#5OnMyTBR is a bookish meme that was hosted by E. @ Local Bee Hunter’s Nook. Learn more about it here.
Family
I love any opportunity to feature more books and found this meme an interesting way to take a look at my TBR. I hope to also get some feedback from you. Should I keep these books on my TBR? Should I push them up the list? Without further ado, below are five books with the word "family" in the title.
Family Family by Laurie Frankel
“Not all stories of adoption are stories of pain and regret. Not even most of them. Why don’t we ever get that movie?”
India Allwood grew up wanting to be an actor. Armed with a stack of index cards (for research/line memorization/make-shift confetti), she goes from awkward sixteen-year-old to Broadway ingenue to TV superhero.
Her new movie is a prestige picture about adoption, but its spin is the same old tired story of tragedy. India is an adoptive mom in real life though. She wants everyone to know there’s more to her family than pain and regret. So she does something you should never do—she tells a journalist the truth: it’s a bad movie.
Soon she’s at the center of a media storm, battling accusations from the press and the paparazzi, from protesters on the right and advocates on the left. Her twin ten-year-olds know they need help–and who better to call than family? But that’s where it gets really messy because India’s not just an adoptive mother…
The one thing she knows for sure is what makes a family isn’t blood. And it isn’t love. No matter how they’re formed, the truth about family is this: it's complicated.
The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson
Mr. and Mrs. Fang called it art.
Their children called it mischief.
Performance artists Caleb and Camille Fang dedicated themselves to making great art. But when an artist’s work lies in subverting normality, it can be difficult to raise well-adjusted children. Just ask Buster and Annie Fang. For as long as they can remember, they starred (unwillingly) in their parents’ madcap pieces. But now that they are grown up, the chaos of their childhood has made it difficult to cope with life outside the fishbowl of their parents’ strange world.
When the lives they’ve built come crashing down, brother and sister have nowhere to go but home, where they discover that Caleb and Camille are planning one last performance -– their magnum opus -– whether the kids agree to participate or not. Soon, ambition breeds conflict, bringing the Fangs to face the difficult decision about what’s ultimately more important: their family or their art.
A Family Matter by Claire Lynch
A young wife following her heart. A husband with the law on his side. Their daughter, caught in the middle. Forty years later, a family secret changes everything.
1982. Dawn is a young mother, still adjusting to life with her husband, when Hazel lights up her world like a torch in the dark. Theirs is the kind of connection that’s impossible to resist, and suddenly life is more complicated, and more joyful, than Dawn ever expected. But she has responsibilities and commitments. She has a daughter.
2022. Heron has just received news from his doctor that turns everything upside down. He’s an older man, stuck in the habits of a quiet existence. Telling Maggie, his only child—the person around whom his life has revolved—seems impossible. Heron can’t tell her about his diagnosis, just as he can’t reveal all the other secrets he’s been keeping from her for so many years.
A Family Matter is an exploration of love and loss, intimacy and injustice, custody and care, and whether it is possible to heal from the wounds of the past in the changed world of today.
Like Family by Erin O. White
After a near-stranger dies in their small town, a tightknit group of friends can no longer ignore their long-dormant desires and unfulfilled dreams—a moving debut about the complicated joys of chosen family.
“Like Family is so warm, joyful, smart, and nuanced. Its depictions of friendship and middle age and marriage and the beautiful messiness of life feel familiar in the best ways, but also fresh in the best ways. I absolutely love this novel and can’t wait to share it with everyone I know.”—Curtis Sittenfeld, bestselling author of Show Don’t Tell
It was too much to ask. But sometimes too much is what we ask of the people we love most.
Radclyffe, New York, is an idyllic upstate town, nestled in the hills and complete with artisanal bakeries, pottery studios, and hidden swimming holes. Ruth and her wife, Wyn, are living the dream (or Wyn’s dream, at least) with their four children on their small farm, which is also the bucolic gathering place for their circle of friends. It’s a sweet life, but there’s a secret at its center, one that not even Ruth’s best friend, Caroline, knows.
What Caroline does know is that she loves and depends on Ruth, and on the bond between their families. More than anything, she wants her tender-hearted son not to grow up lonely the way she did. Unfortunately, no one can assure her of that, especially not her husband. He just wants things to be easy, drama-free—which is impossible, as he has donated his sperm to his cousin Tobi and her wife so that they could have kids of their own. Now those children are asking unanswerable questions.
After an unexpected death in their community, all three couples are forced to confront the tensions that have long been buried beneath the surfaces of their lives. Richly textured and big-hearted, this exhilarating debut is an unforgettable story of the alchemy of love and loyalty that makes friends Like Family.
Family Pictures by Jane Green
Who can you trust if not the ones you love?
Sylvie and Maggie are two women living on opposite coasts with children about to leave the nest for school. Both are in their forties with husbands who travel more than either would like. The looming emptiness of their respective homes has left them feeling anxious and lonely, needing their husbands to be home now more than ever. It isn't until Eve, Sylvie's daughter, happens to befriend Maggie's daughter that the similarities between these two women becomes shockingly real. A huge secret has remained well hidden for years until now, and their lives will be blown apart as dark truths from the past come to the surface. Can these two women learn to forgive, for the sake of their children? For themselves?
In Family Pictures, Jane Green, the beloved author of such bestsellers as Jemima J and The Beach House, has written an emotional, page turning story about what it means to be a mother and a wife, about trust and family and the enduring strength of women when put to the test.
What "family" books are on your TBR?
Let us know in the comments!
Let us know in the comments!
No comments:
Post a Comment