This is a cute middle grade novel about a young girl's search for her donor half-siblings. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC.

This is a good look at finding siblings through a database, since Olly and Quinn had a sperm donor dad. Quinn is really wanting to connect with some and there are a lot of them.
I had a hard time connecting with the characters, I thought that Quinn was a little needy and concentrating on finding the siblings instead of just enjoying the time with her family.
I think it's a great book for anyone who is from an environment like these and can see themselves in a character.

Thanks NetGalley for this ARC.

The Doughnut Club follows Quinn and her family on their summer vacation. Quinn and her younger brother are donor-conceived, and when Quinn learns that she has 16 other donor siblings, she is optimistic that she may have more in common with them than she does with her family. She becomes obsessed with contacting and meeting these siblings, and her single-minded focus causes her to frequently blow off her brother and disobey her moms. (Related: her mom has the weakest laptop password in the history of the world.)

I may not add the story to my main library collection, because the cover may appeal to readers not ready for some of the content, but I will recommend for 4th and 5th grade classroom libraries.

While I've read a lot of YA that's centered around donor-conceived stories, this was my first middle grade! Sometimes I feel like I have to really brace myself when a donor recipient parent writes a donor conception story, but I thought The Doughnut Club did a really accurate job with describing how a donor-conceived child may come to terms with finding donor siblings (I do hate the term diblings and actively cringed every time I read it).

My only real critique is that it read a little young for middle grade and it felt a little bit like free publicity for Donor Sibling Registry. Even though DSR wasn't mentioned by name, the description of the site and the fee match up with what Quinn describes in the book, and I don't love that readers could potentially be pointed that website's way (there's a thread from Feb. 2025 on r/donorconceived that explains why DSR is problematic). I also don't love how canonically Quinn has 16 donor siblings -- it's a super common trope in DC books that I'd love people to steer away from. It opens up a can of worms that I don't appreciate as a DC person!

Overall, I think it works as a great piece of representation for donor-conceived kids and works well as an introduction to donor conception for kids.