4.14.2025 | Monday

Statistically Speaking

Item: Statistically Speaking
Rating: 5
Author: Kim

category: Book Reviews
tag(s): adult
0 Comments

the blurb

As a high school history teacher, Gemma Jones loves the certainty of the past: specific names, solid dates, proven statistics. Maybe that's because her own past resembles a jumbled-up sock drawer, one where it's impossible to find a match.

On paper, Gemma's life is just like any other successful, single thirty-something. Her students adore her. She lives in a cute beach-side cottage next door to the world's sweetest neighbor, Margie. And she's definitely caught the eye of Karim, the resident hot PE teacher at her school. But every day of her life she can't get one thing out of her mind: the baby she gave up for adoption when Gemma was just sixteen years old.

This is the year that Baby—the only name Gemma has for her little girl—will turn eighteen. And it might be the year she actually meets her daughter face-to-face.

a few notes

trigger warning: ❗addiction, neglect, mental health, teen pregnancy❗

POV: 1st person
setting: Liverpool, England
keywords/phrases: adoption, family, friends
tropes: family dynamic, found family, dealing with trauma
spice: 1/5🔥
language: 1/5🤬

public reading: safe
cover notes: love a redhead!
mood reading: deep emotional stories, flawed protagonists, hopeful
bonus points: multigenerational friendships, women supporting women

my review

This book was very different from what I expected when I began to read. The cute cover doesn’t hint at the heavy topics within the pages of this book, although it definitely hints at the unexpectedly sweet and funny moments peppered throughout the story. I enjoy a flawed protagonist, and it was impossible not to feel for Gemma. Her life has been far from easy, after a dark childhood with a mother wholly unequipped for the role. Gemma had to grow up fast, dealing with her mother’s addiction and mental-health issues, eventually ending up in England’s foster system. And then she found herself in the place she never wanted to be. Sixteen and pregnant.

Gemma was such a well-developed character, imperfect in ways that felt incredibly real, even relatable. In so many ways, this was a sort of coming-of-age story for her. She’d spent so much of her adult life a little bit separated, building figurative walls between herself and others. Those walls protected her, but they also kept her from living fully. Watching her grow and change and open as she began to develop friendships was beautiful to read. The author did a wonderful job of writing the story with perfect emotional depth, allowing the reader to feel every moment of the story.

And there were some very hard topics at the core of the story, in Gemma’s past with her mother and with the adoption of her baby. I felt like the author really understood the effect those things would have on a person, and then reflected them in Gemma’s character. That was really well done. But with those hard topics were moments of brevity and love that I adored.

About Debbie Johnson

Debbie Johnson is an award-winning author who lives and works in Liverpool, where she divides her time between writing, caring for a small tribe of children and animals, and not doing the housework.

She writes feel-good emotional women’s fiction, and has sold more than 1,000,000 books worldwide. She is published globally in many different languages, and has had two books optioned for film and TV.

Facebook | Goodreads | Bookhype | Amazon