I am left with mixed feelings about The Adoption by Jenna Kernan. On the one hand, it is one heck of a psych thriller. The reader is just about as psyched out as the characters.
On the other hand, my reading of it was almost derailed by (what I saw as) unnecessary and repetitive commentary. I’ll explain this in a minute.
(NOTE: The publisher indicates that early feedback was taken into consideration and the repetition was addressed in a new version. I do not have the time to go back in and read the entire book again. So, please know that this review is of the original version. Therefore, some of these points may not be valid anymore.)
First, the good parts of the book. There are so many twists and layers that I had to read very carefully. Usually, I do not have the patience to dive into a pleasure read. But by simple luck, I read this at the right time to be in the right frame of mind.
Dani returns home after having been in a mental hospital for a period of time. That’s really all you need to know. Everything else from that premise is a tie to the mysteries of the book.
There is not actually a lot of character development, but the story itself is full of detail. Dani is a wreck, and her husband Tate is a young judge with political aspirations. All other characters are secondary (for the most part).
Tate proves himself to be unreliable very early on. But, due to her conditions, Dani is also an unreliable narrator. So, actually, one of them may be more reliable than it appears.
See what I mean about being a psych out?
Part of Dani’s unreliability is due to a condition called acquired prosopagnosia – also known as face blindness. I’m not going to go into detail here. The author does plenty of that in the first half of the book. (Remember my note from above here).
In fact, there are so many mentions of Dani’s afflictions that they got repetitive and boring. Fortunately, at one point, the author decided that was enough and the plot really took off. Unfortunately, that was about halfway through.
What is odd is that it gets barely a mention in the second half of the book. It would have fit, especially as Dani tries to figure out the truth in her situation. A little more balance would have been nice.
Additionally, due to Dani’s condition, we are to believe that she is okay with how her husband goes about the adoption. As someone who is adopted and has adopted a child, this was one of the toughest parts for me to just let go. Everything about it screamed at me that it was beyond ridiculous.
But it is a psych thriller sooo….<shrug>.
On a different note. I almost stopped reading the book early on when the author kept mentioning the pandemic. It was especially annoying when Dani muses that her newborn is “too young yet for the shot.” This is such a lightning rod topic that it took me right out of the action.
I get that the contemporary setting made the author feel that she needed to include it. Perhaps if more had relied on the mask-wearing? It would have felt more natural to the story, especially due to Dani’s problems. As it is, though, it felt gratuitous and not organic.
So, take my note about the first half. If that has been fixed, you’ll find that The Adoption is a multi-layered psych thriller that leaves the reader in knots.
If you’re looking for a thriller/suspense novel, you can check out A Killer’s Daughter, also by Jenna Kernan.
Twitter: jennakernan
Author Bio:
Bestselling author Jenna Kernan writes gripping domestic thrillers. Her 2021 release, A Killer’s Daughter, won the bronze medal from the Florida Book Awards in the popular fiction category.
