Love Forms

A Novel

By: Claire Adam

A heart-stirring novel about a mother's love, in all its forms, as a woman searches for the daughter she gave up for adoption when she was a teenager growing up in the Caribbean, from the prize-winning author of Golden Child

For much of her life, Dawn has felt as if something had been missing. Now, at the age of fifty-eight, with a divorce behind her and her two grown-up sons busy with their own lives, she should be trying to settle into a new future for herself. But she keeps returning to the past and to the secret she’s kept all these years. At just sixteen, Dawn found herself pregnant, and—as was common in Trinidad back then—her parents sent her away to have the baby and give her up for adoption.

More than forty years later, Dawn yearns to reconnect with her lost daughter. But tracking down her child is not as easy as she had thought. It’s an emotional journey that leads Dawn to retrace her steps back home and to question not only that fateful decision she’d made as a teenager but every turn in the road of her life since.

Love Forms is a powerfully moving story of a woman in search of herself—a novel that rings with heartfelt empathy through the passages of a mother’s life, depicting the enduring bonds of love, family, and home.

©2025 Claire Adam (P)2025 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“An exquisitely written and uniquely Caribbean novel about the hard edges of social pressure and the soft longing of mother love . . . I was swept away from page one to the kicker ending. . . . A compelling and tender story of what—and who—is hidden in almost every family . . . Read this book and give it to your friends.”—Monique Roffey, author of Passiontide

“An arresting voice that made me think of silk: Its delicate beauty belies its intrinsic strength.”—Claire Kilroy, author of Soldier, Sailor

“A compelling read, full of secrets and the complexities of family and a rich sense of place.”—Romesh Gunesekera, Booker Prize-shortlisted author of Reef