A review by booklistqueen
Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate

dark emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

 In this emotional coming-of-age book, Lisa Wingate bases her story on a notorious real-life scandal of an adoption agency that kidnapped and sold poor children to wealthy families. In 1939, twelve-year-old Rill Floss is asked to watch her four younger siblings while her father takes her mother to the hospital to give birth. Suddenly, a group of strangers arrives and takes Rill and her siblings to a Memphis-based orphanage where Rill must fight to keep her siblings together under the eye of the cruel director. Meanwhile, in the modern day, the privileged daughter of a senator starts digging into her grandmother's history.

Before We Were Yours is historical fiction at its finest, bringing a horrifying historical event to life with a powerful story. Rill's story is heartbreaking and all too real, highlighting all the layers of abuse Georgia Tann inflicted on victims of her black market adoption scheme. As with so many historical fiction stories, Before We Were Yours is told in dual timelines, and Wingate excels at making the modern story compelling which keeps the pacing level throughout the book.