The Nine Lives of Rose Napolitano by Donna Freitas is another book I had on my list that Gayle Weiswasser posted on her best of the year list, so, as it also came available to me from the library, it was added to the “must read before the end of 2021” pile. “Rose Napolitano is fighting with her husband, Luke, about prenatal vitamins. She promised she’d take them, but didn’t. He promised before they got married that he’d never want children, but now he’s changed his mind. Their marriage has come to rest on this one question: Can Rose find it in herself to become a mother? Rose is a successful professor and academic. She’s never wanted to have a child. The fight ends, and with it their marriage. But then, Rose has a fight with Luke about the vitamins–again. This time the fight goes slightly differently, and so does Rose’s future as she grapples with whether she can indeed give up the one thing she thought she knew about herself. Can she reimagine her life in a completely new way? That reimagining plays out again and again in each of Rose’s nine lives, just as it does for each of us as we grow into adulthood. What are the consequences of our biggest choices? How would life change if we let go of our preconceived ideas of ourselves and became someone completely new? Rose Napolitano’s experience of choosing and then choosing again shows us in an utterly compelling way what it means, literally, to reinvent a life and, sometimes, become a different kind of woman than we ever imagined.” (Amazon) This was a really cool book. The nine options for the way life plays out kept weaving in and out and back again. I should have written a chart to keep track of which was which. That would have made me like the book even better, I think. I really, really liked this book, but I didn’t LOVE it. I LOVED the ending and the way things tied together and I thought it was really creative, but something holds me back from giving it best of the year. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it falls into the way too long 4.5-star category for me. Definitely read it, but, for me, not 5-star worthy quite.