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    Inconvenient Daughter
    Inconvenient Daughter
    Inconvenient Daughter
    Audiobook4 hours

    Inconvenient Daughter

    Written by Lauren J. Sharkey

    Narrated by Leslie Bellair

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    Rowan Kelly knows she’s lucky. After all, if she hadn’t been adopted, she could have spent her days in a rice paddy, or a windowless warehouse assembling iPhones—they make iPhones in Korea, right? Either way, slowly dying of boredom on Long Island is surely better than the alternative. But as she matures, she realizes that she’ll never know if she has her mother’s eyes, or if she’d be in America at all had her adoptive parents been able to conceive.

    Rowan sets out to prove that she can be someone’s first choice. After running away from home—and her parents’ rules—and ending up beaten, barefoot, and topless on a Pennsylvania street courtesy of Bad Boy Number One, Rowan attaches herself to Never-Going-to-Commit. When that doesn’t work out, she fully abandons self-respect and begins browsing Craigslist personals. But as Rowan dives deeper into the world of casual encounters with strangers, she discovers what she’s really looking for.
    With a fresh voice and a quick wit, Lauren J. Sharkey dispels the myths surrounding transracial adoption, the ties that bind, and what it means to belong.

    Editor's Note

    Stirring #OwnVoices story…

    Born in Korea and raised by white parents in Long Island, Rowan Kelly has always felt out of place. As a young woman increasingly butting heads with her adoptive mother, Rowan seeks a sense of belonging in the arms of abusive men. A stirring #OwnVoices story exploring transracial adoption and the heart-wrenching, and ultimately redemptive, struggle to find one’s identity.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherEverand Productions
    Release dateFeb 9, 2021
    ISBN9781094416298
    Author

    Lauren J. Sharkey

    LAUREN J. SHARKEY is a writer, teacher, and transracial adoptee. After her birth in South Korea, she was adopted by Irish Catholic parents and raised on Long Island. Sharkey’s creative nonfiction has appeared in the Asian American Feminist Collective’s digital storytelling project, First Times, as well as several anthologies including I Am Strength! and Women under Scrutiny. Inconvenient Daughter is her debut novel, and is loosely based on her experience as a Korean adoptee. You can follow her at ljsharks.com.

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    Reviews for Inconvenient Daughter

    4/5

    467 ratings30 reviews

    What did you think?

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    • 5/5
      Sad in the best ways possible. A story I wish more young women would read (adopted or not) we are all worthy of love no matter who doesn’t see it :)
    • 4/5
      This is a story of a messed up teenager who was adopted and has low self-esteem. Sad
    • 4/5
      Excellent book on the intricacies of adoption, belonging and being whole. Parenthood, especially motherhood, is very complicated and this book explores that and adds the complexity of adoption to the mix.
    • 5/5
      This was a difficult audiobook to listen to and is not for anyone uncomfortable with raw language and sexual themes. The story is a compelling drama of a young girl who seeks acceptance in the only way she could think of despite the reality that she already had what she longed for.
    • 3/5
      Ending was flat and abrupt. No actual growth of character.
    • 3/5
      It was giving mid at its best. If this was YA, I’d throw this book under the bus. But this wasn’t, I reckon. I’m so angry with the main character but who is a teenager that’s not annoying most of the time?
    • 5/5
      A little bit funny, but also very dark. A great story.
    • 3/5
      An adopted Korean teenage girl runs away from home and, while trying to fit into her Caucasian family and feel accepted, continually chooses the wrong boyfriends and ends up in many casual encounters and abusive relationships.This book begins as a rather humorous young adult book, but gradually deals with emotional and complex issues of self-esteem. To make the story flow a little more smoothly, I would have appreciated a more in-depth look at the relationship between Rowan and her mother.
    • 4/5
      A sad tale of a Korean child adopted into a loving Irish Catholic family, but she can never accept that she is worthy of love. I read it in one sitting.
    • 3/5
      Rowan only knows life living in suburban Long Island, but everyone seems to identify her as Korean. She was adopted from Korea by her Catholic parents and knows nothing of Korea. She worries that she’s never been wanted, and like a teenager doesn’t know how to deal with that other than by isolating herself from those who care about her. The first-person narrative does an excellent job in portraying roan’s loneliness and search for identity. It seems a little uneven and that is distracting.
    • 3/5
      Ok but not brilliant but the plot a little predictable
    • 5/5
      So very worth reading. Teen coming of age novel with a new perspective. I’m in tears hearing an audiobook that sounds like mine: A story with the first few pages/months missing.
    • 5/5
      Loved it, I could relate to the mother/daughter struggles as well as the self worth.
    • 5/5
      This was a very relatable book. Very sad and yet entertaining.
    • 1/5
      I disliked the story for many reasons & didn’t understand what the author was trying to convey. The adoptive parents were selfless, loving people who would were highly supportive of their daughter & did everything they could to help her succeed. The adoptive daughter, on the other hand, was extremely dislikable & and self absorbed brat who continued to make unbelievably terrible decisions. It was difficult to feel sorry for her when she was surrounded by such a loving family who would have done anything in world for her. This book was a big disappointment.
    • 5/5
      Unbelievable! Rowan is a woman everybody knows but doesn’t. So many topics could read it 100 times and still find something new.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 2/5
      I found this book a little disappointing. The issue of transracial adoption is interesting, however the exploration of it fell short for me. Why is exploring her biological parents roots and her country of birth of less interest to this character than others? Why are negative relationships with men her response rather than other behaviors? None of this is clear and makes it harder to care about Rowan. While the author's style is engaging the plot/characters were almost but not quite there.
    • 3/5
      I found this book to be very interesting – until the end. I felt like the ending was rushed and lacking. It’s a shame, because she had a lot going for the story up until then. My recommendation – the author should revisit the book and revise the ending to be more substantial and fitting to end and otherwise good story.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 2/5
      I got approximate 15mins into this before the disability slurs started. Shocking to find the r word in books published so recently. Do better.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      The experience of listening to The Inconvenient Daughter was a beautifully agonizing blend of feeling shocked at the lead, Rowan, and her string of horrible decisions for years but also a twinge of relatability and guilt at being too quick to judge. This book makes us realize that everyone has their own story and life is unfair and human beings don't always behave rationally, even when they have the capacity to do so. It touches the delicate subject of a complicated mother-daughter relationship and does complete justice to portray it as the difficult and helpless situation that it is. Later on in the novel, it makes the reader ponder upon the psychological consequences of domestic violence, and why women choose to stay in abusive relationships to the point of no-return. The most important subject in the book, the feeling of never being good enough, for your parents, for a friend, for a man, and constantly finding solace in numbing the guilt and shame out altogether - the relatability of the content is phenomenal. Loved the book because it made me feel all the right emotions at the right places.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      I was hooked on the 1st chapter. It was a fun and thought provoking story.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      An interesting adoption saga from an adoptees prospective that has different thoughts that a biological Family member would not think of. The detail was good but she goes from age 24 to 30 without too much detail at all compared to what the rest of the book offers.

      2 people found this helpful

    • 1/5
      While Sharkey attempts to circle the adopted child-parent narrative, what’s instead put forth is an account of a spoiled child and her whining about not getting enough attention from boys. It’s written at high-school level, both in mindset and writing ability. The protagonist lacks any real depth and staves off any character development like it’s the plague. I don’t know how this ever got published. Possibly just to help increase visibility, but it remains lacking in the one area it’s supposed to promote.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Good character development. The story is believable and painful. Throughout the story, I knew why Rowen was making the choices she was. I am disappointed that the author did not choose to develop the recovery side of this story. The end was too neat, easy, and simplistic.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Man, this book broke my heart! An ‘Inconvenient Daughter’ is told in first person in a stream of consciousness style. The protagonist, Rowan Kelly, details important events in her life that have lead up to her being in a hospital following a traumatic encounter. She was adopted from Korea as a baby by white parents in Long Island, New York. The story follows her emotional struggles with being surrendered for adoption and increasing tension with her mother, whom she views as controlling. Rowan’s lack of self-worth grows and she begins to seek approval and affection outwardly, continuously picking the wrong partners. I was sobbing at some of these encounters. It takes her more than five years to begin to heal and understand she is worthy. I appreciated the redemption aspect of the story, but I wanted more. I was so rooting for her relationship with her mother. The story ends abruptly, but you are left with hope for their relationship.

      2 people found this helpful

    • 3/5
      Wow. So raw and honest. Short and impactful. The protagonist POV helped me understand my Korean adopted roommate from university.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      It’s a book about a girl growing up, it’s nothing special. Maybe it would appeal to people who can relate to it more than me.
    • 1/5
      Terribly boring. Kept jumping from past to present with no fluidity.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 1/5
      This book was horribly boring not a good read at all
    • 5/5
      This one had me missing my bus stop & crying in public. I’m grateful the author was so willing to share their story and be so vulnerable in their writing.

      1 person found this helpful