A review by sweetpeppah
Brother and Sister by Joanna Trollope

2.0

contrived but interesting exploration of the spectrum of reactions and ripples of adoption from two adopted siblings who look for their birthmothers as adults. the POV switches around so you get intimate with each birthmother and their families, the adopting parents, and the spouses, children and coworkers of the adopted brother and sister. she explains and analyzes the emotion explicitly, which might be tedious for some people but is right up my alley :) none of it particularly matches my experience(birthmother) or those of adopted adults i know. the two birthmothers have very extreme experiences(i don't want to spoil it), and there were a lot of painfully stupid decisions made among the rest of the characters. the emotions were real, but i had trouble believing the resulting actions. the one point that did resonate is that maybe somehow a baby knows whether it is *wanted*, it might absorb that from its mother in the 9 months they spend together and that feeling stays with them and affects how they feel about being adopted and family in general.