Books like Adoption Unfiltered — picked by fans

I loved Glaser’s book because it skillfully presents closed adoption history within the context of a real-life story. For me, it took the best parts of Nancy Verrier’s and Ann Fessler’s books and presented them as a puzzle that needed solving.

The gripping account of a birth mother and her son who were thwarted at many junctures in their desire to reconnect authentically highlighted the injustices of a rigid, closed adoption system. The book also validated the struggles my twin sister and I faced in reconnecting with our own birth relatives.

Like my own story, this is a tale of love and loss that highlights the importance of identity and belonging.

This book is the ONE book that would have helped me the most in the early days after I brought my adopted baby home from the hospital. My beautiful, healthy three-day-old baby was unhappy, fussy, and cried all the time. Little did I know that she was missing her birth mom. I was told by the adoption counselors that this baby was a clean slate, and I would do all the loving and nurturing and could raise her as if I gave birth to her. 

Verrier explained so much about how the wound that my child still carries with her today affects her behaviors. And she also gave me hope and insights that acknowledging the wound can lead to healing and hope even when the trauma cannot be erased. 

When my twin sister and I first began our closed adoption search in 2010, this was the first book we read for background knowledge. I learned what unwed mothers like my own went through in the 1960s, how their boyfriends, parents, and families treated them, and what they were told to believe after relinquishing their child.

Eye-opening and heart-breaking, Fessler’s book afforded me the gifts of compassion and empathy that I needed once my twin sister, my birth mom, and I embarked on a reunion. For every adoptee from the closed adoption era, this should be required reading.

When I first heard Gretchen Sisson speak about her long-term study involving birth mothers, I felt gratified. Through her impeccable research, she quantified the feelings and experiences Ann Fessler had written about her book, The Girls That Went Away.

Because of my reunion and relationship with my own birth mother, I understand the importance of giving these women a voice and validating it through a scientific study. The conversation with those touched by adoption is important work. For it offers to those outside the adoption constellation a serious and accurate glimpse inside.

I love this classic book because it provides practical advice to adoptive parents without guilting them. So much of what is written today in the adoption space can make an adoptive mom feel bad about or question themselves. 

Eldridge, an adoptee, explains what an adopted child might be feeling but starts by supporting the adoptive parents, too. For example: “I suffered a profound loss before I was adopted, and you are not responsible.” I found that to be refreshing and encouraging. I really like how Eldrige describes how an adoptee might be feeling and then follows it up with both the psychological explanation and advice on how to react to your child’s feelings. I found it to be well-researched, professional, and positive. 

This is a peculiar and marvelous book about birth families, adopted families, and “found” families, and how each of these can be equally screwed up.

Starting in Ireland in the 1940s, the story is peppered with sharp, clever dialog and vivid, fully-human characters. I love how the narrator struggles with his own heart for decades, unable to decide what he wants, who he loves, what’s right, what’s wrong, etc.—in other words, all the stuff I haven’t figured out yet myself. 

Coincidence also plays a huge role in this book, basically making an ass of everyone, which I find oddly comforting since it reminds me that part of being human is having very little control over my own life. Painfully funny and brilliant from cover to cover. 

Grief is such a universal experience, yet I don’t think we get enough opportunities to truly grieve.

Nicole’s book provided me with space to grieve alongside her but also to grieve my own losses. I also appreciated how she connected her father’s death to broader systemic failures and how his view of himself shaped the help he was willing to accept or not.

I was especially taken in by how the theme of community shows up throughout the book–how important community is, how we find community, and how we build communities of care.

I used to work as an oncology RN so I generally avoid cancer stories, but this author is a friend so I gave the book a chance, and wow am I glad I did. This story manages to capture the crushing reality of cancer for both the patient and the people who love her, but it’s also funny and mysterious and romantic, with plenty of meaningful things to say about grief. It takes insight and compassion to balance all those elements without ever being disrespectful to or flippant about terminal illness. I powered through this gorgeous book (the cover is even more incredible in person!) in one sitting and finished the story feeling hopeful and inspired.

The bloodthirsty roses, Isra the blind beauty, and Gem the intriguing beast. It was an intriguing combo that first made me pick up this book and start the beginning of this adventure. That isn't to say that this book is all sweetness, there are most definitely moments that had me seething with anger. The way the 'perfect' Smooth Skins treated the flawed one of their own kind, and the Monstrous struggling to survive outside the dome. But by far my most favorite part was how Gem and Isla bonded over gardening together. Yes, it was originally a lie so that Gem could gather information to help his own people, but it turned into some of the most character-building scenes that tied the whole story together in a rose-shaped bow.

Hata, a Korean, adopted by a Japanese couple, serves the Japanese Army as a medic in World War II. His job is to care for enslaved Koreans who serve as “comfort women” to Japanese soldiers. His experiences are the material of nightmares. Years later he leads a deceptively quiet life in a small town in New Jersey with his Korean adoptive daughter. It is deceptively quiet because his unresolved war experiences, presented in flashbacks, haunt him. I admired the abrupt manner in which Chang-Rae Lee interrupted Hata’s uneventful life with horrific memories.

The author’s method felt like the triggering of those who have suffered trauma and continue to relive events as PTSD. This approach of interweaving past with present inspired my depiction of a young German woman living a quiet life on a primitive Icelandic farm, milking the cows and raking the hay, while being repeatedly interrupted by memories of… show more.