I'm not much of a suspense reader but I do love books about motherhood, parental anxieties and such. Nightbitch was a recent favorite, so I wanted to give another new mom book a try.

And I'm very glad I did. This book is exactly what it promises. Further than that though, I really loved Hannah's character and the way the first person narrative was so detailed and precise. It's one of the better uses of the first person POV so if you usually find it limiting, this might work for you.

Hannah is also a writer, and some of her constantly mentioned projects are pretty good narrative symbols.

There's one line in the first half of the book when Hannah is being accosted by a woman in her support group, where she hopes that the woman doesn't ask her about her book because "I wasn’t a sci-fi writer; I was a suspense writer who liked to play with science." This immediately increased my interest in The Possibilities itself because this sounds very meta, and after this I also didn't care the increased scifi-ness of the story because to me, it read like a person/author trying to fix a story in the only way their brain would allow them.

I don't know, I just really enjoyed reading this narrative and I think I'll be going back to it soon.

Thank you to Netgalley and Random House Publishing for providing me with an eARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

"The Possibilities" will be published on 7/25/23.

I was very intrigued by the premise of this novel--new motherhood and alternate realities (or "possibilities", as they author refers to them). I love a story that focuses on childbirth, mental health, and relationship to one's spouse. While I'm not really a reader of much science fiction, I'm typically game for some speculative fiction or parallel worlds/multiverse.

I really enjoyed the first half of this novel, and getting to know the main character Hannah after the birth of her son Jack. The second half started to lose me, however, because I felt like too much time was spent trying to get into the nitty-gritty science-fiction plot devices, and less time spent on developing the main characters. I really felt like Hannah's husband was 2-dimensional and underdeveloped, and some of the scenes with him from the beginning of the story don't really get explained thoroughly by the end.

Another thing that drives me crazy in novels is when a certain descriptive phrase is used over and over again. In this case, it's where Hannah describes the smell of her son as "loamy, like bread." I thought it was perfect the first time it was used. But I counted 3 additional times the exact same descriptors were used throughout the book. We get it, he smells like bread, loamy. Perhaps this is just a pet peeve of mine though?

Yael Goldstein-Love has written a captivating and suspenseful novel--overall, I felt it was very well-written, and I really didn't know how she was going to wrap up the plot points, so I remained curious throughout. She also infuses some humor into a story that is ultimately not a funny one.

I"d recommend "The Possibilities" to readers who enjoy contemporary suspense, stories about new mothershood, as well as those who are open to some genre-bending and light science fiction.

I'm rating this 3.75 stars (rounded up to 4)-- this was a quick, enjoyable read, and kept me guessing. Not sure I fully understand the physics involved, but I don't think one needs to in order to enjoy this novel.

I really enjoyed this book, that explored navigating motherhood and relationships with a twist of quantum possibilities. The writing was good enough I had to stop and write down several quotes throughout the book.

I wish I could have lent this book to my own mother, because I feel like as a twenty-something non-parent there's a lot of this story that just didn't have the same impact on me as it might on someone who has experienced the grief and love and fear and joy of having a child. I did appreciate the metaphors for postpartum depression and infant loss that were threaded throughout, and despite this being a science fiction novel there is definitely an argument to be made for it representing childbirth and early parenthood as horror.

This is a brilliant, gorgeous, terrifying treatise on new motherhood, but it's also genre-defying in ways I don't want to specify for fear of spoilers. The disorientation of being transformed into a parent, the terror associated with that, the sleepless burring of lines, the intensity of panic - this book knocks it out of the park. I love an unreliable narrator and this is a master-class in writing one, one who serves to instantly pull the reader into her swirling state-of-mind. If this book isn't a huge hit, I'll be shocked.

The Possibilities
🎢 Book Type
⭐️ ⭐️ ✨ 2.5 Stars
🚫 Spice Level

Visual Appearance and Expectations

The cover is pretty basic. I neither like nor dislike it. I did receive an ARC of this book, so I read the digital copy. My expectations of this book were in the middle. As a mother who would do anything for her kids the idea of the book was intriguing.

Book Plot

After a traumatic birth Hannah struggles with her day to day life. Eight months pass and Hannah's growing anxiety becomes crippling. Things get even worse when her son goes missing from his crib one night. Hannahs love is put to the test as she rushes to save her son but can a mothers love cross worlds?

This had some interesting moments throughout. However for the most part the story dragged a bit. It took me a really long time to get through the book as it didn’t consistently hold my attention.

Book Characters

I didn’t have much of an attachment to the characters. I felt bad for Hannah. She was very much struggling and I was frustrated she wasn’t seeking more help. But I do understand it can be difficult to ask for help. Her therapist seemed a bit out of touch as well.

Adam really made me mad. We see almost immediately he has asked to separate. My problem with that was he was the one that desperately wanted a child and convinced her despite her feelings, into having a child. Then she is struggling post birth and he bails. I couldn’t forgive him.







❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌








❌❌❌Spoilers❌❌❌












I was hoping for a bit more with the crossing over into different worlds aspect. It fell a bit flat that Jack was just blipping around worlds on his own. I think I would have preferred another Hannah had came and stolen him into her world.

This is a great book for those who have had a child or are going to (that's not me).

In the novel Hannah explores the idea that there are many many parallel universes in which her son Jack is alive, alive and in danger, or no longer alive. These are harrowing at best and an opportunity for the author to write simply and eloquently about the fears of being a mother.

Are there parallel universes? Is Jack here, in our world? Is Hannah losing her mind? Yael Goldstein-Love blends many genres to answer that question. Tension remains throughout the novel and Hannah is a likeable character. I feel that those especially with young children will feel so SEEN that they will recommend this book to everyone in the family!
#RandomHouse

This book was captivating, thought provoking, and entirely unique in it’s execution.

The story starts with a pivotal moment; one of those “big life moments” that has the ability to completely alter the course of our protagonist’s life… and it does, in another universe.

This story is full of “what if”, and exploring the “possibilities” that can arise in life and the multitudes of paths that this could take us down.
Then, it gets REALLY sci-fi heavy. While the themes of first time motherhood, anxiety, and the changes of life stay consistent, the book does execute them in a very “multiverse of madness” style.

Overall, not your typical book about the anxieties of motherhood, but a great execution of a mother’s journey, nonetheless.

Sidenote, baby Jack is too smart; I love it.

Hannah thinks she saw the worst thing a mother can see: her baby, dead at birth. But, as everyone in her life keeps reminding her, it was a moment of hallucination, an irrational fear produced by her overactive mind. Or was it?

As Hannah's world slowly starts to fall apart, ending in the moment her son is kidnapped from his crib, she comes to realize that the world she thought she knew exists in multiple dimensions...and all the Hannah's in the universe seem to be experiencing the same thing. What follows is a terrifying race against time across multiple timelines and into many worlds.

Hannah's journey to save her son is a stunning exploration of motherhood, both the power and the pain, the joy and the stifling claustrophobia.

It asks the reader to acknowledge how parenthood mimics quantum physics and improbabilities and to ask what being a good parent even means. If you've ever wondered what string theory and breastfeeding have in common, this book does a wonderful job of letting the cerebral and the physical coexist.

As a mother, this book spoke to so much of my lived experience, from leaky breasts to irrational fear.

What an unusual book!

This is the story of a mom who is suffering from post-partum and her marriage is unraveling. Her baby goes missing from his crib one night and she has to go through parallel worlds to find him and bring him back. Sounds crazy, doesn't it?

And it's so interesting and well executed. I loved it and I loved the story around motherhood, and the lengths we go to, to save our loved ones.


with gratitude to netgalley and Random House for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review

I feel torn on reviewing this one because I know I am not its ideal reader. This writer is clearly talented, and the prose is smart and sharp. But I'm having a hard time relating to motherhood/pregnancy narratives, even if they are wonderfully done. I think there's a great wry humor and depictions of mental health and parenthood and divorce and loss here--even within the opening of the book, we have fantastic stakes to dig into--but I'm just not in love. Totally a me issue, and if you're intrigued by the plot and premise, I expect you'll love this one.

The Possibilities follows Hannah, a new mother whose life becomes a fractured mess of timelines when she gives birth to her son Jack and glimpses two realities: one where he lives, and one where he doesn't. When Jack becomes lost in a space outside of time hanna must come to terms with her marital issues, her history with her own mother, and her newfound ability to travel between timelines to save him.

This book honestly blew me away. It's beautifully written with great attention to detail and witty, realistic dialogue. Hannah is a wonderfully complex character who easily pulls you into the story. I loved the sci-fi aspects of the book, but also the personal journey Hannah takes in reconciling her past with her own mother so she can move forward. Overall, an immensely moving read that I will not stop recommending.

My review is currently posted to my Instagram @blondeandabook https://www.instagram.com/p/Co0TG--vIDR/?igshid=OTA3YzJiYTA%3D

How to describe this book?
It was bonkers, but also I couldn't put it down. And now I'm interesting in researching quantum mechanics. No big deal.
The Possibilities is about a mother who travels to parallel universes to save her son. It starts off pretty confusing. You don't know what is happening, and neither does anyone else. Stick with it, the plot starts to solidify and it gets easier to follow.
This story seemed to put words to that anxiety every parent feels. Am I doing it right? Is there a right way to do it? It's also about the lengths parents will go to to ensure the safety of their child.
The Possibilities is a mind bending book that will likely appeal to sci-fi fans (bonus points if you're also a parent).

Thanks to Netgalley and Random House Publishing for an early copy for review.

The Possibilities by Yael Goldstein-Love. A good premise but simply not for me, thank you for giving me a chance with this book.

Wow! I was completely in this book's clutches from the start. What a smart, tense, mind bendy book!

We meet Hannah, a new mom, ostensibly dealing with post-partum issues after the birth of her son Jack. She is seeking the help of a therapist at the urging and pleading of her husband, as her depression and fixation on their son were outside the bounds of what he thought was normal. She is deeply in touch with her instincts after almost losing their son in childbirth. After hours of struggling with natural labor, she had to demand a C-section, fighting with all the medical staff and her husband, because she could tell something wasn't right about the birth, despite this being her first birth. Her instincts were right as she had a vivid image of him not surviving but being revived. As she is in her sessions, her doctor diagnoses her with post-partum and tells her that the lack of sleep can cause her to hallucinate and prescribes her a sleep aid. Through visceral storytelling, deep character building, and powerful language, we see Hannah crumble under the weight of fear for her 8-month-old son, the announcement from her husband that he is leaving, hallucinations that her son keeps disappearing, and even that he may have never even existed.

The book takes that terrifying premise and explodes into different worlds and dimensions to discover whether her son is alive, or did he actually die in that birthing room. I am not someone who is a mother or who has thought deeply about the primal bond between child and mother, but this book made me feel it. I was utterly hooked by it and thought it was fantastic! I look forward to seeing other readers taking this journey when it's published.

I would like to thank the publisher for access to the digital ARC via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Good stuff. This crosses genres although it's probably mostly sci-fi. This is engaging and has an interesting premise and characters. Recommended. I look forward the author's future work.

I really appreciate the free ARC for review!!

This is a bit hard to explain. Hannah begins slipping between realities at the birth of her son. She is convinced she saw his stillborn body, although he is still alive. Then it begins to happen more, eventually leading to her son's disappearance in her world and her trying to save him. This was difficult to read at first because I often consider the what-if possibilities of not having had a child, but this was the first time I had considered that my child could have died rather than just not existed at all. The fact that he has the same name as the baby in the book made it a little suffocating at times too. This was an odd, upsetting, interesting book. 3 stars.

Yael Goldstein-Love's THE POSSIBILITIES was not a book I expected to find myself enjoying so thoroughly as I did. I got it from NetGalley as an arc, picking it up only because I believed it could pass the time. But by the time I was three chapters deep into the book, there was no way to escape: the claws of The Possibilities, shards of motherhood and responsibility and reality, had dug so deep into my arm that I physically couldn't put it down.

The book follows Hannah, who is a mother first and a human second, or maybe a mother first and only a mother at all. Like all mothers, she's haunted by the possibilities of those "what-ifs"—what if her son had died, what if her son goes missing, what if her son had never existed? But the difference is, of course, that of those infinite possibilities, she begins to see them all playing out: hallucinations plague her, haunting her day and night, until she's destroyed her marriage, her sanity, and her relationship with herself. Of course, it all goes wrong when her son genuinely goes missing—and worst of all, despite her numerous attempts to convince them otherwise, most people are convinced he died eight months back, only minutes after he was born.

And so it goes. From the first page, we're thrust into Hannah's worst: a state of constant anxiety and horror. Her entire worldview is pinned on her son; we get the sense that the entirety of the earth could go up in flames and she wouldn't notice, so long as Jack—her baby—was safe. Admittedly, it took me three separate tries to get past the first chapter, mainly because Hannah is so fraught with panic that, as a childless woman, it's hard to connect with her. But as we progress, it's clear that Hannah is no longer Hannah, but Jack's mother: the real strength of this book lies in her overwrought connection with her son, so ferocious and terrible she'd destroy the world for him. The more this is shown, the easier it is to connect with her, and so when the real story begins to unfold, we can go into it with a perfect sense of who Hannah is as a character.

From there, I'll branch out into three separate categories: plot, characters, and themes. The first is simple; without spoilers, the plot revolves around Hannah attempting to get Jack back from wherever he is, if he exists at all, along with the help of her estranged husband and newfound friends. The second category: characters. As Hannah begins to form bonds outside her immediate family, Goldstein-Love makes a point to show that Hannah must learn to develop outside of motherhood. The complex theme of feminism while still falling into traditional gender roles—the devoted mother vs. the independent woman—is developed throughout the course of this book; Hannah's friends, including the stubborn, headstrong Ash—a fellow mother who comes off brash and cruel, but who has a heart of gold—help her see that motherhood, like all things, are simply a crossroads: she can choose either path and still decide to be a person. She is, at heart, still a person, not just a mother. Similarly, other characters help develop the sciencey parts of this book. Admittedly, I'm not too skilled at anything beyond basic physics, but The Possibilities truly delves into the world of the multiverse and infinite possibilities without making the explanation too twisty-turny or confusing. There was no point in time where I found myself disoriented by the science behind what was happening, just what was happening itself.

And, of course, the themes: as mentioned, feminism as it intertwines with motherhood; but also then, motherhood as it intertwines with the world. Goldstein-Love's depiction of motherhood as this all-consuming, magical thing isn't unique, but how she goes about it—combining it with the ideas of crossroads and multiple realities—is utterly so. (As a note, I've noted before that authors treat motherhood as some sort of bioessentialist thing, whereas G-L makes a point of saying it comes from the strength of one's feelings, not their biology.) As Hannah moves forward, making friends, making a name for herself, saving her child, she's given the chance to become her own person: and yet, she is completely true to herself and her child. Her development, while subtle, has this feeling of authenticity. Despite the unrealistic—or realistic; I'm not sure, I'm not a scientist—plot of the book, Hannah comes off as real: dedicated, loving, desperate for love as much as she is desperate to love. Genuinely, I walked out of this book with a higher respect for mothers and motherhood. Not sure if this is what G-L was going for, but it's certainly what I came out with.

And, not to take away from the themes and the plot, but the descriptions and writing style G-L wrote / achieved blew me away. Every single sentence she wrote was plotted at exactly the right point in time, whether it served as a callback or a precursor to something else. Even as Hannah moves through another episode, traveling through reality, the writing fits her harried, rushed emotions perfectly. As a writer, G-L is incredibly talented, and I can't wait to read more of her books in the future.

5 stars. 6, if I could.

I'm not a mother so sometimes I feel like these motherhood-themed books aren't for me but I really enjoyed it. It was chilling and written in a personal way that really made it easy to get sucked in. Parallel universes are just so fun to read about. I did feel like it slipped into science jargon a bit much which didn't fit tonally but it was fine.

The premise of this book really intrigued me, and I loved all of the science talk and how it relayed to the story at hand. There were some parts that seemed to not be fully fleshed out, but didn’t really retract too much from the overarching story. I loved that ultimately this is a book about what we will do for the people we love, whether you are a mother or not.