This Is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel was nothing like I expected and I am so glad I listened to it!
Full transparency here: I’ve had this book for a while. The font is so dang small that I just couldn’t (wouldn’t) pick it up after I finished the first chapter. It feels like work to read font that tiny. C’mon, peeps. Enter the audiobook and crisis averted!
Also full transparency here: I didn’t love the narrator. I have some narrators that I legit luh-huv. Everything they touch is gold. This delivery, the timing perhaps, I dunno. It felt tricky.
I loved the story. Loved! But the voice telling the story wasn’t my fave.
Let’s Dish
Rosie and Penn have four boys. She works full-time as an ER doc; he works at home as a writer and kid-wrangler. Life is chaotic and sleep is tricky but they want one more. Hopefully a girl.
Claude enters the world and he is a perfect fit in the family. Claude shares around age 5 that he wants to be a girl. What Rosie and Penn assume is a passing interest, they indulge him in wearing a purse and skirts and whatnot.
But, it’s not a passing interest. Claude is in it for the long haul.
Tell Me More
After a scary incident with a parent at a play-date, Rosie launches into a research war on LGBTQIA-friendly cities. She assumed Madison, Wisconsin, was just that, but apparently not friendly enough.
The family moves to Seattle and life moves along seamlessly. Claude is now Poppy and everyone who meets the family sees four boys and a girl. Rosie and Penn don’t clarify what others see.
Life turns into a game of keeping secrets. It becomes uncomfortable for some. Easier for others.
Penn looks into sex-reassignment surgery. Rosie wants to shelter Poppy. The brothers don’t care at all that their brother is now their sister, but they do care when others find out about this decision and they can’t handle it in age-appropriate ways.
Truth!
This quote just struck me as perfection! This is exactly parenting summed up!
“You have to make these huge decisions on behalf of your kid, this tiny human whose fate and future is entirely in your hands, who trusts you to know what’s good and right and when to be able to make that happen. You never have enough information. You don’t get to see the future. And if you screw up, if with your incomplete, contradictory information you make the wrong call, well, nothing less than your child’s entire future and happiness is at stake. It’s impossible. It’s heartbreaking. It’s maddening. But there’s no alternative.”
Star Rating
Again, I only share books here that I really, really like or love. (I share ALL my books on my Instagram.) And this book falls into that category because it’s such an important topic for me. I love the fierceness of Rosie. I love the support of Penn. I love the brothers. I loved learning about someone who is transgender. The book could have been maybe 50-75 pages shorter, so keep that in mind. 😉
Stars: ⭐⭐⭐/5
Will I read more of Laurie Frankel‘s books? Yes.
Will I actively seek out more books about transgender individuals and stories? Absolutely.
Will I give this audiobook narrator another whirl? For sure. But just one. 😊