4.5 stars

Thank you to Putnam for the copy of this book!

Any Other Family is a fantastic narrative about a family uniquely impacted and blended through the adoption of four kids from the same birth mother. While adoption is a difficult subject to write about well, Eleanor Brown has personal experience with adoption and clearly knows what she's talking about. She uses ethical and appropriate language and portrays the emotions of prospective adoptive parents so well through the heartbreaking letters between some of the chapters. Eleanor does mention the shortcomings of the story not having the perspective of the adoptees or birth parents, but she really does a fantastic job of sharing the adoptive parent side of the story: reasons for adoption, emotions, and general difficulty of parenting (even if for non-adoptive families).

I loved relating to all three of the moms in this story and feeling so validated in the fact that motherhood is HARD and there are so many unique stages of parenting... and sometimes, we just want to get through some of those stages quickly because they are ROUGH.

I will say that I wish the birth mother was portrayed a little more positively. Often, birth mothers are in difficult positions and each places children for adoption for her own reasons, which was the case here, but I'm ready for an adoption narrative that has a little more of a positive view of the birth mother instead of someone who is stuck in a cycle and never gets out. (Maybe that is the story of many, but I long to see that through placing for adoption, having an open relationship, and being able to live her life how she wants that a birth mother would be able to more easily get out of the cycle.) Regardless, this is a very good and emotional book, especially if you are a mother.