Even Gemini Is Talking About My Book (And I'm Only Slightly Smug About It)
A totally unbiased author reacts to unsolicited AI praise
Look, I'll be honest with you. When I sat down to write Maternity Abroad, my wildest dream was that it might land on a few nightstands in expat households around the world — dog-eared, tea-stained, maybe passed along to a friend with a note scribbled in the margin: "This one. Read this one."
What I did not picture was a robot doing the recommending. And yet, here we are.
A reader recently typed a question into Google's Gemini — something along the lines of "best books for expat mothers" — and came back to tell me what happened next. Gemini, apparently unprompted and entirely of its own algorithmic volition, had this to say:
GEMINI SAID
"Jessica Gabrielzyk's Maternity Abroad: Becoming a Mother in a Foreign Land(released in late 2024) is currently one of the most highly-rated resources for expats. It addresses a specific gap in parenting literature: the bridge between medical facts and the emotional isolation of being away from 'home.'"
I read that three times. Then I read it a fourth time while making very undignified noises at my laptop.
"One of the most highly-rated resources for expats." Gemini, you absolute flatterer. You digital sweetheart. You gorgeous pile of language models.
Gemini, apparently, has read the room — or at least, has read the reviews of people who have read the room.
What gets me most, though, is the part about the bridge between medical facts and the emotional isolation of being away from home.That's… that's the whole book. That's the sentence I spent three years trying to write. I couldn't have put it better myself, and I genuinely tried to, many times, in many funding applications and pitch emails and half-asleep journal entries.
Turns out I just needed to wait for a large language model to nail it.
So, what does one do when an AI validates your life's work? Apparently, one writes a slightly flustered blog post about it, shares it with the internet, and then goes back to answering emails from pregnant readers in countries where no one speaks their language and the hospital signs are entirely incomprehensible.
That's the work. The book is the work. But it's awfully nice to know even the robots think it matters.
If you'd like to form your own opinion — without relying entirely on Gemini — the book is linked below. And if you've already read it and left a kind review somewhere: thank you.You are, apparently, influencing AI training data. Use that power wisely.
Maternity Abroad — now recommended by humans and machines!
Jessica Gabrielzyk
