Nine Lives of Rose Napolitano – Donna Freitas  

Rose Napolitano is a married woman who finds herself at crossroads regarding pregnancy and motherhood and must live nine lives to try and convey the author’s message. 

Many must have come across similar books, where an author puts the protagonist through various scenarios to get a certain result. 

The thing that sets Nine lives of Rose Napolitano by Donna Freitas apart from these other books, is that one can never be sure which life she was truly meant to live, or which life was best for her. 

Rose never wanted to have children and made sure that the person she married knew this. Her husband, Luke, however, has started to change his mind.  

Each of the nine lives that she lives in the book starts with a fight between the two about prenatal vitamins. Luke wants her to take vitamins and try for kids, but Rose is adamant on refusing. 

In some lives, Rose takes the vitamins just to shut him up. In others, he leaves her because she refuses to. 

The author’s intention is clearly to portray that women should have autonomy over their reproductive rights, and to discuss the influence of pressure from family and society on women and their decisions. 

Rose is a professor and an academic who feels like she has no time or space for kids in her life. She wants to focus on her career and her marriage and does not see why they need children to live a content life.  

Her husband was once someone who understood this and promised that he would never pressure her. Her own mother thinks her cold-hearted for not wanting to bring a child into the world and believes that her marriage would improve if she gave in to Luke’s request. 

It is a story many women can relate to. It is fair to assume that Freitas, author of this book and professor and researcher of sex-related topics, wants to bring forth important discussions on how women can live whole lives without becoming a mother. 

However, it seems that Freitas has failed in her attempt to convey this message. While the attempt made is admirable, readers may instead misinterpret, and here is why. 

The nine different lives that Rose lives all stem from a different decision taken during the prenatal vitamin argument with her husband. All decisions have different outcomes and in each of them she faces loss but also experiences joy.  

The letdown? One of the biggest things readers may notice when there are no more pages to turn to see if Rose got the happy ending that she wanted, is that in each of these lives, Rose becomes a mother.  

Whether the choice she makes is to stay with her husband, leave him, agree to having a baby, or refuse it, she eventually has a child in her life. 

Freitas tried hard to make the career-oriented woman deemed to be cold by the world, a loving mother. But in this attempt, she let Rose down. 

In all nine lives, Rose finds out that her relationship with Luke will not work out. In the storylines where she does stay with Luke, she has a baby, grows distant with him and has an affair with a man named Thomas. 

In those that she and Luke divorce the day of the argument, she finds Thomas who already has a daughter.  

In one of the lives, she dies in childbirth, which although an attempt at making a point, still ends up with Rose becoming a mother.  

Freitas’ seems to make it a point to mention that Rose’ life would be incomplete without her child. As a reader, this may raise questions about whether motherhood is a non-negotiable part of being a woman. 

The book goes to the lengths of discussing the controversial topics of abortion and infidelity to justify the consequences of losing autonomy over one’s life and choices. But Freitas stops short of giving Rose a baby she regrets or a content life without a child.  

So, while the book starts with the idea that motherhood is not what defines a woman and she should not reduce herself to her partner’s or family’s expectations, it concludes that motherhood is in fact the missing link that connects a woman to all the good things in life; including the man of her dreams, happy grandparents, and a good marriage.  

While the effort made by Freitas is honest, the flawed plotline added with the hard-to-track overlapping timelines, makes what could have been a brilliant and change-inspiring book, an average read.