The book doesn’t feel speculative so much as inevitable, which is all the more horrifying ... although the book isn’t billed as a horror novel, I felt consistently spooked while reading, disturbed but propelled on by Chan’s excellent pacing ... absurdities...might be funny if they weren’t so distressingly close to the real-life expectations our culture and institutions have of mothers. But Frida’s personal journey captivated me far more than the sometimes-familiar dystopian elements. She’s a complex character, keenly aware of the racial and gendered dynamics of the group of women she’s with ... It’s easy to judge—and readers may be understandably disturbed by the behavior of some housed at the facility—but Chan’s debut shines a light on its mothers’ humanity, mistakes and all.

The 'wrongfully accused person' plot is terrifying because it dramatizes two extremely common scenarios: being misunderstood and being ignored ... The School for Good Mothers, is a crafty and spellbinding twist on this genre ... Chan’s novel is too original to come off as a purée of influences. She renders Frida’s cornered-animal consciousness in clipped and twitchy prose so effective that I had to pause every few pages to unclench my fists ... Chan’s ideas are livid, but her prose is cool in temperature, and the effect is of an extended-release drug that doesn’t peak until long after you’ve swallowed it. One test of speculative fiction is whether or not it gives you nightmares, and when mine came — I knew they would — it was a full week after I’d finished this time bomb of a book.

... [an] excellent, provocative debut novel ... It’s tempting to slot The School for Good Mothers into sci-fi—robot children! state surveillance!—but as the book continues, and as it becomes clearer that success in the school is close to impossible, I couldn’t help wondering if those more explicitly dystopian details were even necessary. At times I found myself sidetracked by the logistics of the AI dolls, and their existence opened big questions about consciousness and humanity that linger. They function ultimately as tools of discomfort, which is where Chan really shines. In a book full of characters obsessed with the idea of who is and who isn’t a good mother, Chan is sure-footed in her ambivalence, never allowing the reader to get too comfortable in a clear answer ... Chan smartly places Frida’s bad judgment just past relatability: Frida leaves her toddler home alone for two and a half hours. Indeed, Harriet could have died. Frida knows this, and we know this, but as we get to know Frida and inevitably empathize with her, the nagging fear shifts. The scariest thing about The School for Good Mothers isn’t that government overreach could allow the state to terminate parental rights based on one mistake; it’s that your worst mistake could turn out to be something you’d never think you were capable of.

I’m grateful for a spate of new works...The School for Good Mothers among them, that are confronting the idea that being a 'good' mother means totally suppressing all your own needs and desires and instincts. They challenge the long-standing pact of American motherhood: We give mothers nothing and expect everything in return ... Chan is clear-eyed in describing Frida’s crime ... Chan’s novel is dystopic but grounded in emotional realism ... The School for Good Mothers is crafted like a sinkhole, all the more nightmarish for how plausibly it pulls Frida in and entraps her. The book’s futuristic twists—at the school, robots simulate toddlers—jazz up its defiantly simple premise: This is a novel that portrays what it’s like to make a terrible mistake that costs you your child. We are party to Frida’s doubt and exhaustion and panic. The weight of her guilt is suffocating ... The state can scrutinize Frida as ruthlessly as it likes, but it’ll never manage to best all the ways she critiques herself.

The brilliance of Chan’s approach is to play with readers’ own judgmental impulses, to yank their chains and get them to examine the thought bubble that pops up while they’re reading: 'I would never' ... Chan touches on so many of the issues that bleed into our collective assessment of acceptable parenting: race, class, culture, age, sexual orientation.

There is no shortage of parenting books about how to be a good mother. Jessamine Chan’s first novel, The School for Good Mothers, will make you want to throw them all out the window ... Throughout Frida’s story, Chan intertwines supporting characters who are just as interesting, thrilling and desperate as she is. You will catch yourself laughing one minute and shaking your fist the next, demanding that we change the narrative of contemporary motherhood ... If good writing, gripping plot and provocative questions about the world we live in are your priorities, then The School for Good Mothers needs to be on your reading list, whether or not you are a parent, or someday want to be.

Readers who enjoy a darkly imagined alternate reality will appreciate the credible details ... Chan depicts modern standards of good parenting as absurd and flags how those standards are inequitably applied depending on gender, race, culture and wealth. Deadpan observations accompany the blunt language (Frida’s ex-husband’s lover 'is on a mission to nice her to death') ... Though logical to the story, the lessons in motherhood become repetitive, crowding out a deeper exploration of the many characters’ lives. We get tantalizing glimpses of Frida’s own childhood and ask, how did her immigrant parents’ non-Western parenting shape Frida as an adult? This is never fully developed. The story darts from point to point, posing more inquiry than illumination. But the questions are timely in this age of strident morality, the upset and tedium of pandemic parenting and creepy surveillance.

Isolated and stressed by motherhood, Frida has 'one very bad day,' is arrested, and must negotiate child-protective services ... Stark social commentary and questions of authority and attachment play out in Frida’s desperate gambit to atone for her one very bad day.

Enthralling ... Woven seamlessly throughout are societal assumptions and stereotypes about mothers, especially mothers of color, and their consequences. Chan’s imaginative flourishes render the mothers’ vulnerability to social pressures and governmental whims nightmarish and palpable. It’s a powerful story, made more so by its empathetic and complicated heroine.

A dark satire that's also a dramatic women-in-prison story ... If this doesn't become a miniseries, nothing will ... An enthralling dystopian drama that makes complex points about parenting with depth and feeling.