Saving Noah by Lucinda Berry
📘 Saving Noah by Lucinda Berry – Book Review
Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ 3 out of 5 stars
A raw, unsettling read that forces us to confront the unthinkable—and asks us to consider what compassion really means.
⚠️ Spoiler Alert
This review discusses major plot points, including the ending. Proceed with care if you haven’t read the book yet.
🧠 What Saving Noah Is Really About
This is not an easy book. It’s not meant to be. Saving Noah tackles a subject most people don’t want to acknowledge even exists: what happens when a child—a good, kind, seemingly normal child—develops an attraction to younger children? What if that child is your child?
That’s exactly the nightmare that Adrienne, a mother and former competitive swimmer, finds herself living in when her 15-year-old son Noah confesses to having molested two little girls on his swim team.
Noah doesn’t try to hide it. In fact, he turns himself in and begs for help. But there is no real help. Instead, Noah is arrested and sentenced to a juvenile sex offender program where he’s isolated, monitored, and made to repeat mantras about self-control. He does everything he’s told—but the urges don’t stop.
💔 A Family Shattered
Adrienne refuses to abandon her son, even when the world turns against them. Neighbors shun them. Friends walk away. Her marriage to Lucas begins to crumble under the strain.
Worse, Adrienne starts to notice signs that something even darker might be at play: Noah’s increasing depression, his reluctance to speak about his past, and the unsettling relationship between Noah and his younger sister Katie.
As the story unfolds in alternating timelines, we witness the slow unraveling of this once-functioning family. The book pulls us into Noah’s pain, Adrienne’s helplessness, and society’s refusal to believe that someone with these urges can also be a human being worth saving.
🧩 The Truth Comes Out
Toward the end of the book, Noah—now older, having completed his sentence but still consumed by guilt and plagued by urges he cannot suppress—makes an unthinkable request. He wants to die. Not out of selfishness, but because he believes his very existence is a danger to others. And, more heartbreakingly, he wants to free his family from the stigma of his crimes.
Adrienne, emotionally wrecked and feeling utterly powerless, helps him.
After his death, Adrienne discovers the full truth about Lucas: her husband had sexually abused children in his past, possibly even Noah and Katie. This deeply buried trauma may have influenced Noah’s own struggles. The generational cycle of abuse becomes painfully clear.
🗣️ A Personal Reflection
While this book didn’t blow me away in terms of writing or structure—some plot points felt repetitive or a little forced—it still left a powerful impression. 3 out of 5 stars, because while I didn’t love the execution, I deeply respect the courage it took to tell this story.
As someone who has spoken with a person affected by similar urges (but who has never acted on them), I found the book’s premise disturbingly familiar. That person once told me, “This is an illness. There’s no cure. But I would never hurt a child.” He chose to live a quiet, isolated life, child-free and surrounded by nothing but self-monitoring and fear.
We don’t like to think of pedophilia as a mental illness. But until we do, until we stop demonizing every person with these thoughts and start offering compassion and actual clinical treatment, stories like Noah’s will remain all too real.
📌 Final Takeaway
Saving Noah doesn’t offer neat answers or feel-good endings. It’s a harrowing reminder that some people live with demons they never invited in—and that some of the most tragic stories happen behind closed doors, inside “normal” families, in homes just like ours.
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📚 If You Liked Saving Noah, You Might Also Like:
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2. Room by Emma Donoghue
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3. The Good Son by You-Jeong Jeong
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4. We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver
Told through letters from a mother to her estranged husband, this controversial novel delves into the psychology of a teenage school shooter and questions how much of evil is nature versus nurture.
5. Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn
A journalist returns to her hometown to cover the murders of two young girls, only to confront buried family secrets. If you appreciated Lucinda Berry’s exploration of familial dysfunction, this is another raw, unsettling read.
6. The Push by Ashley Audrain
A psychological drama about motherhood, nature vs nurture, and the deep fear of raising a child you don’t understand. If Saving Noah made you question how well we can ever really know our kids, this one will haunt you.
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