his was one of the most fascinating books I have ever read in my life. Valerie is an outstanding writer and it was a pleasure to read her writing - and she wrote about something that I ordinarily never would have chosen - sperm donation.

When I first requested the book from NetGalley, I requested any book that looked like it was about motherhood, given the struggles I’ve gone through to be a mother because I want to read other stories to feel like I’m not so alone.

Even with the subtitle, I guess I didn’t realize what I was getting myself into. I’m so glad I did. This is so interesting and it’s a whole world that I knew nothing about, nor even knew existed.

Valerie approached this topic how I would in my own research - exhaustively. She included everything and more about this topic. Just when I thought there certainly could not be more, she presented something else and discussed it at length. I mean, she rocked it.

Thank you to Netgalley and Union Square & Co for the ARC of Inconcievable!

This was a first-hand account of the harrowing process of fertility treatments in less-conventional forms. The author is a single mother who sought to pursue motherhood via sperm donation, and who chose to circumvent formal sperm banks in an effort to personally know her sperm donor. The author balanced the ethical concerns of wanting to know the biological donor who she chose, while also laying out plainly the risks and less-than-ethical behavior that occurs in informal sperm donation processes.

I felt like this was a harrowing read, which was honest and relatively balanced in its analysis of the process. I appreciated how she considered that the process could be even harder on those who were poor or for queer people pursuing parenthood through off-market sperm donation. She outlined risks and rewards, and we saw her fall into several pitfalls along the way.

I felt like the writing style shifted between personal and intimate (someone sharing their real and complex feelings about a difficult process with a friend) and a more sterile, journalistic analysis of the process. Both were helpful, but as a reader, it caught me off guard a few times.

In general, I did learn (and gained perspective) from this book!

An eye-opening book about the strange and emergent world of fertility and artificial insemination told through memoir and first-hand experience. I was shocked to learn about the unregulated sperm donor market and how expensive these procedures are.

This could be an important book for a class in narrative medicine or a course in medical humanities. I appreciated its close and nuanced look at reproductive technologies and the medical industrical complex as well as gender and fertility.

Wonderful book. Well researched.
Thanks to author, publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book. While I got the book for free it had no bearing on the rating I gave it.