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stuckinthebook 's review for:
Inconvenient Daughter
by Lauren J. Sharkey
What I loved about this book was it didn’t just focus on transracial adoption. Yes, transracial adoption is prominent without the story, but through this, author Lauren J. Sharkey explores a whole breadth of themes.
Lauren J. Sharkey’s debut novel follows a young girl named Rowan Kelly who was adopted by an American family from Korea when she was a little baby. The story focuses on her journey to adulthood and honestly depicts the struggles of an adoptee who wants to feel like someone’s first choice.
What this book does excellently, is it explores the hardships of teenage and young adult years. Everyone always says that your teenage years are your best years but it isn’t always what it's cracked up to be and Inconvenient Daughter explores this eloquently. When you are young you are vulnerable. You are trying to find yourself with a new sense of independence, and trying to be different whilst trying to fit in at the same time. It’s a difficult and confusing time. Young people are vulnerable to controlling, harmful and dangerous relationships because they want to experience their own independence and make decisions for themselves. Rowan finds herself in some awful situations and all her relationships are with people who don’t really love her but she sticks around because it's nice to feel wanted by someone. My heart breaks for her numerous times throughout the book.
Lauren J. Sharkey beautifully explores mother and daughter relationships in this book too and the transracial adoption theme is one that allows us to explore the difficulties in mother/daughter relationships. Without giving too much away, Rowan believes her mum hates her because she isn’t her real mother. Rowan believes that her adopted mum (and not her ‘BioMum’) could never fully love her like her own because she isn’t her biological daughter. It’s heartbreaking that Rowan would think like that and this belief, in my opinion, is what drives her to leave home and do some questionable things.
I think the journey that Rowan goes through as she tells us about her life, is one that by the end allows Rowan and us, as readers, to see the issues with her relationship with her mother and those she has held with other people. I think by the end, we are forced to question what we originally thought of both Rowan and her mother, and this journey was one I thoroughly enjoyed reading.
Lauren J. Sharkey’s debut novel follows a young girl named Rowan Kelly who was adopted by an American family from Korea when she was a little baby. The story focuses on her journey to adulthood and honestly depicts the struggles of an adoptee who wants to feel like someone’s first choice.
What this book does excellently, is it explores the hardships of teenage and young adult years. Everyone always says that your teenage years are your best years but it isn’t always what it's cracked up to be and Inconvenient Daughter explores this eloquently. When you are young you are vulnerable. You are trying to find yourself with a new sense of independence, and trying to be different whilst trying to fit in at the same time. It’s a difficult and confusing time. Young people are vulnerable to controlling, harmful and dangerous relationships because they want to experience their own independence and make decisions for themselves. Rowan finds herself in some awful situations and all her relationships are with people who don’t really love her but she sticks around because it's nice to feel wanted by someone. My heart breaks for her numerous times throughout the book.
Lauren J. Sharkey beautifully explores mother and daughter relationships in this book too and the transracial adoption theme is one that allows us to explore the difficulties in mother/daughter relationships. Without giving too much away, Rowan believes her mum hates her because she isn’t her real mother. Rowan believes that her adopted mum (and not her ‘BioMum’) could never fully love her like her own because she isn’t her biological daughter. It’s heartbreaking that Rowan would think like that and this belief, in my opinion, is what drives her to leave home and do some questionable things.
I think the journey that Rowan goes through as she tells us about her life, is one that by the end allows Rowan and us, as readers, to see the issues with her relationship with her mother and those she has held with other people. I think by the end, we are forced to question what we originally thought of both Rowan and her mother, and this journey was one I thoroughly enjoyed reading.