Happy Pub Day & Thank you @blackstonepublishing for my gifted copy of ‘Everything Here is Under Control‘ by Emily Adrian!
Amanda is a new mother, & she is breaking. After a fight with her partner, she puts the baby in the car & drives from Queens to her hometown in rural Ohio, where she shows up unannounced on the doorstep of her estranged childhood best friend.
Amanda thought that she had left Carrie firmly in the past. After their friendship ended, their lives diverged radically: Carrie had a baby the summer after high school, became a successful tattoo artist, & never escaped Ohio’s conservative grid of close-cut grass. But the trauma of childbirth & shock of motherhood compel Amanda to go back to the beginning & to trace the tangled roots of friendship & family in her own life.
Compelling & engaging, ‘Everything Here Is Under Control’ is a raw, honest, occasionally hilarious portrait of the complexity, conflicting emotions, & physical trauma of both modern motherhood & the intense, intimate friendships that women forge in their youth.
A fantastic book about the complexity of female friendships, motherhood, trauma, breaking the bonds of friendship & ultimately, forgiveness. Also touching on postpartum depression, the story reminded me of what I felt as a young mother when I had my first child…the sometimes overpowering loneliness, the sleepless nights, the anxiety once the baby does go to sleep, & the all too consuming, 24/7 feeling that you aren’t doing enough or aren’t a good enough mother, even though you are doing everything as right & as well as you know how.
I’m also an Ohioan, so I love it when a book (or part of a book) takes place in a real or fictional town in my state. I would love to see a second book as a sort of ‘where are they now’ about Gabe, Carrie & Amanda. Overall, ‘Everything Here is Under Control’ is a really beautiful, complex, engaging & diverse book & I look forward to reading more from Emily Adrian in the future. Look for this book today at your local indie bookstore.
And don’t forget to enter my current giveaway a couple posts back for your chance to win (3) hardback books from Book of the Month, & if you join BOTM through my referral link in my bio, you get (20) bonus entries to up your chance of winning even more! The August BOTM’s will be up SOON so what are you waiting for…join today! (US residents only unfortunately)
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What others are saying about ‘Everything Here is Under Control’:
”A sharp, thoughtful, poignant look at early motherhood, a small town, and the complex, challenging, and beautiful relationships that make up our families both biological and chosen.” —Lydia Kiesling, author of The Golden State
”How Emily Adrian could write a book so honest and raw about the first weeks of motherhood and yet so appealing and unputdownable and — dare I say, heartwarming — is a mystery of novelistic alchemy. Nonetheless, there it levitates: light as a feather and heavy as a stone, a romantic comedy that redefines the terms of traditional romance and takes happily ever after far beyond the loss of maidenhood. Magic, addictive, brilliant fun.” —Rufi Thorpe, author of The Knockout Queen
”I tore through Everything Here Is under Control in just a couple of days, compelled by its refreshingly honest portrayals of not only early motherhood but the kind of childhood friendship that shapes the rest of your life. Emily Adrian writes with such a keen and sensitive eye, and she’s funny, and she is an astute observer of human behavior. I cheered when I got to the plot twist midway through, and, even now, I can’t get this novel’s characters out of my mind.” —Edan Lepucki, New York Times bestselling author of California
”Emily Adrian is such a uniquely perceptive writer, possessing a kind of X-ray vision that finds the hidden truths inside of us, no matter how painful they might be. Everything Here Is Under Control skillfully lays out a story that converges on motherhood, friendship, and our responsibilities to the world around us, the lives that touch us. A beautiful, bracing novel by an amazing, open-hearted writer.” —Kevin Wilson, New York Times bestselling author of Nothing to See Here
”I could not put down this brilliant, beautiful book. It’s about the elastic, resilient love of our earliest friendships. It’s about the challenges of motherhood at any age. It’s about how the lands of our childhood define and complicate us — and how we can never leave them completely. Everything Here Is Under Control is everything I want a novel to be: suspenseful, emotional, intellectual, and populated with characters so true and dimensional that their shocks and pains and happiness merge into my own. Emily Adrian is a force. Now, go read her book.” —Jeannie Vanasco, author of Things We Didn’t Talk about When I Was a Girl
”Brutally tender, ferociously intimate, astonishingly surefooted, and deeply satisfying. Emily Adrian has crafted a multilayered story whose people — I hesitate to call them mere ‘characters’ — became so real and vivid to me that I’ve thought about them long since finishing the book. An immersive, irresistible pleasure.” —Chelsey Johnson, author of Stray City
”Emily Adrian writes with deft assurance and penetrating insight about the intensities of motherhood, marriage, and female friendship.” —Heather Harpham, author of Happiness: The Crooked Little Road to Semi-Ever After
”There is so much to examine here, from the harrowing experience of new motherhood to the role of a father in an infant’s first days. Amanda’s complex relationship with Deerling, which includes her own mother, is worth noting, too, and a twist midway through the book adds great intensity to the story. But the heart of the novel is Carrie and Amanda’s friendship, with all its sorrow and joy. A perfect selection for book groups.” —Booklist (starred review)
Emily Adrian is the author of two critically acclaimed young adult novels, Like It Never Happened and The Foreseeable Future. She currently lives in Richmond, Virginia, with her husband, her son, and their dog, Hank.
*Mom Loves Reading* 