Matched

When the adoption attorney told Denise and her husband that they would be responsible for finding a woman willing to give them her baby, Denise was horrified. But horrified quickly turned into obsessed.

She advertised across the country, fielding and vetting potential birth moms by phone. The first to contact Denise had been raped, twice. Ashamed and depressed, she spent her pregnancy doing coke and drinking vodka to knock herself out. Do you want to adopt my baby? she asked.

The director of a women's shelter housing victims of human trafficking asked Denise, Would you have a problem adopting a baby born of prostitution? Denise knew she wouldn't, but what would her husband say?

The eight birth moms Denise met during her search - one an unhoused twenty-year-old, another an MBA-holding executive - changed her life forever, leading her not only to her child, but, in a twist of fate, to the one woman Denise thought she'd never meet: Her own birth mom.

Matched is first and foremost a book for memoir lovers. It's also a love letter to anyone touched by adoption. Whatever your place in the triad: adoptee, birth parent, or adoptive parent, your story is told within these pages. Adoption is beautiful. It's also problematic. Massar invites you to ride shotgun on her un-instagrammable journey. Because real is so much better than perfect.