Here are 91 books that Somebody's Daughter fans have personally recommended if you like
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I'm a mom of two daughters who is fascinated with reading nonfiction parenting books and listening to parenting-related podcasts. My absolute favorite, though, is when fiction authors take a dense parenting topic and turn it into a relatable and engaging story so that readers can explore the same important issues and challenges in a more enjoyable way.
This novel exemplifies parenting fiction in my mind. It takes a concept I could’ve read about in a nonfiction parenting book (how to handle teenage drinking) and slides it into a compelling narrative that realistically depicts all the potential complexities and nuances in the parenting decisions and how they might play out, including several factors and consequences related to teen alcohol use and parent-sponsored parties that I would’ve never thought of myself.
Two mothers face the consequences of their choices in a gripping novel about friendship, family, and forgiveness by Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling author Jamie Beck.
Grace first met Mimi when she blew into their sons' toddler playgroup like a warm bay breeze that loosened Grace's tight spaces. Despite differing approaches to life and parenting, the fast friends raised their kids together while cementing a sisterlike bond that neither believed could be broken. But when a string of ill-fated decisions results in a teen party with a tragic outcome for Grace's son, the friendship is ripped apart and…
I'm a mom of two daughters who is fascinated with reading nonfiction parenting books and listening to parenting-related podcasts. My absolute favorite, though, is when fiction authors take a dense parenting topic and turn it into a relatable and engaging story so that readers can explore the same important issues and challenges in a more enjoyable way.
This novel is a chilling depiction of the cut-throat world of elite college admissions for families attending an ultra-competitive private school. It’s another great example of taking concepts I’ve seen in nonfiction parenting books (helicopter parenting and over-pressuring kids) and playing them out in a fictional way. The details on the parents’ backstories, and how they affected their thought processes, allowed clear comparisons and contrasts to their situations, values, and beliefs and helped me see why I may want to handle certain situations differently.
"For those who couldn't stop reading about Lori Loughlin and Operation Varsity Blues, this suspenseful thriller about the lines moms are willing to cross to get their kids into college is for you."-Refinery29 "Book Club Winner."-Real Simple, Book Club Selection "A thriller for the post-college-admission-scandal age."-PopSugar Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2021 by Parade Magazine, Newsweek, POPSUGAR, Refinery29, Brit + Co, and more! Three women, three daughters, and a promise that they'll each get what they deserve... College admissions season at Seattle's Elliott Bay Academy is marked by glowing acceptances from top-tier institutions and students as impressive as their…
I'm a mom of two daughters who is fascinated with reading nonfiction parenting books and listening to parenting-related podcasts. My absolute favorite, though, is when fiction authors take a dense parenting topic and turn it into a relatable and engaging story so that readers can explore the same important issues and challenges in a more enjoyable way.
You and Me and Us tackles several intriguing parenting challenges between a mother and her 14-year-old daughter as they lose someone they both love. It also depicts the normal parenting tightrope in dealing with teens wanting greater independence and what happens when their goals are different from their parents. An added bonus is the book is written in dual POV, alternating between the teen and parent perspectives, so readers can gain a better understanding from both sides of the issues.
"Hammer is an expert at both tugging heartstrings and keeping the reader utterly immersed in a world of hope and heartbreak. A great new voice in women's fiction."-- Kristin Harmel, #1 international bestselling author of The Winemaker's Wife
The heartbreaking, yet hopeful, story of a mother and daughter struggling to be a family without the one person who holds them together-a perfect summer read for fans of Jojo Moyes and Marisa de los Santos.
Alexis Gold knows how to put the "work" in working mom. It's the "mom" part that she's been struggling with lately. Since opening her own advertising…
I'm a mom of two daughters who is fascinated with reading nonfiction parenting books and listening to parenting-related podcasts. My absolute favorite, though, is when fiction authors take a dense parenting topic and turn it into a relatable and engaging story so that readers can explore the same important issues and challenges in a more enjoyable way.
West has authored three books that I’d consider parenting fiction, but this one is my favorite. The main storyline follows a mom as she struggles to parent her teenager through his impulsive decisions and public failures. It also explores how a child’s behaviors or actions can often feel like a reflection on their parents. West is an expert in writing multiple POV novels, so readers get to understand these issues from every angle.
"A breezy yet affecting read filled with struggle and hope."—People A Good Day LA Pick
Among fake Instagram pages, long-buried family secrets, and the horrors of middle school, one suburban mom searches to find herself.
Alice Sullivan feels like she’s finally found her groove in middle age, but it only takes one moment for her perfectly curated life to unravel. On the same day she learns her daughter is struggling in second grade, a call from her son’s school accusing him of bullying throws Alice into a tailspin.
When it comes to light that the incident is part of a…
I was a late reader. I was, in fact, forcefully against reading. You’d have had to drag me by my ear to get me anywhere near a book. I was dyslexic, suffered with Irlen syndrome, and detested the embarrassing fact that I found reading too difficult. I thought my mother had invented some kind of cruel torture when she insisted I read to her every day. It never worked. And then… it did. I read my first book at the age of 12, and it was written in the form of letters. It was Animorphs Book 1 by KA Applegate, and the rest, as they say, is history.
This book sucker-punched me. Trigger warning for child abuse, gaslighting, alcoholism, drug abuse, EDs, Incest, and self-harm. Told entirely in verse, this novel follows the lives of identical twins, Kaeleigh and Raeanne, the seemingly perfect all-American girls. But each sister is hiding a dark secret. Raeanne uses drugs, alcohol, and sex to replace the love her father lavishes on her sister. Neither sister is holding onto their dark secrets very well, and pretty soon one will have to save the other. But who will step up? This novel was my first experience reading a novel in verse, and I still marvel at the technical skill it must have taken and the bruise my heart sustained in the process.
Kaeleigh and Raeanne are identical down to the dimple. As daughters of a district-court judge father and a politician mother, they are an all-American family -- on the surface. Behind the facade each sister has her own dark secret, and that's where their differences begin.
For Kaeleigh, she's the misplaced focus of Daddy's love, intended for a mother whose presence on the campaign trail means absence at home. All that Raeanne sees is Daddy playing a game of favorites -- and she is losing. If she has to lose,…
I’ve always been fascinated with the first-person voice, the way it magically pulls us into a story through the character’s/narrator’s perspective, and how when done well, can feel so natural and personal. I’ve tried to write in this perspective over the years, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. I hope I have done it adequately with this current novel. I wouldn’t say I’m an expert when it comes to the first-person, but I am an interested participant. I am a creative writing professor, but I am also a student of writing and always will be. The more I investigate, the more I read, the more I learn. Focusing on this topic has been no exception.
There such an intimate sense of discovery in this novel, narrated by Linda, a teenage girl taken under the wing of a strange family.
Linda guides us through this natural world, the cold woods of Minnesota, both mysterious and beautiful. Her simple descriptions of place always build on a subtle sense of dread in her voice, “The sky between the branches looked like sunburn. It was twenty minutes through the snow and sumac before the dogs heard me and started braying against their chains.”
Linda’s is a vulnerable first-person voice, not in command of her world, but constantly open to its possibilities, for better or worse. As authentic as it gets.
"So delicately calibrated and precisely beautiful that one might not immediately sense the sledgehammer of pain building inside this book. And I mean that in the best way. What powerful tension and depth this provides!" Aimee Bender
Fourteen-year-old Linda lives with her parents in the beautiful, austere woods of northern Minnesota, where their nearly abandoned commune stands as a last vestige of a lost counter-culture world. Isolated at home and an outlander at school, Linda is drawn to the enigmatic, attractive Lily and new history teacher Mr. Grierson. When Mr. Grierson is charged with possessing child pornography, the implications of…
Throughout my life as a therapist, I have focused on couple and family relationships, including the relationship we have with ourselves. When trauma was beginning to be recognised as something most people can and do experience, when we began to realise that it isn’t just front-line combat soldiers who get traumatised, I began my journey into how trauma affects our relationships. My study of trauma and relationships has helped my work with clients and, without naming their experiences as trauma, has moved them on from re-enacting the damage caused to them or unknowingly inflicting the same on others.
We might believe that not saying the unsayable will keep family members from being affected by the awful truth. Well, nothing could be further from reality, and John Bradshaw's Family Secrets explains perfectly why keeping awful secrets can be more damaging than having truthful conversations.
This is one of the best books recommended to clients who came to me with family trauma. A mum who was emotionally distant, unable to show love or give support, a dad who terrorized the dinner table with silence or sudden flairs of anger. Perhaps an uncle or aunt in front of whom certain subjects were never mentioned. Secrets that were kept so tight yet were on display at every family gathering.
Family Secrets clarified many questions for a lot of clients, clearing the way for therapy to go deeper.
What you don't know can hurt you— but it can also lead to self-acceptance and healing.
Family Secrets gives you the tools you need to understand your family—and yourself—in an entirely new way.
In his bestselling books and compelling PBS specials, John Bradshaw has transformed our understanding of how we are shaped by our families. Now join him on this fascinating journey of discovery, which starts with your life today and takes you back through the conflicts, the strengths, and the weaknesses of your parents’ generation—and even your grandparents’. Using a powerful technique for exploring your “family tree,” you’ll trace…
When writing about friendships, it was important for me to highlight the highs and the lows of friendships. This approach takes the reader on a journey with the main character as she remembers the good times while she navigates through the tough times. By sprinkling in humor, a story that could sway to the serious side and stay there is suddenly entertaining and balanced, giving the main character’s plight depth and the reader an engrossing experience.
"The Restoration of Celia Fairchild is wise, witty, and utterly compelling." -Jane Green, New York Times bestselling author of The Friends We Keep
Evvie Drake Starts Over meets The Friday Night Knitting Club in this wise and witty novel about a fired advice columnist who discovers lost and found family members in Charleston, by the New York Times bestselling author of The Second Sister.
Celia Fairchild, known as advice columnist 'Dear Calpurnia', has insight into everybody's problems - except her own. Still bruised by the end of a marriage she thought was her last chance to create a family, Celia…
I was drawn to writing family drama because complex family dynamics are endlessly fascinating to me. I’m an adopted person whose parents went on to divorce and remarry. I have two teenagers of my own and I’ve found that there are a multitude of choices we have to make as parents, and sometimes dilemmas don’t have a clear answer. If we get it wrong, the effects on the people we love can be devastating. Love within families can be tricky. The gap between what we want and what we need can be vast. There’s so much to explore in family dramas!
Secrets and lies always keep me turning the pages and this book has those in spades.
I love that Fisher writes about the kind of women we all know. Her characters are truly relatable and the dilemma of whether Maggie should expose her husband’s lies or protect the people she loves is an agonising one.
There’s so much humour in Fisher’s writing. I love a book that brings out laughter and tears.
In this heart-wrenching, emotionally gripping USA Today bestseller, a woman with a seemingly perfect life finds a mysterious letter that reveals dark secrets from the past that threaten to destroy her family.
Lara's life looks perfect on the surface -- gorgeous doting husband, Massimo; sweet little son, Sandro; and the perfect home. But Lara knows something about Massimo. Something she can't tell anyone else, or everything he has worked so hard for will be destroyed: his job, their reputation, their son. This secret is keeping Lara a prisoner in her marriage.
Maggie is married to Massimo's brother, Nico, and lives…
I am the author of a number of psychological thrillers including The Perfect Family and The Wrong Twin. I like this genre because it really makes your blood pump. For the most part, these are ordinary people who get caught in extraordinary situations so it’s easy to relate. Once you start reading a really good thriller you can’t stop, it’s like riding a roller coaster. It feels exhilarating but it’s totally safe. And the really good ones get you thinking. What would I do in that situation? How would I react?
Adele Parks was already accomplished at writing entertaining women’s lit well before she turned to psychological thrillers so the style is engaging and accessible. It feels like you’re reading the confessions of an old friend. This book has a great plot too, it has more twists than you can shake a stick at. I consider myself good at figuring out what’s coming, but not with this one. The pace is fast, the storytelling keeps you hooked, and you won’t see the bends in the road until it’s too late.
After years together, the arrival of longed-for daughter Millie sealed everything in place. They’re a happy little family of three.
So what if Simon drinks a bit too much sometimes—Daisy’s used to it. She knows he’s just letting off steam. Until one night at a party things spiral horribly out of control. And their happy little family of three will never be the same again.
In Lies, Lies, Lies, #1 Sunday Times bestselling author Adele Parks explores the darkest corners of a relationship in free fall in a mesmerizing tale of marriage…
