43 Of Your Favorite Books About Complicated Families
This Riot Recommendation is sponsored by Just Fly Away by Andrew McCarthy.
A debut novel about family secrets, first love, forgiveness, and finding one’s way in the world from award-winning writer, actor, and director Andrew McCarthy. When fifteen-year-old Lucy Willows discovers that her father has a child from a brief affair, she begins to question everything she thinks she knows about her life. Worse, Lucy’s father’s secret is now her own, one that isolates her from her friends, family—even her boyfriend, Simon. When Lucy runs away to Maine to visit her mysteriously estranged grandfather, she finally begins to get to the bottom of her family’s secrets and lies.
The estranged siblings reunited by a will, the parents that micromanage their grown children, the deceptions employed to protect the family unit…show us a book about family and we’ll show you dysfunction. We asked you to share your favorite books about complicated families, and you responded. Here are 43 of your favorites! The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie The Nest by Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara Ordinary People by Judith Guest Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah Gilded Cage by Vic James The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton A Tree Grows In Brooklyn by Betty Smith Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs I’ll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen One Half From the East by Nadia Hashimi Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë It Happens All the Time by Amy Hatvany The Possibility of Somewhere by Julia Day All the Ugly and Wonderful Things by Bryn Greenwood Winter Solstice by Rosamunde Pilcher August: Osage County by Tracy Letts Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy Good Night Mister Tom by Michelle Magorian Surviving the Applewhites by Stephanie S. Tolan The World According to Garp by John Irving My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry by Fredrik Backman Commonwealth by Ann Patchett Just Listen by Sarah Dessen Once We Were Sisters by Sheila Kophler The Vacationers by Emma Straub Big and Little Questions (According to Wren Jo Byrd) by Julie Bowe The Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving The Godfather by Mario Puzo A Million Junes by Emily Henry The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon You Don’t Know Me by David Klass This is Where I Leave You Jonathan Tropper It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover The German Girl by Armando Lucas Correa The Deep End of the Ocean by Jacquelyn Mitchard Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng Mom & Me & Mom by Maya Angelou The Secret Life of Violet Grant by Beatriz Williams
A debut novel about family secrets, first love, forgiveness, and finding one’s way in the world from award-winning writer, actor, and director Andrew McCarthy. When fifteen-year-old Lucy Willows discovers that her father has a child from a brief affair, she begins to question everything she thinks she knows about her life. Worse, Lucy’s father’s secret is now her own, one that isolates her from her friends, family—even her boyfriend, Simon. When Lucy runs away to Maine to visit her mysteriously estranged grandfather, she finally begins to get to the bottom of her family’s secrets and lies.
The estranged siblings reunited by a will, the parents that micromanage their grown children, the deceptions employed to protect the family unit…show us a book about family and we’ll show you dysfunction. We asked you to share your favorite books about complicated families, and you responded. Here are 43 of your favorites! The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie The Nest by Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara Ordinary People by Judith Guest Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah Gilded Cage by Vic James The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton A Tree Grows In Brooklyn by Betty Smith Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs I’ll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen One Half From the East by Nadia Hashimi Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë It Happens All the Time by Amy Hatvany The Possibility of Somewhere by Julia Day All the Ugly and Wonderful Things by Bryn Greenwood Winter Solstice by Rosamunde Pilcher August: Osage County by Tracy Letts Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy Good Night Mister Tom by Michelle Magorian Surviving the Applewhites by Stephanie S. Tolan The World According to Garp by John Irving My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry by Fredrik Backman Commonwealth by Ann Patchett Just Listen by Sarah Dessen Once We Were Sisters by Sheila Kophler The Vacationers by Emma Straub Big and Little Questions (According to Wren Jo Byrd) by Julie Bowe The Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving The Godfather by Mario Puzo A Million Junes by Emily Henry The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon You Don’t Know Me by David Klass This is Where I Leave You Jonathan Tropper It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover The German Girl by Armando Lucas Correa The Deep End of the Ocean by Jacquelyn Mitchard Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng Mom & Me & Mom by Maya Angelou The Secret Life of Violet Grant by Beatriz Williams
