The Shaw family is a large farming family. There are seven children. The father is having a hard time farming and over the years he sells off more and more of the land. There are two huge family events that marks them all. Their mother dies after years of deep depression and remoteness from the children. Then one of the girls becomes pregnant and gets married at fifteen.

Over the years the children disperse to live their lives. There are marriages and divorces, children, addictions. Growing up, each child except the one who got pregnant early, had a sibling they were closest to. They continued this closeness as adults and after the father died, several of the children moved back to the farm and lived together.

I listened to this novel. The narrator was perfect, outlining the various events in the childrens' lives as they grew to adults and parents themselves. The family secrets slowly emerge and reconciliation is found as the childrens' adult lives unfold. This book is recommended for readers of women's literature.

I enjoyed this story, the characters, the narrator and all of that made it a really easy and quick listen.

Thanks to the publisher for granting me access to an eAlc in exchange for an honest review.

Family drama as told through the perspectives of seven siblings and over the course of many years. Sibling and family relationships are often complicated, but the bonds remain.

I want to thank Netgalley and the author for gifting me the ebook. An interesting read. Drama/suspense Novel.

Chorus by Rebecca Kauffman is a delightful book about a family, seen through the decades of loss, growth, love and a gathering together for the good of the one and of the whole. It was easy to get confused or sidetracked by the fact that 3 of the male family members' names start with a "J." At first I thought it was a oversight by the author, but then came to believe that the similarity of names was a purposeful connecting of these main characters, perhaps emphasizing that most family members have so many strengths and weaknesses in common.

The reader sees the family in rural Virginia during the 1st half of the 20th century struggling through the Great Depression and WWII. As with most families, the siblings grow up and apart. It takes a monumental loss to bring them all back together again, fighting and scraping, this time with words instead of actions. But, in the end most find themselves reconciled and supported by their siblings. As any mother or father will stress, you will know and love your siblings for a longer time than with any other relationship you will ever have. Kauffman's prose is light and beautiful, a wonder to read.

Elisabeth Rodgers is a wonderful narrator and I will definitely be listening to more of her work. She succeeds with the gender voicing making distinct changes as well as keeping the reader engaged through her inflection.

Thank you Netgalley, RB Media, Recorded Books and Rebecca Kaufman for an advanced's listeners copy in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to Netgalley, the author and the publisher for the chance to listen to this audiobook in exchange for an honest review. I had a hard time liking this family of main characters even though the plot sounded very interesting to me. Chorus is a family drama that tells the story of the 7 Shaw siblings (from the 1930s to the 1950s) and how the death of their mother affected each one. The chapters jump from one sibling to another and from one year to another, so it is a little confusing. The book is all over the place in sense of time and I found it difficult to stay on track to the end.

*received for free from netgalley for honest review* 45, liked this a lot more than i thought it would ngl. was unsure exactly how the book/story was going to play out but after like 2 chapters i was sold and couldn't put it down! would reread in the future.

3.5 stars

I like stories about families, & this one is a detailed portrait of several siblings & their interactions from childhood to adulthood. Well written, slow paced, & thoughtful.

[What I liked:]

•Each of the siblings has a unique story, ambitions, regrets, & view of the world. It was interesting to see how such a diverse cast of characters overlapped, shared things in common, but also reacted differently to life situations.

•The life story of each sibling is also interesting & divergent. One stays home, others leave but return home. Some are career focused, some are family focused. Some never want to look back. This variety helped make up for the slow pace of the narrative.

•The writing is smooth & not overly flowery, but still nuanced & descriptive.

[What I didn’t like as much:]

•The book is meandering & slow paced, more like a collage of vignettes or a collection of interconnected short stories than a novel. I mostly enjoyed this style, but it may not be to everyone’s taste.

CW: cults, abuse, physical assault, terminal illness

[I received an ARC ebook copy from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. Thank you for the book!]

Listened to the audio and read book as well. Enjoyed this story as it shifted between different points in time and various family members viewpoints. Each layer perfectly built upon previous layer and wrapped up this large family's joys and tragedies.

I've never read anything of Kauffman's before, but when I was looking at predictions for books that might be Book of the Month Club options for March, I stumbled across this title. It sounded like such an interesting read, that I knew I wanted to read it regardless and was thrilled to be approved for it on NetGalley!

In a rural and remote part of Virginia, the Shaw family consists of parents and their seven children. In vignettes spanning decades, the family's story unfolds - though traumatic events leave their marks on them all in different ways. This makes for an engaging listen - obviously one very focused on the characters. There really isn't a plot, per se - but the historical aspect adds subtle dimension. I think this is the type of book that will really appeal to some book clubs to pick it apart for discussion. There's certainly a lot here to talk about!

For the most part, I enjoyed the audio performance - except for the dialogue intonation to mark a child's voice... it was just really cringey... But, on the whole, this kept my attention from start to finish.

I am captivated by a good family drama and Chorus delivered on that front. There are several characters in this book, including seven siblings, and it took some time to settle in. In fact, the first time I started listening, I didn’t get very far. The narrator was great, but the audiobook quality was poor and it interfered with both my enjoyment and ability to follow the story. I went back a week later and was able to not only get through it, but enjoy it. The Shaw family went through some really difficult times including the “mysterious” death of their mother when they were young. They each coped in their own way setting a vastly different trajectory for all of their lives, but at the end of the day, family is everything. Chorus was complicated, heartbreaking, redemptive, and hopeful. If you like a well-written family drama, alternating timelines and numerous POVs, this book is for you. It also gave me some Kristin Hannah vibes, so fans of her work will probably enjoy this one, too.

Thank you Net Galley and RB Media for the audiobook of this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This is a moving novel about a big family with seven kids who live on a farm in Virginia and experience a common trauma when the mother in the family kills herself. The story is told via a chorus of voices speaking to us from the 1900s to the 1950s.

The mother at the heart of the story has undiagnosed bipolar depression in the 1930s and spends much of the kids' childhood in bed, often behaving in heartbreakingly rejecting ways toward the children before ending her life. The children cope with this unrecognized trauma in a variety of ways. One becomes an academic scholar, one an alcoholic, one is raped and so in denial about what has happened to her that she marries her rapist. Some of them are professionally successful, some struggle to make ends meet.

The novel makes clear that even children raised in the same family can have markedly different experiences. The eldest remember when their mother was well and tended to them; the youngest know her only as a shadow of herself. They each have a different relationship with their father, a stoic man who doesn't say much about his or anyone else's feelings, and with each other, and the sibling relationships really shape their childhood experiences and influence their adulthoods as well. The oldest sister becomes a caretaker to the rest of them and has the most heartbreaking story, never finding a way to leave the family home, but in the end life opens up in surprising ways for her when some of the siblings come back.

Overall, I felt there were a few too many voices in this chorus. Especially because the stories were shared in a non-linear fashion, it was sometimes hard to keep up. But for a glimpse into how our views toward family and mental illness have changed or stayed the same, I would still recommend this novel.

Thanks to Netgalley and RB Media for providing me with an audio version of this novel in exchange for my honest review.

4 stars
From the publisher, “Entangled in a family knot, each sibling encounters divorce, drama, and death, while haunted by a mother who was never truly there. Through this lens, they all seek not only to understand how her death shaped their family, but also to illuminate the insoluble nature of the many familial experiences we all encounter—the concept of home, the tenacity that is a family’s love, and the unexpected ways through which healing can occur.”

Kauffman’s writing is beautiful, dialog is strong. The story moves back and forth from 1903 to the 1950s in a rural setting and is character driven, though the plot holds surprises. Nothing big happens in most chapters, but the details stuck with me.

I would have found a different title for the book, something with the theme of home, leaving and coming back. ‘Chorus’ does not really portray the intricate and nuanced family relationships portrayed. From the publisher, “Chorus is a hopeful story of family, of loss and recovery, of complicated relationships forged between brothers and sisters as they move through life together, and of the unlikely forces that first drive them away and then ultimately back home.” “They all had their own homes to return to, their own families to care for and contend with, their own set of stories to negotiate, to tell or not tell, to remember or forget, to honor or to dispense with, their own private collections of darkness and light truths and lies. Our little hearts can carry only so much in one lifetime…. it is so much, it is so much.” The book left me wanting much more, but it also felt enough.

I also listened to the outstanding audiobook. The narrator skillfully portrayed male and female voices, differentiating between the many siblings. Her voice was smooth and easy to listen to with great pacing.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

For me personally, from a strictly enjoyment perspective, I think this was closer to a 2 or 2.5 but this isn't a genre I read from a lot and once I hit the 50% mark I was enjoying the book a lot more. I found the beginning quite confusing because I didn't realize that the different chapters were talking about the same people later on in life. Once I got a hang of the changing POVS and back and forth between childhood and adulthood, I started to enjoy the book a lot more.
This book is written in a really interesting way- you don't spend a lot of time with any one character but rather get lots of little insights into each their lives and the different outlooks and dynamics of their relationships through dropping in on each one for a chapter at a time. If you are into slice of life types of stories and interesting family dynamics this might be a great read for you. For some reason, this book kind of reminds me of Little Fires Everywhere, even though I can't really figure out why.
The narrator does a great job with the narration, adding in different accents and inflections to differentiate all the different characters and even between their younger and older selves.
Thank you to Netgally and the publisher for for providing me with an arc of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

I finished Chorus a little while ago and I’ve been processing it since. Sometimes I close a book and that’s the last time I think about it, but Chorus is a short novel that packed a lot into it.
Spanning the first half of the twentieth century, Chorus weaves through time offering glimpses into the lives of the Shaw family. Each chapter is a vignette told from the perspective of the seven Shaw children and is a story unto itself, but the plotting is cleverly paced to share information about the mystery of their mother’s death.
As one of six children, I understand one child’s voice getting lost in the crowd, so I loved this storytelling and giving each one their own voice, but in the end it’s the chorus of all seven making the family what it is. It was a lovely, beautifully written novel.
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I’m a sucker for family dramas so I was so excited for this book and overall I really liked it. This family is clearly been through a lot and is continuing to go through a lot and has changed a lot over the past few years. I do think this book was a little bit difficult to follow on audio just because there were so many different characters it was a little harder to keep track of who was who. But overall I really liked it and if you like family dramas I would definitely recommend but I would encourage the physical copy as that may be a little easier to follow.

"Chorus" by Rebecca Kauffman is an example of how strongly we rely on family and how easily and often we push them away!

This Historical Fiction story of the Shaw Family's seven siblings has multiple timelines beginning in the early Twentieth Century through the late 1950's. Their lives are impacted by two life altering events: the unexpected and untimely death of their mother and the distressing circumstances of a sibling's teenage pregnancy.

Both events shape their childhood and profoundly affect their future. In a third-person narrative, you hear each sibling's memories in alternating 'snapshot-like' chapters through the years. You realize how each is impacted so differently and yet feel so much the same.

The deeper I read the more these characters evolve. They are complex and flawed with closely held secrets, deep loss, painful regrets, and good intentions. They work through some very complicated family dynamics in this story!

The amazing Elisabeth Rodgers is the audiobook narrator and she also happens to be one of my favorites. She succeeds in making what could have been a difficult listen a most enjoyable experience. Her ability to engage the reader through both third person narration, as well as believable gender voicing and voice inflections is something I marvel at every single time. If she narrates a book, please sign me up!

This character driven story is beautifully written and artfully designed, making this family feel painfully real to me. I'm delighted I have found another author to love with a back-list to read and I will patiently wait for each new book she writes. I highly recommend this book to those who love character driven stories and beautiful writing!

Thank you to NetGalley, RB Media, and Rebecca Kauffman for a free ALC of this book. It has been an honor to give my honest and voluntary review.

Pub date: 3/1/22
Genre: family drama, historical fiction

In one sentence (from publisher): Chorus shepherds seven siblings through two life-altering events—their mother’s untimely death, and a shocking teenage pregnancy—that ultimately follow them through their lives as individuals and as a family.

I love family dramas, and the Shaw family delivered. After their mother's death, each sibling moves forward in their own way as they try to process what happened. Audio was a good choice for this one - it felt like Elisabeth Rodgers was telling me family stories of her own. There's a lot of action packed into six hours on audio, and the conclusion at a family gathering is particularly impactful.

Other reviewers have recommended this for a book club read, and I wholeheartedly agree - I think each reader will be drawn to different parts of the story. If you like character-driven novels, I think you'll like the Shaws.

Thank you to Recorded Books for providing an ALC in exchange for an honest review.

This book needs discussion and would be a great choice for a book club. Maybe it should have questions in the back. There is so much to unpack. I probably should have read it slower than I did. A LOT happened! Seven siblings who experience their mother’s death as well as lots of other issues in life. We all experience and remember life differently. In Chorus, Kaufman allows the characters to grow in front of our eyes. We get to see how this loss changes them. Wow! Beautiful in a very broken way. Thank you for allowing me to review this book. The cover is beautiful as well. The only difficult part for me was keeping all if the characters straight.

4.5/5

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an advanced audio copy of this title in exchange for an honest review.

Y'all. I was so not prepared for how much this story would infiltrate my heart. This title is perfect for people who love Taylor Jenkins Reid. For such a short novel, it packed a huge emotional punch.

It took me a while to get used to the way the story is told-- we are jumping around in time back and forth with Jim, the father, and then several of his children as time passes. It was confusing for a little bit because there are SO many characters in this family. But after listening for about an hour or so, each character stood out to me in a different way. They were each so different from one another and were easily distinguishable. They had completely different voices and responded to their familial trauma in different ways.

I would highly recommend this to other readers who love family drama stories. I will be purchasing this title in my next bookshop.org purchase because I enjoyed it so much.

The narrator was great-- I would definitely seek out more titles narrated by her.