The Nine Lives of Rose Napolitano by Donna Freitas
Book Review
Shoutout to Viking Books for sending me this gifted copy of The Nine Lives of Rose Napolitano. Look at that cover 😍.
As soon as I heard the premise of this book, I immediately wanted to read it. I was envisioning parallel universes and a hint of sci-fi magic. However, that wasn’t quite how it turned out.
The story begins with Rose Napolitano and her husband arguing over pre-natal vitamins. Rose doesn’t want children, but her husband, Luke, does want children. What follows is nine different realities of how Rose’s life could go. In some versions of her life, Rose births a beautiful baby girl named Addie. In other versions, Rose never becomes pregnant. While some elements remain the same across all nine version’s of Rose’s life, some aspects are wildly different.
First, I should mention, this is certainly not a sci-fi book. Rose is completely unaware of these alternate realities or timelines or whatever you want to call them. While I did find some aspects of the story fascinating, the book as a whole was way too difficult for me to follow as it skips around both in time and between Rose’s different lives (aka Rose 1 - 9). Despite my best efforts, I couldn’t keep track of what was happening in each of Rose’s 9 different lives. I think the story may have proven more effective if it followed fewer versions of Rose’s life. I also found much of the content and conversations repetitive. So much of the book centers on the question of whether or not to have a baby, but some of the parts I found most interesting were the other aspects of Rose’s life - her career, her romantic relationships and her relationship with her parents across her various lives.
While this one wasn’t my favorite, I’ve seen some glowing reviews, so perhaps I’m an outlier. If you’re fascinated by the idea of how life might turn out differently based on one big life decision, perhaps give this one a go… just maybe take notes so you can keep track of what is happening when/where lol.
⭐️⭐️💫/5
TW: abortion, death during childbirth, cancer, infidelity
