Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson

This is a short and beautiful book. I finished it in a couple of sittings and wanted to start all over again.

Why the title? I think the Washington Post reviewer got it right!

Woodson reminds us that this was, indeed, another Brooklyn, far from the tony borough of multi-million-dollar brownstones and speciality grocery stores. Heroin addicts wobble along these streets. A prostitute who lives beneath August’s family loses her children to Social Services. “White people we didn’t know filled the trucks with their belongings,” August remembers, “and in the evenings, we watched them take long looks at the buildings they were leaving, then climb into station wagons and drive away.”

Every Kind of Wanting by Gina Frangello

I heard about this book on one of my podcasts and thought it sounded really interesting....and it was, but I really didn't like any of the characters very much, so I had a hard time engaging with the story.
Having just gone through the experience of having a surrogate carry my son and daughter-in-law's first child, I was attracted to the story, but this story is SO DIFFERENT from that in my family. Thank God!
Here is what the Westchester Library says about the book:

Every Kind of Wanting explores the complex intersection of three unique families and their bustling efforts to have a "Community Baby." Miguel could not be more different from his partner Chad, a happy-go-lucky real estate mogul from Chicago's wealthy North Shore. When Chad's sister, Gretchen offers the couple an egg, their search for a surrogate leads them to Miguel's old friend Emily, happily married to an eccentric Irish playwright, Nick, with whom she is raising two boys. Into this web falls Miguel's sister Lina, a former addict and stripper, who begins a passionate affair with Nick while deciphering the mysteries of her past. But every action these couples make has unforeseen consequences. As Lina faces her long-hidden demons, and the fragile friendships between Miguel and Chad and Nick and Emily begin to fray as the baby's birth draws near, a shocking turn of events-and the secret Lina's been hiding-threaten to break them apart forever. By turns funny, dark and sexy, Every Kind of Wanting strips bare the layers of the American family today. Tackling issues such as assimilation, the legacy of secrets, the morality of desire, and ultimately who "owns" love, the characters-across all ethnicities, nationalities, and sexualities - are blisteringly alive"--

But, here is my favorite quote in the book:
"Our children are never ours. We belong to them, but they belong to themselves.  They belong to people not yet born."

Mischling by Affinity Konar

I wanted to love this book, after hearing it reviewed on All the Books Podcast, but I can't say that I did. The poetic nature of the writing distanced me from the characters and seemed to "pretty" in light of the subject matter. The book deals with two twin girls' experiences at Auschwitz under Mengele's "care." His interest in twins is notorious and this book took the reader right into his "Zoo" (laboratory)
The ending also seemed a little too "pat" for me.
I guess the book didn't stand much of a chance, either, for me, because I had just finished A Gentleman in Moscow, which is certainly my favorite bookfor the last year or so.