Book Review: No Names to Be Given
JULIA BREWER DAILY
Categories: Women's Fiction / Vintage Fiction / Adoption / 1960s
Publisher: Admission Press Inc.
Pub Date: August 3, 2021
But such a life-altering event can never be forgotten, and no secret remains buried forever. Twenty-five years later, the women are reunited by a blackmailer, who threatens to expose their secrets and destroy the lives they’ve built. That shattering revelation would shake their very foundations—and reverberate all the way to the White House.
Told from the three women’s perspectives in alternating chapters, this mesmerizing story is based on actual experiences of women in the 1960s who found themselves pregnant but unmarried, pressured by family and society to make horrific decisions. How that inconceivable act changed women forever is the story of No Names to Be Given, a heartbreaking but uplifting novel of family and redemption.
PRAISE FOR NO NAMES TO BE GIVEN:
A gorgeous, thrilling, and important novel! These strong women will capture your heart. --Stacey Swann, author of Olympus, Texas.
An insightful and sympathetic view offered into the lives of those who were adopted and those who adopted them. --Pam Johnson, author of Justice for Ella.
A novel worthy of a Lifetime movie adaptation. --Jess Hagemann, author of Headcheese.
Readers can expect deep knowledge of the world the characters inhabit. --Sara Kocek, author of Promise Me Something.
This book is a relevant read and one that will keep readers guessing page after page until the very end. --The US Review of Books
Today's young women, especially, need to absorb No Names to Be Given. --Midwest Book Review, D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer
Where do I even begin with this review? When I first read the synopsis, I thought it would be a great book. When I actually read it, I found out it wasn't just a great story, but one with similarly amazing characters, beautiful words and a very interesting topic.
I was hooked from the moment I read the first chapter and it held on until that final page. It was as if I were reading a Lifetime movie, but a good one. The author pulls us in with the lives of our 3 lead characters and then gently lets us see into their lives and how they got to where they were. The book made me laugh, cry, and most of all, sympathise.
I felt so attached to our characters and I wanted to know every detail about their lives. From their most pressing thoughts to their outcry of hope, the author lets the reader get to each character individually and apart. We get to see them start as innocent girls and their troubling journey of growing up.
I also just really liked the topic that the author focuses this book on. I don't believe many of us understand how unkindly women were treated when they got pregnant before marriage. It's a sad reality when we take a look back at the '60s and see how it was handled then and where we are now. I'm happy that the author shed some light on this topic and it was written beautifully.
Overall, I do give this book a 5 out of 5 stars. I enjoyed every page and there was nothing that I would change. A great read for anyone looking for something different to read in their spare time. Until next time everyone, Happy Reading!
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Julia Brewer Daily is a Texan with a southern accent. She holds a B.S. in English and a M.S. degree in Education from the University of Southern Mississippi. She has been a Communications Adjunct Professor at Belhaven University, Jackson, Mississippi, and Public Relations Director of the Mississippi Department of Education and Millsaps College, a liberal arts college in Jackson, MS. She was the founding director of the Greater Belhaven Market, a producers’ only market in a historic neighborhood in Jackson, and even shadowed Martha Stewart. As the Executive Director of the Craftsmen’s Guild of Mississippi (300 artisans from 19 states) which operates the Mississippi Craft Center, she wrote their stories to introduce them to the public. Daily is an adopted child from a maternity home hospital in New Orleans. She searched and found her birth mother and through a DNA test, her birth father’s family, as well. A lifelong southerner, she now resides on a ranch in Fredericksburg, Texas, with her husband Emmerson and Labrador retrievers, Memphis Belle and Texas Star.
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I like what you said about how the author shed light on the treatment of unwed mothers in the past. Even as so many things have stalled in how women are treated, this is one place where things have improved, I think. (But there's still room for it to improve even more!)Thanks for the review.
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