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Jan 17, 2012

Tanu rated it:

Such a beautiful story!! Kavita and Jasu are a poor but loving couple living in the rural town of Dhanau, India. In a society that favors boys and considers girls as a burden, Kavita has to give up her daughter to an orphanage, to protect her life. Meanwhile another couple from America, Somer and Krishnan can’t have a baby and decide to adopt, connecting the lives of these two very different couples separated by thousand of miles. And thus begins this really touching tale of their lives and the More...

2 comments like (6 people liked it)

Jun 25, 2011

Omnia rated it:

Watching so many Bollywood hits, I never saw India as I saw her through the eyes of the writer. She has the ability to take you into her world in such a captivating way; making you see all the negatives and the positives of her Homeland, and finally you have nothing but fall in love with this rich and contradicting country.
Shilpi Gowda managed to discuss fatal subjects through her book in a smooth and endearing way. With her rich characters she goes through Poverty, Identity, Motherhood, T More...

1 comment like (7 people liked it)

Jan 09, 2011

Khaya rated it:

Meh. Not a bad story, but too superficially rendered for my taste.

Kavita, a poor village woman, has just given birth to an infant daughter she names Usha. Terrified that her husband will murder the daughter because she's a girl, she journeys to Mumbai to place Usha in an orphanage. Meanwhile, Somer and Krishnan, a California couple struggling with infertility, decide to adopt an Indian orphan and end up with Usha. The book follows the twists and turns in these characters' lives as More...

10 comments like (12 people liked it)

Apr 08, 2010

kim rated it:

Wonderful book! If this is the author's first novel, I can't wait to read her second! I won the book through the First Reads giveaway here at Goodreads, and as soon as I did, I went to the authors website and read the first few pages in the preview! After just the first chapter, I was hooked!
The story is centered around the 'secret daughter' Asha/Usha. She is born the 2nd daughter of Kavita, an Indian woman who lost her 1st daughter immediately after birth to infanticide. She is det More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Apr 03, 2010

Tara rated it:

This is a story that beautifully and creatively tackles many controversial issues. Between Somer and Krishnan, we have an interracial marriage. (Issue one) Krishnan, an Indian man and Somer, a caucasian woman, think nothing of the difference in their cultures until a trip to India shows Somer the world from which Krishnan comes from. She does a double take and wonders how well she really knows her husband.

Issue two: motherhood. Somer wants to have a baby so bad but her body do More...

0 comments like (9 people liked it)

Dec 27, 2011

Jeanne rated it:

In India, Kavita gives birth to a girl and her sister helps her to spirit the baby away, to avoid the fate the first one suffered. Luckily, her third child is the cherished son that everyone hoped for.

In California, Somer and Krishnan are unable to conceive and finally decide to adopt. They visit Krishnan’s indian family and finalize the adoption of a baby girl named Asha, from an orphanage in Mumbai.

Asha’s curiosity about her heritage and her country of birth eventually More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 23, 2011

Liz rated it:

Loved book. Couldn't put it down. Story of girl adopted from India, and her family in America and her birth family in India

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Nov 14, 2011

Kristel rated it:

Secret Daughter by Shilpi Somaya Gowda

The author is Indian. Her parents migrated to Canada from Mumbai. This novel was a New York Bestseller for her and also an international bestseller. She spent a summer as a volunteer in an Indian orphanage. This story is of an Indian girl adopted by an Indian father and white mother (both doctors) living in the United States, covers what it is like to be adopted and provides information about girls born in India. Ashe travels to India and spends t More...

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Jun 20, 2011

Michelle added it

While the synopsis states that the story is about the bond of motherhood, Secret Daughter is also a captivating look at life in India. In fact, of the two mothers, Kavita is the one who is the most sympathetic and leads the most intriguing lifestyle, if only because she leads a harsh life that is extremely foreign to those readers who are only familiar with the western world. The cultural differences, including the unusual birth rate statistics, are exposed in an intriguing and entirely realisti More...

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Feb 18, 2012

Marcy rated it:

Secret Daughter was one of the best books I have read in a long time! Somer, an American doctor, and her husband, an Indian surgeon, are childless. Somer feels the never-ending grief of miscarriages deeply. They both fly to India, to Krishnan’s wealthy family in Mumbai, to adopt an Indian child, a girl named Asha. Somer does not take to India, and it affects her relationship with her husband, who relishes the smells and sights of where he was born, and where he grew up, with much love. Alth More...

1 comment like

Jan 14, 2012

Shawn rated it:

At first, I found this story choppy and the characters undeveloped. It's like an irritating flipping through of fuzzy photographs. However, once Asha got to India as an adult, the story started to flow, and I found myself wishing Gowda had started there, and used flashbacks to tell the back-story. At the end, I still found the characters weren't as rounded as I'd have liked, but whether because I've been spending so many hours at a hospital bed this month or not, I did find myself bawling thro More...

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Oct 05, 2011

Hattie rated it:

shilpigowda
This extremely wonderful novel begins with the birth of Usha, an Indian girl. She is born in a part Mumbai. Her name means Dawn. Quickly Usha is taken away to an Indian orphanage. She will grow up not knowing her biological parents. An American family will adopt her and raise her in America. Somer, her mother is Caucassian. Krishnan, her father is Indian. Somer and Krishnan rename Usha, Asha. Throughout her life Asha will always have to make adjustments. It seems like there are m More...

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Oct 04, 2011

Edna rated it:

There are two stories simultaneously:

The story begins in India where a young mother gives birth to her 2nd baby girl. She and her husband live in a small village and are poor. The father has threatened to kill the baby like he did her first infant if it is a girl so the mother, Kavita, and her sister walk to a neighboring town where Kavita tearfully leaves the baby girl in an orphanage. This story follows the lives of Kavita and her husband and the son they eventually have.
More...

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Sep 24, 2011

Judi/Judith rated it:

This is the profoundly moving story of Kavita, a very poor Indian woman, living in the countryside outside of Mumbai and Somar, an American Pediatrician living in California. Asha is the daughter they share. As the novel opens, Kavitata has just given birth to her second baby girl. Only boys are valuable because they can work the farm and girls cost too much in dowries. When poverty rules in India, the value of girls drop. Kavita, with her sister decide to secretly take the baby to an orphana More...

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Sep 21, 2011

Jennifer rated it:

This was an easy read that I finished in a couple of days. I love stories that are about mixing cultures and this was exactly that. I was frustrated with the mother, Somer, as I just can't understand being so closed to a culture. Especially one that her desperately wanted daughter comes from. I'm not sure those two aspects of the story made sense. She almost let her infertility ruin her and yet when she finally adopted a child she didn't embrace the child's history. I know there was an attempt More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Sep 07, 2011

Rachel rated it:

When Kavita, an impoverished young Indian woman, gives birth to a hazel-eyed baby girl she knows that she will not be able to keep her. Her husband needs a son to help him in the fields and they can’t afford to pay a dowry for a daughter. Kavita makes a difficult journey of many miles with her daughter to an orphanage in Mumbai since the only other option is infanticide, an unfortunate practice in India for some girl babies.

Halfway around the world in California, Somer and her Indian More...

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Jul 30, 2011

Andrea added it

Sometimes a book becomes popular, not because it is well written, but because the subject matter is relevant to the current times (like "Still Alice," for example). "Secret Daughter" is an interesting story about a baby given up for adoption by her mother in India in order to save the baby's life. As is stated in the book "Mother India does not love all of her children equally" meaning that some baby girls are so undervalued that they are murdered by their familie More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jul 06, 2011

Ameena rated it:

If I had a dollar for every moment I’ve wasted time playing the “what if” game, I could retire rich and read fabulous books all day long. And how wonderful would that be?

But since that will never happen, allow me to share a few of the many questions I preoccupy myself with:

What if my father hadn’t been fortunate enough to escape India for America? Is it possible that I would have been born into poverty and lived a very different life? What if, when I was born, my dad deci More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jun 18, 2011

Elaine rated it:

For most of the book I thought I would give it a three but it has been a long time since I cried at the end of the book.

The stuggle for women's rights in India: infanticide of baby girls, dowry deaths, bride burning, sex selective abortions.

Bride-burning is a form of domestic violence practiced in India .It is not the same as ancient and long abolished (formally abolished in 1829) custom of Sati, where widowed women were forcefully placed on a burning pyre of the dead hus More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jun 15, 2011

Denise rated it:

I received this book for Mother's Day this year and it was a wonderful gift. What a great story! Ms. Gowda's rich descriptions both of India as a place as well as the very detailed depiction of the various characters in the book is exceptionally good. I found myself dreaming of India every night. I could image the food and almost smell it! She does a really wonderful job of portraying all the various Indias that exist simultaneously in the present day. From the young, beautiful shopping di More...

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Jun 03, 2011

Michelle rated it:

On the eve of the monsoons, in a remote Indian village, Kavita gives birth to Asha. But in a culture that favours sons, the only way for Kavita to save her newborn daughter's life is to give her away. It is a decision that will haunt her and her husband for the rest of their lives, even after the arrival of their cherished son. Halfway around the globe, Somer, an American doctor, decides to adopt a child after making the wrenching discovery that she will never have one of her own. When she and h More...

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May 26, 2011

S.B. rated it:

It's an interesting plot: an Indian mother whose husband feels they can only afford a son. In order to save her infant daughter, she puts her in an orphanage, but lives forever with the pain of separation. Her story was well done. I sympathized with the woman. She had strength and conviction and an ability to forgive. Her husband, initially the 'evil one' is also developed into a more complex character.
The problem was with the 'other' story, half the book, taken up by the NY doctor who ad More...

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Apr 24, 2011

Patty rated it:

There's been a lot of buzz about this book but I found it to be an airport paperback tarted up as literature. In India a poor woman hands her daughter over to an orphanage rather then risk her being killed (as daughters aren't valued). In America, a physician and her India-born doctor husband decide to adopt a daughter (the abandoned girl) when attempts to conceive a child fail. The author bounces back and forth between the two mothers and while the tale of the Indian woman who overcomes grindin More...

2 comments like (7 people liked it)

Apr 19, 2011

Chrystie rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

0 comments like

Apr 16, 2011

Arlene added it

On the eve of the monsoons, in a remote Indian village, Kavita gives birth to Asha. But in a culture that favours sons, the only way for Kavita to save her newborn daughter's life is to give her away. It is a decision that will haunt her and her husband for the rest of their lives, even after the arrival of their cherished son. Halfway around the globe, Somer, an American doctor, decides to adopt a child after making the wrenching discovery that she will never have one of her own. When she and h More...

0 comments like

Mar 27, 2011

Alison rated it:

Do you ever find a book unavoidable? Your mom is reading it, your friends are reading it, there's chatter about it on Facebook, and strangers on the bus are poring through it? Secret Daughter was such a book for me so when I saw it on a shelf in Buy the Book, my local used bookstore, I picked it up. The bookseller even chimed in with, "Great choice. It's a terrific book." My expectations were high–slightly too high in the end.

In Secret Daughter, author Shilpi Somaya Gowda jux More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Feb 28, 2011

Geetha rated it:

A moving, poignant story about three women – Kavita, a mother in rural India who is forced to give her daughter up for adoption to protect her from infanticide, Somer an American doctor unable to bear a child and Asha the daughter Kavita gives up and Somer adopts.

The author does a remarkable job exploring and expressing the emotions these women feel, each struggling with their losses and fears – Kavita racked with guilt and tortured by memories of leaving her crying infant in an orph More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 16, 2011

Doreen rated it:

Once again I find myself in the minority regarding a book that is a best seller and has remained so for some time. I read somewhere in a review that the author did not think that the book was ready but she was encouraged by the publisher to proceed. I have to agree that I think it was not ready and that the writing is not that of a mature author. For me, many of the characters are so poorly developed and very shallow. Are we too believe that Somer who is highly educated would give so little thou More...

4 comments like (8 people liked it)

Feb 14, 2011

Sarah rated it:

I am really enjoying reading books about other countries and cultures. I really liked this book and would highly recommend it!

"On the eve of the monsoons, in a remote Indian village, Kavita gives birth to Asha. But in a culture that favours sons, the only way for Kavita to save her newborn daughter's life is to give her away. It is a decision that will haunt her and her husband for the rest of their lives, even after the arrival of their cherished son. Halfway around the globe, S More...

0 comments like

Feb 10, 2011

Steph rated it:

This author has an amazing talent for crafting her stories through the eyes of her characters, however this book it almost akin to reading two completely different stories of two very different families. though they are connected through their daughter (the American family who adopts Asha and the poor Indian family that gave her up) they are living very different existences. Both mothers are connected through the "secret daughter" and for both the connection leads to sorrow in many dif More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

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