The Nine Lives of Rose Napolitano
By Donna Freitas
Blurb
ONE QUESTION.
ONE CHOICE.
NINE PATHS TO THE REST OF HER LIFE…
One day, Rose Napolitano’s marriage ends.
Her husband wants a baby – but motherhood has never been part of the plan.
One day, Rose Napolitano’s marriage survives.
She loves her husband. Could she reimagine her future?
One day.
One fight.
Nine different lives.
Following the butterfly effect of one life-defining choice, nine times over, The Nine Lives of Rose Napolitano winds through all the paths and decisions that shape a life. It cuts to the heart of what it means to be a woman. Every expectation, every choice, every path, every outcome – every piece of oneself that’s lost and found along the way…
For every woman there are many stories.
These are Rose’s.
Our Review
The Nine Lives of Rose Napolitano is an outstanding book. It is for any woman who has felt judged over her choices surrounding children or the lack thereof, it challenges the assumption that motherhood is and should be synonymous with being a woman.
Rose has always known she doesn't want to have children. At every turn she has been challenged and doubted by people who think they know better. Her husband Luke has known from the start how she feels and felt the same way too...until now. Luke decides he wants to have a baby and Rose has to decide whether to have a baby and save her marriage or to stick to her firmly held beliefs. We get to see both options play out in The Nine Lives of Rose Napolitano.
"Why doesn't he see that he is the one who betrayed me? That by changing his mind about children he's shown me that I am not enough on my own?"
I actually can't begin to describe how much this book resonated with me, and made me think of countless conversations with friends over people commenting on our choices to have children or not.
"Whenever I tell people I don't want children, that Luke and I don't plan to have any, people always give me this look. Then they'll say something condescending, like how I'll only discover my true purpose after I become a parent. As though we women are by definition, just mothers-in-waiting. As though growing up into womanhood is simultaneous with growing up into motherhood, a kind of latent genetic condition that only shows up once a person reaches a certain age. Women eventually realise it's been there all along, it just hadn't presented itself yet.
it makes me so mad.
People never say things like that to Luke."
The Nine Lives of Rose Napolitano is one is a perfect read.
"And I wish so badly that the world was different,' I go on before she can say anything else...'that people could think it was just as normal for a woman not to have kids as to have them. It is so overwhelming sometimes, how much pressure I feel to be someone I'm not. I mean, I know I could do it if I had to; I could give Luke a baby. But I'm so certain it's not what I want. I wish I didn't feel like those were the choice in front of me - to do this thing I don't want to do in order to keep my husband, or just...let my marriage come to an end."
Our Final Rating...
Read & Shared 12 Times.
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