In a book that takes societal judgement about mothering to the next level, the protagonist (overwhelmed, over worked, and under supported) has "one very bad day" and finds herself forced to attend a school to become a better mother. There, normal parenting mishaps are conflated with genuine abuse (her own actions probably falling on the moral spectrum somewhere between the two) while she learns to mother better over the next year or risk losing custody of her daughter altogether. There are no real villains in this book (although there are plenty of people to dislike), except the Program's unrelenting attempts to measure and quantify being a 'good mother'. Any woman who has had a child, raised a child, or judged another's mothering will see someone in this book they resonate with. It looks sideways at, without asking directly, what is a good parent? And why is that burden disproportionately rested on the shoulders of mothers.

Frida Liu is a newly divorced single mother struggling with the persistent demands of doing her job, raising her daughter, Harriet, and keeping their home in perfect order.
One day, for no singular reason at all, Frida leaves little Harriet alone for almost three hours. She refers to this lapse in judgment as her “one very bad day”.
Frida loses Harriet to her ex-husband and his pretty wife, (who stole him when Frida wasn’t looking). Frida is then a ward of the court system, and from here on we enter a dystopian world that eerily reflects where we’re headed in today’s society.
We follow Frida through the court system and into year-long confinement, a training camp/prison of sorts, to make her a good mother. She’s responsible for a doll robot, very similar to her own daughter, whom she calls Emmanuelle. The training really starts to get creepy here. Emmanuelle slowly evolves into more than just a robot, something that has emotions and thought, almost a "someone" instead of a "something".
I absolutely love this author. Her snarkiness, writing skill, imagination, and extremely dry wit really hits home with me. She lightly touches on almost every single divisive issue of today’s society and pokes fun at it in a sneaky, snarky, amazingly acute way. Race, sexuality, misogyny, and a multitude of other “hot button topics” are openly exposed and discussed with no apology or forbearance. This author is an astute, intelligent person with an uncanny sense of humor.
Sincere thanks to Simon & Schuster for an ARC in exchange for my honest review. The publishing date is January 4, 2022.

This was a bizarre look at what happens when a parent has a “very bad day.” Frida has such a day and as a result is sent to a special residential school in order to learn how to be a good mother. The premise of this book was mind-boggling and includes a brilliantly written fast-paced plot. There were many parts of the books in which I could not believe that humans could treat others in such an inhuman way. The characters most well developed were those who were at the special school. I empathized with them, because who hasn’t had a bad day? Nevertheless, the ladies in the pink lab coats and the directors who ran the school were nothing less than evil, demanding more and more and rewarding less and less. There was a lot of foreshadowing about what would happen, but there were also plenty of surprises. This was one of the best debut novels that I have read, although I will say that it was disturbing on many levels. I heartily disliked the characters of Gust and Susanna, Frida’s ex-husband and his lover who take over raising Frida’s toddler Harriet. Susanna was condescending and Gust was a betrayer and a philanderer who somehow escaped a court system and seemed to be rewarded for having an affair when his wife was pregnant. There were parts of the book that were not believable but the book as a whole was an eye-opening look at what happens when the government steps in and tries to control motherhood.
Disclaimer
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255, “Guides Concerning the Use of Testimonials and Endorsements in Advertising.”

This book told the heartbreaking demise of a woman - a good mother, a single mother, a working mother, who made one bad decision that cost her her daughter. I am not a mother, so I can't even begin to imagine the pain and regret, frustration and anger that this woman must have felt toward her careless decision to leave her young child alone for a couple of hours, only for CPS to come take her away. This woman is put through an annual retreat for "bad mothers". This retreat was incredibly disturbing and infuriating to read, especially as time went on. This woman wasn't a bad mother, yet she was constantly told by her counselors, the workers at the camp, by other mothers that she would never be a good mother. Overall, an okay story, but one that was hard to stomach.

The School for Good Mothers puts you in a dystopian world where mothers can be separated from their children for making a parenting mistake. It is a terrifying place that seems all too much like a possibility. This book is great is has you pulled right into this awful world and even if it's awful you don't want to leave.

As a mother, I really appreciated this novel. I really enjoyed the fact that the main character is a person of color--it feels like many books about motherhood are about white mothers. This is a very well done novel.

I read 30% of this book and had to stop for my own well-being. I read this book in June, so it's possible I read an earlier version and edits have since been made.

There is so much sensitive content in this book including some language related to race, and historical events that didn't sit right with me. However, I stopped reading this book when a comparison was made to children within a sexual context ("her little-girl body", "built like a teenage girl"). I also found the way that mental health and body image were talked about to be troubling.

This is a dystopian novel, but even putting that in context, Frida’s interactions with CPS are pretty reality-adjacent in worst case scenarios. I don’t have a lot of triggers, but I do frequently work with people who have contact with CPS (as parents, children, foster/adoptive parents) and this was too much for me. I thought that the lack of consideration of postpartum depression by the systems here, as well as the derogatory way in which psychotropic medications were discussed, could be damaging to some readers.

Thank you NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for this arc.

In Jessamine Chan’s dystopian novel, Frida Liu is a middle-class woman of Chinese descent who loses custody of her daughter Harriet. She left her baby home by herself for two hours while she went to grab a coffee and bring back home some papers from work.

While what the protagonist has done is indefensible, what the reader sees next is a terrifying turn of events. Frida is first put under surveillance and later sentenced to go to an institution, that resembles a prison, where she needs to follow innumerable rules and has to show her capacity for genuine maternal feeling while also mastering other skills such as cooking, cleaning the house, giving medicine to a child etc.

All these skills are performed by the mothers on dolls that are more like robots. The story only gets creepier, exposing the unrealistic expectations society puts on mothers and the judgmental society we live in. At this school for good mothers, they repeat the mantra “I am a narcissist. I am a danger to my child. I am a bad mother, but I am learning to be good”.

The book also discusses race, power, privilege, sexism, and shows how government can control parental rights. It is a well-written, deeply moving and heartbreaking novel. I finished this book thinking “what parameters do we use to measure a good mother?”. I can’t recommend this novel enough.

Creepy dystopian thriller! Frida is a young single mother who is exhausted. On what she calls her very bad day, Frida leaves her toddler daughter alone for 2.5 hours. As a result of her lapse of judgement she is sent to a government run program to become a good mother. Frida must attend the camp for a year with very little phone contact with her daughter or risk loosing all parental contact. Extremely dark tale that is impossible to put down.

After a sleep-deprived poor decision ends up in a call to Child Protective Services, divorced mom Frida is faced with a decision: lose joint custody of her daughter Harriet, or join a new rehabilitation program for negligent parents. If she fails out of the program, the consequences are dire: full termination of her parental rights.

The world of this novel is near-future dystopian – society is like ours, but with more draconian child protection laws and procedures, including in-home surveillance cameras and phone tapping to analyze behavior, and parental training centers that are more like re-education camps. And – surprise! – “bad” fathers don’t seem to get the same harsh treatment as the mothers. The setting starts out seeming just like our world, but grows more and more dystopian – even venturing in to science fiction territory – as the book goes on. And like any good dystopia, it’s frighteningly easy to see how this world could emerge from our current society.

Frida is depressed and not in treatment for it, led by the stigma surrounding medication to stop taking her meds, putting on a façade of having it all together and saying her baby “healed” her while privately she’s struggling – and that was before the trauma of having her child taken away. After Harriet is removed from her custody, things only get worse.

All in all, this book is powerful and beautifully written, but heartbreaking and disturbing. It’s really good, but it’s a hard read emotionally.

Representation: Asian woman as main character, other people of color as side characters, mental illness representation (main character has depression)

CW: child endangerment, mention of child abuse, infidelity, gaslighting and other mindfuckery, suicide and suicidal ideation, homophobia, misogyny, racism

Frida is a single parent to a toddler. This wasn't how it was supposed to be. She and her husband had planned a future together, but halfway through her pregnancy, he found someone younger and less pregnant to love instead and now Frida is struggling. She's taken a lower paying job that lets her work from home on the days she has custody of Harriet, but Harriet has an ear ache that kept her up all night and Frida needs some papers from her office to complete an overdue task. So she makes the mistake of leaving her child to run a quick errand. An errand that took a little longer than planned and when she gets home, it's to find the police there and child services taking her daughter away. Soon after, Frida is sentenced to a year in a reeducation program for bad mothers.

Frida is incarcerated with a diverse group of mothers whose transgressions swing between actual abuse to the allegations of an ex-husband. Each woman must been seen to learn her lesson and become a good mother, with the help of AI robots designed to look like appropriately-aged children. As the women work through the lessons of parenting -- an approach that says that every moment a mother must be vigilant and attentive. This is a version of the world just slightly different from our own and the differences seem all too plausible.

Frida isn't an entirely likable character and her mistake toes the line against what is acceptable, but she's also very human and a good conduit for showing this repressive world and what it might entail. Chan is a talented writer and the novel is well-plotted. I don't generally like dystopian fiction, but this book kept me turning the pages, invested in Frida's life.

Whiny main character trying to justify leaving her 18 month old alone for hours citing "it was an honest mistake." Completely over the top with unlikeable characters. This book is offensive to mothers who actually work their butts off to take care of their children.

Thanks to NetGalley for providing a digital copy in exchange for my honest review.

When Frida has a very bad day and leaves her 18 month old daughter unattended for 2.5 hours, her child is taken from her and she is sent to the school for good mothers.
In a dystopian society, she is forced to learn how to be a good parent to a robotic doll. She must pass many obstacles and tests in order to get her daughter back. Unfortunately, the mothers at the school are not treated as well as the fathers and often have many basic needs and privileges, such as phone calls to their children, taken away. Mildly disturbing considering the current state of the world.
Thank you to NetGalley and Simon and Schuster for an ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

"𝑰 𝒂𝒎 𝒂 𝒃𝒂𝒅 𝒎𝒐𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒓, 𝒃𝒖𝒕 𝑰 𝒂𝒎 𝒍𝒆𝒂𝒓𝒏𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒕𝒐 𝒃𝒆 𝒈𝒐𝒐𝒅."

Heart wrenching, chilling and gutting, The School for Good Mothers tells the story of dystopian world in which mothers are put under a microscope by the government and sent to a reform school with little to no contact with their children for minor infractions like a child getting hurt at the park, posting much on negativity on social media or letting an 8 year old walk a few blocks alone. The goal is to make them better mothers so they can raise their kids.

The story shook me to the core because we live in a world where parents are judged constantly for how they parent or raise their kids. I've read articles about CPS (Child Protective Services) being called when a mom let her kids play in the fenced in backyard alone and when a dad let his kids run 100 feet ahead during a hike. In this world these parents are sent to a reform school.

The School of Good Mothers took me on an emotional journey and I could feel the pain these mothers felt as they were forced to say things like "I am a bad mother but I am learning to be good." They endured impractical lessons by raising artificially intelligent dolls with the goal of learning to be a better mother. It was a reminder of the unrealistic expectations that mothers face on a regular basis. I found the characters to be relatable, kind, tender, determined and emotional. The storytelling pulled on my heart strings. It made me feel mad, sad, and at times so livid that I wanted to crawl into my kindle and slap someone. If you are a fan of Handmaids Tale then this story is definitely for you.

I enjoyed this speculative fiction look at the expectations we place on mothering and on being mothered. Some readers seem bothered by the fact that the School for Good Mothers seems too extreme for real life yet somehow not serious or wild enough for a dystopian landscape. I disagree, and thought the balance worked well. My primary interest in speculative fiction is not "How likely is this exact thing to happen in my own time and place?" but "What is this thing saying about my own time and place?" and The School for Good Mothers gave me a lot to think about. I suggest this book for fans of Margaret Atwood (as everyone has said), and also Kazuo Ishiguro.

It’s amazing how one bad day can transform your life, and Frida finds out just how much. This story was good, and sometimes women need to learn what was taught at the school, but I kept thinking that what these women were learning, they needed to learn with their families, not apart from them. Other than that there plenty of happenings to keep you wanting to read on.

Great debut. A dystopian portrait of motherhood, set in an unspecified future (but seems so familiar). This novel is horrifying from the first to last page, in a good way. It's a meditation on motherhood, specifically middle-class mothering, and the ways in which EVERYONE judges mothers - other mothers, women in general, the state, etc. It's especially difficult to read as a mother.

"Frida Liu is struggling. She doesn’t have a career worthy of her Chinese immigrant parents’ sacrifices. What’s worse is she can’t persuade her husband, Gust, to give up his wellness-obsessed younger mistress. Only with their angelic daughter Harriet does Frida finally feel she’s attained the perfection expected of her. Harriet may be all she has, but she’s just enough.

Until Frida has a horrible day.

The state has its eyes on mothers like Frida — one’s who check their phones while their kids are on the playground; who let their children walk home alone; in other words, mothers who only have one lapse of judgement. Now, a host of government officials will determine if Frida is a candidate for a Big Brother-like institution that measures the success or failure of a mother’s devotion. Faced with the possibility of losing Harriet, Frida must prove that she can live up to the standards set for mothers — that she can learn to be good.

This propulsive, witty page-turner explores the perils of “perfect” upper-middle-class parenting, the violence enacted upon women by the state and each other, and the boundless love a mother has for her daughter."

Thanks to NetGalley for the free ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Thank you to netGally and Simon and schuster for providing a copy of this book to read and review.

The story is about Freda, whose Chinese, her husband Gust, and their daughter, Harriet who is 2 months in the beginning. The husband leaves to live with his girlfriend Sussana.. Freda is stressed, and has a bad day. She leaves Harriet alone for a couple of hours. The neighbors call authorities and a judge finds her negligent and sends her for one year, to an experimental school for making a bad mother good. Harriet goes to live with Gust and Harriet.

The school is creepy, the mothers, each with some bad child behavior, is given a doll complete with movement, looks and is a programmed AI who has a vocabulary which is matched age appropriate with the child taken from them. They are given punitive exercises to perform with the doll. The motive to succeed is a call to their child. Men have it easier. The issues are sometimes cruel, lack compassion and leave a feeling of hopelessness. The mothers are filmed 24/7. The government interferes with parental training of mothers. How is it the government decides which behavior is good or bad.

I too thought the book to have dystopian character. I thought the exercises were too many to make their point. Although you can feel the frustration throughout the story.

The premise in my option goes too far.