Pretending to Dance

August 1, 2015
A prospective adoptive mother examines her past and her conscience prior to embarking on her parental journey. Molly and her husband, Aidan, involuntarily childless attorneys in San Diego, are going through the fraught process of qualifying to adopt. Molly, 38, has a degree of trepidation about how "open" this adoption is expected to be: is the birth mother, Sienna, expecting to be part of her child's life in perpetuity? Molly's misgivings are understandable; she herself is the product of a family in which her birth mother, Amalia, lived close by, and she witnessed the discomfort such proximity created for her adoptive mother, Nora. Molly has not told her husband why she's now estranged from both Amalia, who's dying, and Nora-in fact, she's told him almost nothing about her past. The present narrative is interspersed with chapters flashing back 24 years to Morrison Ridge, a large tract of family-owned land in the wooded hills near Asheville, North Carolina: Molly is 14, living with her mother, Nora, and her father, Graham, a psychotherapist who has invented a new behavioral regimen, "Pretend Therapy." Multiple sclerosis has left Graham paralyzed from the neck down. Molly is a bookish, precocious teen who types Graham's manuscripts and accompanies him on book tours. However when she falls under the influence of a classmate, Stacy, who introduces her to older boys, the plot takes a major detour through teen-novel territory: Molly's main preoccupation, enabled by a Judy Blume novel no less, is now losing her virginity. In the meantime, Graham and his relatives are wrangling over the fate of the Ridge: one faction wants to sell to a developer while others, including Molly's grandmother and Graham, want to keep the land pristine. While the family argues and Molly's hormones run wild, something else is going on that will make for the explosive revelation at novel's end. Marred by excessive sentimentality and superfluous exposition that dilutes the drama.

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December 1, 2015

Molly and her husband, Aidan, want to adopt a baby. A young pregnant girl who wants to give her child up thinks that they may be the couple to become her baby's parents. But though Molly knows that she wants this baby, she is also unsure about being an adoptive mother. Her past looms close and hides a secret that she fears will unhinge not only this adoption but possibly her marriage. Alternating chapters tell the story of Molly's life during the summer she turned 14 in her small North Carolina town, juxtaposed with chapters about her life today as a lawyer in San Diego. She was raised in a loving family with a pharmacist mother and a therapist father with multiple sclerosis. That summer, Molly befriends a new girl who introduces her to an older boy, and subsequently drugs and sex. When a devastating event occurs and her beloved father dies, Molly is unable to reconcile the actions of her family. She is unable to trust them and leaves them behind, first for boarding schools and then for her adult life in San Diego. It is only her fear that the past is beginning to influence her present that pushes her to deal with those earlier events. VERDICT An excellent choice for mature teens who will follow Molly's burgeoning maturity as she tries to keep her father close and safe.-Connie Williams, Petaluma High School, CA

Copyright 2015 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 15, 2015

Chamberlain (The Silent Sister) adds to her stack of popular works about seesawing family dynamics with a novel centered on 14-year-old Molly Arnette, who lives on 100 acres in the Blue Ridge Mountains with her therapist father and adoptive mother; her biological mother lives nearby. Summer 1990 starts out promisingly, but the adults have plans that will upend Molly's world.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 15, 2015
In 1990, Molly Arnette was like any other 14-year-old girl, yearning for a pair of purple Doc Martens. Her world was just starting to open up beyond her family's neighborhood in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. Decades later, Molly looks back on the summer of her 14-year-old self as the summer when everything changed. As a grown woman, Molly wonders if she's strong enough to proceed with the adoption application she and her husband have started and whether it's time to let him know the truth about her own childhood. Chamberlain has teenage Molly and grown-up Molly narrate alternating chapters, piecing parallel stories together. Exploring the thrilling feelings of first love, the depths of teenage angst, and the difficult decisions families and spouses make together, Pretending to Dance is a multilayered, poignant novel. Chamberlain writes knowledgeably about seeing a family member confront a degenerative illness, the power of therapy, and the hardship of loss. Reminiscent of a Sarah Dessen or Sharon Creech novel, Pretending to Dance proves that a coming-of-age story can happen at any time in your life.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)