Third Quarter outside Reading Book Review

Multiple Blessings by Kate Gosselin and Beth Carson. Zondervan, 2008.
Genre: Autobiography

Multiple Blessings is an autobiography written by Kate Gosselin about the challenging life of her family with two sets of multiples. Her family consists of Kate and her husband Jon, their twin girls, Cara Nicole, and Madelyn Kate, and their sextuplets, Alexis Faith, Hannah Joy, Aaden Jonathan, Collin Thomas, Leah Hope, and Joel Kevin. The book begins at John and Kate meeting and getting married, and documents their life up until the book was published, with two healthy twins and six healthy sextuplets. The story tells the ups and downs of life with two sets of multiples and gives outsiders a look into the Gosselin’s everyday struggles and accomplishments.

A reviewer says about the book: “The book was a light, easy read. It gave me more of an understanding of how Kate thinks and why she does things the way she does.”

The best way to describe Kate Gosselin’s writing style is that she tells it as it is. With Kate’s main job being a mother to her numerous children, writing a book must have been difficult. You can tell that in her writing, she isn’t trying to make her life seem perfect or “pretty”. She is telling the readers the truth, as different and weird as it may be. She also admits to flaws that her and her family have. She knows that she has flaws, and she isn’t afraid of admitting it.
Also, I liked how Kate added her journal to the back of the book. This shows her writing before it was edited. It shows what she just jotted down whenever she had time, knowing that she wanted to make a book about it.

“The chill of reality washed over me as I watched my husband – my best friend, cheerleader, and storehouse of strength – slowly drop to his knees at the count of five. Fear stricken and nauseous, he couldn’t bear to look anymore.” (35)

I chose to read this book because the television show, Jon and Kate plus Eight, used to be one of my favorite shows until it was canceled. The book was also a little sad because I am reading it a few years after it was published and things have changed for the Gosselins. Jon and Kate are no longer together. I really liked the book because compared to the show; it gave a different view of the family. The show sometimes showed a bad side of Kate or Jon but the book explained the stress that they were going through, which explained the way that they sometimes acted. Overall, I thought Multiple Blessings was a great book.