The cover, showing the author and her twin sister on the front, is what originally drew me to this title - I just can't resist a twin story no matter what! After a series of alarming health concerns, Julie decides to spearhead the search for her and her sister's biological parents. I wasn't expecting this to have such a local connection with me. The suburb they live in neighbors one where I grew up! And the adoption agency that they used is the same that a friend of my grandmother's used during this same time period. So this really came vividly to life for me and it was easy to share rather viscerally in Julie's persistent search.

This is a riveting journey that is both emotional and satisfying. This is the type of memoir that is hard to tear yourself away from and I found myself definitely listening to this one at every opportunity. I think that this will lead to a lot of lively discussions amongst readers - particularly those who are unfamiliar with adoption. A lot of big issues come up here - from privacy rights, to personal rights and the complications that not knowing your medical history can cause.

There were more revelations uncovered here than I expected and while, like the author, I would have liked things to turn out differently along the way, this makes for an emotional and engaging listen. There are some lingering questions at the end, and ones that I hope that some day the author will have answered. I quite enjoyed this memoir that manages to feel personal and candid without ever crossing the line into being overly intimate or uncomfortable. In sharing her experience, I think this really opens up eyes into not only the adoption experience, but in the search for answers as well about heredity.

This memoir allows us to follow along on Julie's journey to find her biological parents. The road to discovery is not a smooth one for her, and we witness multiple obstacles that arise.
While the story is interesting and easy to follow, I didn't find it particularly compelling. However, I feel confident that this book will offer comfort and hope to anyone in a similar situation.

This is a great story about twin sisters that were adopted at birth and Julie is now looking for her birth parents to get her health background. After trying many different options she finally has some success in connecting with her birth mother, but still doesn’t know anything about her biological father. Her sister suggests they try a dna test like a sentry.com or 23 and me. The results they get are unbelievable.
The narrator does an amazing job at bringing Julie’s story to life.
You will cry and laugh and feel what Julie goes through to find answers about her health.
Great story about two sisters search for who they are and where they came from.
#twiceadaughter, #netgalley

This book was quite a fascinating memoir. The narrator did an amazing job bringing Julie's story to me.

For me the book was a little slow, but was overall a good listen. The audiobook was done well and the narration was done well.

This is a remarkable memoir told by Julie and her resounding and resilient effort to find her birth parents. She and her twin sister were put up for closed adoption with Catholic charities. They were adopted by an amazing family; however, due to cancer scares she needs to find health records to her birth parents. This book taught me so much about the adoption process and how difficult it is to find out necessary medical information one may need. Toward the end of the book I was crying with delight.

This is such a complicated and challenging journey of Julie, who is on the journey to find information on her life to help save her life. It's sad because her adopted parents don't understand. This story was so sad. I felt so bad for her and her struggle to find out who she is.

I found this story very good despite being only a short audiobook. After a few hours I was feeling bad that she had to fight to know the truths that most people just know.

Very good read.

What a fantastic book! This memoir recounts the author’s search for her and her twin sister’s birth parents, ostensibly to get needed medical information, although at some point the need to know her biological family and form those connections seem to supersede the need for the medical records. It presents her quest in great detail with intelligent and beautiful writing, compassion, and honesty, including her frustrations with both the process and some people who became roadblocks in her search. She calls to task those who were unhelpful, but fully celebrates the many wonderful people she encountered along the way. The events towards the end of the book are so amazing as to seem almost too coincidental; if this were a novel, I might consider it a bit unrealistic, but the fact that it’s true made these developments quite moving and really lovely. I also very much appreciated the epilogue. I had the pleasure of listening to the audio version and the narrator was absolutely excellent. I highly recommend this book, whichever format you enjoy it in! Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an audio e-ARC of this book.

This is a remarkable memoir told by Julie and her resounding and resilient effort to find her birth parents. She and her twin sister were put up for closed adoption with Catholic charities. They were adopted by an amazing family; however, due to cancer scares she needs to find health records to her birth parents. This book taught me so much about the adoption process and how difficult it is to find out necessary medical information one may need. Toward the end of the book I was crying with delight.

When Julie McGue receives a concerning medical diagnoses, she decides that it is time to begin the search for her birth family. This memoir chronicles the many year journey she took to find her birth parents and the obstacles she overcame to do so.
I really appreciated Julie’s complete honesty and candidness in writing this book. There are many topics that come up, such as her adoptive mother’s feelings about the situation, her birth mother’s reluctance to give up information on her birth father and legal issues that arise during the course of the search. Julie does not shy away from these topics and gives and open and honest look into the adoptive parent search.
I would highly recommend this book for anyone who may be beginning their own such search, or anyone who is interested in family dynamics, or just a true-story about searching for beginnings. Julie’s writing style is easy to read and absorb and she manages to write this memoir in a page-turning style. I listened to this book on audio and will also add that the narrator did a great job. So much so that I didn’t realize it wasn’t the author reading the book until the very end when they mentioned the narrator.
5 stars, highly recommend, thank you for sharing your story with us, Julie.
Special thanks to Netgalley and She Writes Press for this Advanced Reader Copy in exchange for an honest review.

📚 #BOOKREVIEW / #BOOKRANT 📚
Twice a Daughter
Rating: ⭐️⭐️ / Pages: 283 / Genre: Memoir / Narrator: Katie Hagman

This memoir is about a woman who embarks on an 8-year quest to find her birth parents in an effort to find out more about her medical history when she’s faced with a cancer scare. While I am mostly a fiction reader with a heavy emphasis on mysteries and thrillers, what caught my attention was this compelling description about the book: “What began as a simple desire for a family medical history has evolved into a complicated quest—one that unearths secrets, lies, and family members that are literally right next door.” Intriguing, yes? Meh. I forgot that real life is never as exciting as glorious fiction.

What I especially didn’t like was the author and main character. While obviously she has a right to feel her own feelings and believe what she believes, she was just so annoying about everything. She kept moaning over and over about how closed adoptions weren’t fair to the adoptee. What about her rights to know where she came from? What about her? Wah wah wah. Her adopted parents were loving people who gave her a wonderful childhood yet when her mother expressed mixed and hurt feelings about her trying to find her “real mother” she was not empathetic at all and just focused on her own selfish feelings. When she found her birth mother she was hurt that she didn’t want to introduce her to everyone as her daughter. Um because you’re basically a stranger at that point! And THEN, when she finally tracked down her father, he specifically told her he didn’t want anything to do with her and not to contact his family, but she stalked them anyway and had plans to contact his son. Events occurred where she didn’t have to actually do that but she had planned to. And by the way, this woman is in her 50s but acts like a stubborn teenager.

Anyway, I wouldn’t even have bothered to write a review or even finish this snooze fest but I got it from #NetGalley so I had to to keep my score up.

Twice a Daughter is the story of Julie Ryan McGue's search for her birth family. Julie and her twin sister were adopted by a husband and wife that proudly told the girls how they had waited for them and adopted them and how much they were wanted and loved. While the girls often wondered about their birth parents, they never wanted to make their parents feel that they were not enough or hurt feelings by wanting to fill in missing blanks in their lives. When Julie was in her 40s she began having health issues and was often asked by her doctors about her family medical history, but she had no information. She reached out to her mother who had limited information and pointed her in the direction of the adoption agency, who had limited information and refused to share with her what they did have.
After fits and starts, dead ends, fake names, scammers, denials, and lies, Julie was put in touch with a confidential intermediary who worked though the Illinois Probate court system who was able to track down more information.
Her story is the tale of many confidential adoptions across the country. She and her family, including her parents, husband and children rode the rollercoaster with her and caused some of the highs and lows that many adoptees in her situation have had to endure. Sharon Kaplan Roszia wrote about the core issues in the adoption triad 40 years ago and McGue's story displayed all of them. The need for knowing medical issues is part of the core issue of identity, she experienced shame, loss, rejection, and the other core issues. Her mother experienced grief, shame, and other issues, Rejection by her birth parents and their shame at having children outside of marriage in the 1950s.
This book should be mandatory reading for people considering adoption, adoption social workers, and people involved in the search and reunion, foster care social workers, judges, and attorneys who represent children who may be adopted. These professionals and potential parents need to understand the child's need for medical information outweighs the birth parents' desire to maintain secrets and lies.
[disclosure: I help families make open adoption agreements that maintain connections for children]

Thank you Net Galley for the opportunity to read this book in return for an unbiased review

As 48-year-old, Julie, experiences some health issues, it becomes even more important to her to get information about her adoption and the health history of her biological family. Julie, and her twin sister, Jenny, were adopted out through Catholic charities as newborns and the adoption was closed. This means that they couldn’t obtain any information about their birth parents or family health history without permission from their biological parents.

As mounting frustration at not being able to obtain the information they need is blocked by their biological mother (she refuses to give out her own information or that of their father), the twins meet an experienced adoption counselor who helps them through the process. The adoption counselor is a lifesaver and her experience proves to be extremely helpful.

I enjoyed reading about Julie and Jenny’s journey, and felt their frustration as they ran into roadblocks along the way. Although it was a long road to discovering where they came from, I believe they felt it was worth it in the end. Thanks to Netgalley for allowing me the opportunity to review this book!

#TwiceaDaughter #NetGalley

This story pulls at your heart strings and it feels like you’re listening to your friend work through a difficult time in their life. The story builds at a good pace, and characters are relatable especially when they are faced with health issues. The story twists and turns over the eight year period demonstrates how family secrets can impact a simple goal to learn about family medical history.

(4.5 stars)

I thought Twice a Daughter would be a slow evening read – since it’s an audio, I’d listen for a half an hour each evening and be done within the month. Was I mistaken! Finished it in less than a week. Several evenings, and it would have taken even less, had I had more time in the past few days to finish it up. It wasn’t for lack of wanting to! The book really drew me in and I just couldn’t stop.

In short, Twice a Daughter by Julie Ryan McGue is a true story about a woman’s search for her biological parents. What starts off as a quest for her medical history and a hope not to attach herself to what she finds, ends up as a search for her roots, a search for belonging and a story of true, frankly quite wild synchronicity – a story of how odd, sometimes even almost magical real destinies can be.

It’s written well, and I enjoyed the narration too. The author is open and sincere, and it just draws you into her and her sister’s story. While they grew up with wonderful adoptive parents and raised children of their own, had good lives – there was still always that question of who they truly were, and where their roots were. Spurred by some medical trouble and hoping to get access to family medical records, the author braves a closed adoption search to find her real mother and father.

This book is full of ups and downs. I had FEELINGS on the part of the sisters, and even though I finished the book already, I still have those same feelings regarding some of the stuff that happened. I simply couldn’t stay a passive reader.

The story really does draw you in. And it makes you realize how lucky you truly are, if you’ve never had to ask yourself the questions these women had to ask themselves. The author goes through some emotions and reasonings a lot of us will never have had the chance to feel, and she explains it all very well. So this book is kind of an experience, not just an evening or two reading.

Also, I have to say – what a story. Truly, how unbelievable some coincidences in it were! Stories like this make you wonder, were those REALLY coincidences? Or maybe there’s more to the world than we can see and understand? Otherwise, how can these stories work out better than even the craziest movie scripts?

Overall...

Twice a Daughter is definitely worth a read (or as in my case, a listen). It’s a very good book and it may remind you how odd real life can sometimes be – almost better than a fantastic movie script. It’s a touching story as well.

An intriguing account of an adult adoptee`s search for her birth parents. Twin sisters, Julie and Jenny, begin to search for their biological parents in order to obtain their medical history. The search becomes an emotional rollercoaster with its obstacles and unexpected explorations. I found the story-telling quite well, however, at times it does get a bit slow-paced. It is also interesting to learn about the adoption procedures. It is a well-narrated audiobook.

A fascinating story about a dedicated adopted twin looking for her birth parents in order to find a more complete medical history, and in the process, she is dedicated and persistent to find the answers and her journey takes you through the struggles of unlocking some answers. Thank you for the ARC of this book #TwiceaDaughter #NetGalley

This book was highly enjoyable, this book took you on a journey by the author of her story to find her and her twins birthmother & father, and also to find out any medical history so that she could pass it along to her children. It was a roller coaster ride of a book and I would recommend it.

Thank you to NetGalley and Books Fluent for providing me with an audio ARC of Twice A Daughter by Julie McGue. In exchange I offer my unbiased review.

At the age of 48, after experiencing a health scare, Julie McGue decides it’s time to search for her birth parents. Julie and her twin sister were fortunate to have been adopted together, to the same family and were raised in a loving home with parents who adored them. Neither sister ever felt the need to search for their birth parents until the fear of medical conditions and further knowledge might be necessary for their well being. As Julie begins to pursue her journey for her medical information, she is surprised to receive strong negative feedback from her always supportive adopted mother. Julie wonders if her mother is intentionally suppressing information. Julie & her sister were adopted through the Catholic Agency, and all information was closed and sealed. This practice was pretty much standard in the 50’s & 60’s when the adoption occurred.

This memoir traces Julies 10 year journey to uncovering her medical and personal files as she faces many many obstacles and hurdles. What I most appreciated about this memoir is the ethical and moral obligations one has to both the privacy and protection of the biological parents verses the rights and needs of the child/ children who were placed for adoption. A fascinating story and one that is both optimistic and thought provoking.
Audio narration was excellent.

A beautiful memoir. Explaining the difficulties of trying to find birth parents. I am glad the story was told.