Chosen
Chandra Hoffman

Harper / HarperCollins
November 8, 2011 / ISBN 978-0061974311
Thriller
AMAZON

Reviewed by Bob Walch

In her debut as a novelist, Chandra Hoffman calls upon her experiences as an orphanage relief worker and the former director of a domestic adoption program in Portland, Oregon.

Like the author, her main character, Chloe Pinter, is the director of an adoption program in Portland. As the story unfolds, Chloe is caught between couples.

While one couple is expecting their own baby after suffering fertility problems, there is another, wealthy couple, who consider adoption as their only chance to have the child they have always wanted. The third part of this triangle is an impoverished twosome who has nothing – nothing, that is, except a baby everyone wants.

Then, when a child disappears, dreams dissolve into nightmares and everyone is forced to examine what they really want and where it has all gone wrong.

Told in alternating points of view, this is a heart wrenching story that touches on motherhood, infertility, adoption, love and loss, plus how far a person will go to get what he thinks he wants.