Publishers Weekly
Hoffman's middling debut explores the darker side of open adoption, as seen through the eyes of Chloe Pinter, a young social worker at a Portland, Ore., adoption agency. Juggling the insecurities of the wealthy and infertile Francie and John McAdoo with the increasingly strident demands of the contracted and impoverished birth parents, Penny and Jason, Chloe starts to question her own beliefs and motivations. When Chloe sees that Penny has bought a basinet, she warns the McAdoos that the adoption might not go through, inadvertently setting off a chain of events that eventually puts a newborn in danger's path. Hoffman seems to want the reader to understand the dilemma of birth parents confronted with the need to give up a child, but Penny and Jason and their family are too damaged and destructive to elicit any empathy, and the McAdoos, on the other end of the class spectrum, never fail to fall into stereotype. There is a whisper of a solid story about the way poverty, yearning, opportunity, and loss can play out, but with characters so weakly realized, it's tough to see this as anything more than a good-intentioned but inexpert exercise. (Sept.)
Los Angeles Times
Unbearable tension. . . . Chandra Hoffman’s unflinching and suspense-filled account of the pleasures and perils of domestic adoption . . . is a wrenching portrait.
Leonard Chang
In one of the most self-assured debuts I’ve read, Chosen takes the charged and important issue of adoption and spins it into a gripping story that will keep readers captivated. Chandra Hoffman, a superb artist and storyteller, has written a beautiful and compelling novel.
Liza Gyllenhaal
With sensitivity and keen insight, Chandra Hoffman’s absorbing first novel Chosen explores the demanding, uplifting, and emotionally explosive world of adoption. Touching, immediately involving, as well as propulsively readable, Chosen heralds a powerful and distinctive new voice in contemporary women’s fiction.
Therese Fowler
Chandra Hoffman’s Chosen is a finely tuned page-turner. . . . There is no perfect happiness here; instead, there is the unexpected grace of discovering that getting what we want is so often less ideal than wanting what we get. This is an outstanding debut.
Juliette Fay
Gritty and suspenseful, Chosen draws us into the obstacle-strewn path of domestic adoption. Hoffman’s characters are complex and sympathetic in strikingly different ways, even those who appear at first glance to be irredeemable.
Ann Hood
This riveting debut novel from Chandra Hoffman will keep you on edge until its final glorious pages. Enlightening, terrifying, and big-hearted, Chosen is a terrific book!
Booklist
[Hoffman’s] sparkling debut fully engages the reader with Chloe’s altruistic dreams and the predicament in which she unexpectedly finds herself.
USA Today
A shocking ending.
Library Journal
The Chosen Child Agency specializes in private adoptions between well-to-do couples and birth parents from the wrong side of the tracks. Social worker Chloe Pinter handles clients who are rapidly causing her to lose her idealism, such as the case matching the wealthy McAdoos with ex-cons Penny and Jason. Chloe must field spoiled Francie McAdoo's incessant complaints while deflecting the desperate demands of Jason and simultaneously navigating between a failing relationship with her surf bum boyfriend and a simmering attraction to a former client whose wife has just given birth. When a child goes missing, the lives of all the characters collide in a gripping denouement that raises serious questions about the adoption process. VERDICT Debut novelist Hoffman, who has worked as an orphanage relief worker and headed up a domestic adoption program, has written a page-turner that rings true. Despite technical flaws (Francie is too whiny and Jason too skanky to be truly sympathetic), this engrossing read will appeal to fans of domestic fiction luminaries Jodi Picoult, Sue Miller, and Chris Bohjalian.—Jeanne Bogino, New Lebanon Lib., NY
Kirkus Reviews
Gripping tale of an open adoption that spurs a kidnapping, from debut novelist Hoffman.
Chloe Pinter thinks she's found her ideal job: caseworker for Chosen Child, a private agency that matches impoverished birth mothers with upper-middle-class, often middle-aged infertile couples longing for a child to nurture. Chosen Child arranges lodging and medical care for the mothers, and supports them for six weeks after they've delivered their children into the hands of the adoptive parents. Jason, the ex-con boyfriend of Penny, also an ex-con scarred by meth use and a horrific rape, is ambivalent about giving up his and Penny's child to Silicon Valley retiree John and his brittle wife Francie, mainly because the payment won't be enough to realize Jason's dream of escaping dreary, overgentrified Portland, Ore., to live in Mexico. Worse, when Penny gives birth to son Buddy (renamed Angus by John and Francie), she lapses into severe post-partum depression complicated by grief. Jason blames Chloe for his predicament, wrongly assuming that she is benefiting financially from the adoption. Chloe has her own relationship woes: Her fiancé Dan, an extreme sports nut, is not ready to settle down in Chloe's bungalow on the fringes of one of Portland's tony neighborhoods. He heads off to Maui to start a kite-boarding business, daring Chloe to follow. Meanwhile, Chloe finds herself dangerously attracted to former client Paul, who, with wife Eva, considered adoption before Eva gave birth to their son Wyeth. Exhausted and sleep-deprived from the unexpected 24/7 schedule of newborn care, Eva momentarily leaves Wyeth unattended in her car. Through a set of coincidences that Hoffman manages to render believable, Jason snatches Wyeth thinking he is Buddy, and the action accelerates. Although it takes too long for the major players (Chloe and Francie have both been threatened by Jason) to connect the dots, the strong descriptions of these driven characters trump occasional lapses in plot logic.
Despite a distressing number of dangling modifiers and comma splices, a heartfelt story well told.
