This was such a beautiful and heartbreaking book and the fact that this is a part of our history is really devastating. Set during the 1960s in the Baby Scoop era and the Space Race, we get a look at a “maternity home” for unwed mothers. The lack of consideration and agency these women had was so frustrating to read, but there’s still so much hope in these pages. I feel such a connection with Lorraine and all the other women at the home. I liked that while she was our main character, we got a few other POVs like Lorraine’s parents and the woman in charge of the home. It really helped show all the different viewpoints people in that time had about pregnancy and women even though some of them were infuriating. I think this book will affect anyone who reads it, but especially if you’re a woman or a parent. I think I would have loved it, pre motherhood, but it hit even harder now. The ending made me so sad, but it was also beautiful in its own way. Books like these are so important to stress why women need the right to make decisions for themselves. Have tissues (and I mean A LOT) of tissues on hand for this one. And absolutely read the author’s note. I will definitely be reading whatever she writes next.
CW: mentions of incest, infant death, descriptions of pregnancy and childbirth, medical trauma

Thank you to Sourcebooks Landmark for an advanced digital reader’s copy in exchange for an honest review.

The Girls We Sent Away is set during the Baby Scoop era in the 1960s, when thousands of babies were relinquished to the authorities for adoption, willingly and unwillingly. Lorraine Delford is in her last year of high school, an avid scholar and promising valedictorian, dreaming of a career in the space industry. When she realises she is pregnant, after one date which unexpectedly turned intimate, she can’t really process what’s happening. Forced to tell her parents, they give her no choice but to leave school and hide at home, while her mother invents a story for friends and relatives that Lorraine has gone to help an ailing aunt. Her father drives her to a home for unwed mothers when she is six months pregnant, and both mother and father wash their hands of her, neither visiting, nor writing, nor offering any kind of advice. At seventeen Lorraine is entirely on her own.

Church’s story gets deep inside Lorraine’s head with tenderness and compassion, so much so that the first half of the novel might be aimed at the young adult market. Four themes make a deep impact: the complete lack of ownership by the men involved, the complete lack of autonomy over their own lives for the girls, the astounding ignorance in which girls like Lorraine were raised, and the preposterous idea that after the rollercoaster ride of a pregnancy and birth, the girls should return to their lives and pretend nothing happened! This is a heartbreaking tale of prejudice, shame and secret-keeping within families, and a sincere and moving account of one teenager’s personal grief and inner strength, which I think will appeal strongly to readers aged 14+.

Meagan Church breaks our hearts again to tell us about another disturbing time in American history. The “Baby Scoop” era is something I was not familiar with, however I am destroyed knowing this happened to unsuspecting young mothers.

There are so many beautifully yet sickening moments of this book that help you understand how lonely and shameful these women were meant to feel. The father had no consequences and was able to easily walk away. The women had their lives destroyed and ripped apart.

Just like her first novel, this book will stick with you.

Absolutely heartbreaking story but one that needs to be talked about more. Inspired by learning about the "Baby Scoop Era" (roughly 1945-1972) , the author writes the story of Lorraine, who is beginning her senior year of high school and has a tremendously bright future. The story is set in the 1960s. One night with her boyfriend turns everything upside down. When she tells her parents about her pregnancy, she's sent to a maternity home to have the baby and place it for adoption. That's what everyone says she should do. That she is now "that kind of girl." That she's brought shame upon herself.
The Baby Scoop Era refers to the millions of unwed women who were sent to maternity homes to hide until they gave birth. Then, they were coerced or forced to give their baby up for adoption.
The story of Lorraine is a necessary one for this generation to hear. To learn what happens when women are given no choice of what to do with their bodies or babies. The novel is written so beautifully and sensitively. I was absolutely hooked into the story and my heart broke along with every one of the unwed mothers Lorraine encounters.

I would like to preface this review by thanking sourcebooks landmark for sending this title to me in exchange for an honest review.

Lorraine has big dreams she wants to accomplish. She's the soon to be Valedictorian of her class, she has a supportive family, and an even more supportive boyfriend. But, when the summer before her senior year, Lorraine falls pregnant. Now, trying to navigate her life living in the 60's and a teen pregnancy, she is sent away to a maternity home for unmarried women.

Before I jump into this review, I highly suggest checking the trigger warnings for this one. This is a very heavy read but nonetheless, important.

This story brings to light the hardship many young women faced back in the 1950s-1960s. Women who are unwed and fall pregnant were forced to live in maternity homes until they give birth. Then, these women were forced to give up their child. They did this to prevent tarnishing their family's reputation. I did not know about this part of history so this was all new to me. When I read this, it completely broke my heart. Lorraine lost everything that was important to her. Her dreams were crushed but then to further the blow, she had to give up a child she wanted. For me, this story brought a lot of anger. I was angry for Lorraine and what her family and boyfriend did to her. I was angry for the women who lived through this.

This story is told from multiple point of views but it flowed naturally. This book is definitely a "slow burn" but I think everyone should read this book. We need to lift the voices of women who went through this and I think, although, Lorraine was a fictional character, she tells the story of reality for some. This was the easiest 5 star to give to me. Please, read this book.

Thank you again to sourcebooks landmark!

The 60's, unmarried and pregnant. This often went one of two ways. Get married, or go away to "visit/help" a family member or friend and put the child up for adoption. The Girls We Sent Away, by Meagan Church, takes us there, to a sad but true place in history. Thanks, NetGalley and the publisher, for providing me with the ARC ebook that I read and reviewed. All opinions are my own.

This is such a heartbreaking book. While I was already aware of the homes that unwed mothers were sent to, I had no idea about the Baby Scoop era.

Lorraine Delford is a teenage girl living in the 1960s who is destined to be valedictorian and dreams of becoming an astronaut. Unfortunately for her, she becomes pregnant by her college-bound boyfriend, Clint. Ever the optimist, she thinks everything will work out as they will get married and she can continue with her studies. Clint, being a despicable human being and a sorry excuse for a man (in my opinion) abandons her. Lorraine is then sent away to a maternity home, where she is forced to give up her baby for adoption. It is impossible not to feel outrage and sadness on Lorraine's behalf.

This book highlights many shortcomings and issues that still exist in society. First of all, the blatant double standard where girls can be "ruined" but not the boys who impregnate them. The blame is placed solely on the females, and there is a great sense of shame associated with all of these unwed mothers. Regardless of the circumstances surrounding their pregnancies, the young women are forced to hide and carry the burden of the decisions made for them by others.

Moreover, I think this book is definitely eye-opening; while it focuses on the plight of one young woman, it is representative of that of millions.

Wow! What did I just read?!! This is a slice of our history that we all know existed but one I never read that had all the emotions of an unwed mother during the Baby Scoop Era. The author truly nailed all the feelings and impacts of the time period. I became truly invested in Lorraine’s story and felt myself rooting for her. Women were not given a choice and were forced to sign their rights away as they entered a home for the unwed as they waited for the arrival of their baby. Families trying to save face and girls without given a choice depicts this era from 1945-1973. These girls were expected to return to their lives without considering the life long effects of their “decision.” Well written and thought provoking! Highly recommend! #TheGirlsWeSentAway #MeaganChurch #NetGalley

Thank you NetGalley for allowing me to read this eye opening book. In it we follow the story of Lorraine, who is very career and education focused. When she falls pregnant, however, her view of the world completely changes.I think this book is a great discussion starter for teens and adults alike on the topics of sex, consent
and mental health. Definitely a book worth reading

The Girls We Sent Away by Meagan Church is a timely story about the effects of the 60s Baby Scoop.

The main character Lorraine finds herself pregnant and unwed. She is shipped off to the maternity home until she resolves her situation. There, she meets other young women in the same circumstances. Each girl deals with the social effects of her pregnancy in her own way. The writing was incredibly poignant, and I was drawn deeper into the story after every page. This was a book that I had to finish.

The ending was incredibly realistic, which detracted from my overall enjoyment of the book. I really connected with Lorraine, and wanted things to turn out fair - no, better than fair - for her. Ultimately, Lorraine was so wonderfully written and such a compelling protagonist that I'm disappointed with how life just goes on with banality. Essentially, it is proof of quality writing.

Overall, this is a fantastic book based on recent history. If you enjoy being emotionally drawn to characters, this will be a great choice to read.

I received this from Netgalley.com.

An okay read. Descriptions of the time were nicely captured including feeling the Loneliness and hard decisions that Lorraine had to make.

3.25☆

Lorraine Delford is set to be the valedictorian of her class and is looking forward to college. She is in love with Clint and is happy. She makes a mistake that changes everything by getting pregnant. Her parents are mortified as they thought they raised her to be a good girl and want to avoid a scandal so they send her away. Back in the 1960's if you got pregnant you were sent away to a maternity home so you could give birth and have your baby placed with a suitable family.

Finishing school when it came time to fold napkins I almost died laughing. Thankful for the librarian to come along and teach Lorraine.

Allan who listens to Lorraine and sticks by her through it all.

The authors descriptions of the home and how the pregnant women were treated will break your heart. I had no idea about the Baby Scoop Era until reading this book. This was so well written and emotional.

It’s the 1960’s. Lorraine is a senior in high school, and she has it all, an upstanding family, the perfect boyfriend, and she’s on track to be valedictorian. However, right before her boyfriend leaves for college, she and her boyfriend become physical, and Lorraine gets pregnant.

To hide their daughter’s shame, Lorraine’s parents send her to a maternity home for wayward girls. Things aren’t exactly as great as they seem, and the house is full of dark secrets and suffocating rules. As Lorraine works to piece together a new vision for her life, she must decide if she can fight against the powers that aim to take her child or submit to the rules of society.

This book was so good. It hit a little close to home for me because my mom was born in 1965 and my grandma was unwed. Thankfully, she was older and not a teenager, or I might have ended up on an entirely different path, very similar to that portrayed in this story. I just can’t believe that we treated young women this way, well I can but I don’t want to, it’s just hard to fathom. It also doesn’t feel like 1965 was almost 60 years ago, to think that things like this were still happening then is so sad.

This book was so wonderfully written, and it just blew me away. The writing was so captivating and held my interest from start to finish, I needed to know what was going to happen and my heart just broke for Lorraine. She was such a great character, and she was so relatable to me. She was so smart, and worked so hard, and then one moment of pressure her world was turned upside down and her life was forced on an entirely different trajectory than she had imagined. This story just hammers in that some decisions we make in life can have lifelong consequences, and ones we never even thought imaginable.

This book is very gut wrenching and emotional, but it is an important and worthwhile read. It will open your eyes to a part of history that is often overlooked but was very real. The ending on this one was what I saw coming, but it was also bittersweet. I do wish that we had gotten a little more in the end from how Lorraine was doing, but I do understand leaving some things for the reader to imagine.

Lorraine’s character will stick with me a long time and I’ll be thinking of all the countless times versions of her story played out over history.

This was my first book by this author, but I will be going back and reading her debut novel.

This review will be featured on my blog, speedreadstagram.com closer to publication date.

Thank you so much to the publisher Sourcebooks Landmark @bookmarked and Netgalley @netgalley for this wonderful and moving e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

This is the first book from this author I have read and will definitely not be the last. This is one of those books that I could just not put down. I was pretty sure what was going to happen, however I was so drawn to Lorraine as a character that I had to know what happened after. I could not imagine what these women in the 60's went through. Lorraine was exiled from her family and then finds out that she was not alone in her experience, it was heartbreaking what she went through and I think that this author has really written something true to this time period. Thanks for the ARC, NetGalley.

This book blew me away. From page one I was completely captivated by the story. The characters and their heart break leap off the pages. I wanted to squeeze Lorraine and all the other girls tight and tell them they are worthy and it would all be OK. When I finished it I just sat there and cried. It's a heartbreakingly beautiful story. All the stars.

Thank you to NetGalley for gifting me an eGalley of this release. This was my first Meagan Church book and I will pick up another because I enjoyed the writing style and it was a quick read.
This is about a teenage girl who finds herself pregnant in the 70s, and her parents insist she go to a home for unwed mothers to live out her pregnancy and then give her baby up for adoption so that she can then return home and continue her life and go to college without social shame on her or her family. The main issue I had with this book is that the synposis talks about horrors and secrets at the home for unwed mothers, and the home was really not that bad. They didn't get traditional education, they instead had classes like a finishing school where they were taught to be homemakers. They walked into town once a week and they had consistent medical care. The book was compared to The Lost Girls of Willowbrook by Ellen Marie Wiseman, but the environment was vastly different. This was not an asylum and girls chose to go there, they were not taken against thier will, and they technically could have left at any time. It was sad that the girls were coerced into thinking they had to give up thier babies for adoption and basically told to sign their rights away, but it was not abusive and there weren't horrors and secrets lurking there. So it left a lot to be desired int he way it was portrayed.

Another poignant novel by Meagan Church! Beautiful writing, well-researched characters, and wonderfully detailed. I highly recommend.

Thanks to Netgalley for the advanced copy. All opinions are mine.

"Strength isn't in the loud and obvious. Strength is often camouflaged in the quiet, reserved places where most people wouldn't think to look. It's grown in the moments when we give up things along the way."

I am still in a state of awe at this book after finishing this novel. Church's writing is beautiful and heartbreaking, as you follow Lorraine's transition from teen to teenage mother. I have a personal connection to someone who was a part of what Church notes as The Baby Scoop Era and this was an extremely visceral description of what a young unwed mother could have experienced during that time. The number of young women finding themselves in this situation is staggering, and is not as rare as some might like to believe.

I could not put this book down. Lorraine is an extremely likeable character and you can imagine yourself in her shoes; scared, humiliated, shamed by her family, secreted away, and then the ultimate betrayal of everyone telling you to just forget about what happened and get back to normal. Trauma is trauma and in this situation, the physical, emotional and mental impact was epic. And the quote above about strength being in the decisions you make that are in many cases behind closed doors, are the ones that make you into who you are. You carry those with you, and if you are lucky, they don't break you. Lorraine is an unfortunate example of what women have had to do for eons - shrink themselves, solely take on the consequences of two people's actions, and feel as though she had no choice but to do the things that would please everyone around her.

Church's eerie opening sent shivers down my spine. A teen girl in a stretched-out swimsuit is working her shift as a lifeguard at her community pool. As the strap to her swimsuit falls, it catches the eye of a father who has forgotten to keep an eye on his child. At this moment, his daughter begins to drown in the middle of the pool, and the fearless lifeguard, Lorraine, dives in to save her. It is as though Church is setting the scene for her reader that girls must protect themselves.

If you haven't heard of The Baby Scoop Era, this period, roughly from the late 1940s to the early 1970s, is when many unmarried pregnant women were often coerced, pressured, or forced to relinquish their babies for adoption. As widespread social stigma was attached to unwed mothers, many saw adoption as a more socially acceptable outcome than single motherhood.

This page-turner story, set in the 1960s, examines this era with fresh eyes as Lorraine, a gifted teen girl, navigates an unexpected pregnancy during her senior year of high school. Curious and bright, she has aspirations to be an astronaut one day. We are reminded in evocative detail of these dreams for her future as she looks to the sky and imagines a different life for herself as a very different story unfolds on the page.

When Lorraine discovers the pregnancy, she receives little information about what is happening in her body or the process. Instead, sent to a maternity home for teen girls, the parents pray that no one will ever know of her shameful secret. Lorraine's shame is palatable, but for the boy involved, this is barely a blip in his promising future.

As societal expectations and familial pressures ground Lorraine, Church examines the underbelly of perfect picket fences and suburban dreams. We then realize everyone has a shameful secret that could have grounded them at some point.

While these women's experiences varied widely during this time, many throughout this era faced isolation, shame, and psychological distress as they navigated the process of pregnancy, childbirth, and relinquishment. Church deeply humanizes this experience like few books have, with a raw and unfiltered lens through the eyes of a teen girl with few choices.

Well-crafted plot twists and shifting narration add to well-timed tension on every page. This historical fiction novel is another tour de force that showcases the author's magnificent lens at, once again, showcasing the harrowing and untold stories of girls that we need to read.

As this book opens Lorraine Delford is all set to achieve her dreams, she is should be her class valedictorian, and then on to college, but her plans are about to take a nose dive.
This is a time that pregnant girls were sent away, and and gave away their babies. This is Lorraine's fate, and we are there with her and meet those that you will come to dislike, but there are also those whom have compassion and love.
There are surprises dropped, and we soon find out whom are really there for you, and those whom leave when things get tense.
I enjoyed this book, and glad that we get a conclusion, even if it wasn't what I wanted!
I received this book through Net Galley and the Publisher Sourcebooks Landmark, and was not required to give positive review.