90 books like The Family You Make

Kevin Kwan takes a well-educated, confident Chinese-American woman and shows us how different her partner’s culture in Singapore is when she goes home with him and his family doesn’t accept her. I love how she doesn’t give up without a fight. I also enjoyed the side story about Aster and her husband. Nick and Aster were two of my favorite characters because of the humbleness they exude.

Beyond the characters, the clothing, the homes, the cars, the parties—it all blew my mind. I felt like I was Rachel, and all of it was happening to me. As soon as I finished the first book, I devoured the other two in the series. Kevin Kwan gives details that easily pull his readers into the story, causing them to wonder what crazy thing will happen next.

Although I primarily read contemporary romance, I love historical stories. Mary Balogh is one of the queens of the genre. For anyone who has fallen into the Bridgerton Netflix mania, Mary’s writing evokes the feeling of that time period: so many rules for the nobility and so many people who dare not fall in love or risk a lifetime of pain.

In this book, the couple is certainly not a suitable match. Even in their friendship, there is risk. I loved the way the stakes built up, and I also enjoyed the slow unraveling of a childhood secret that was destined to destroy any chance of happiness for the two main characters.

First of all—a holiday story set in New York City? Who can resist that? Like the heroine, I am one of those people who loves immersing myself in Christmas as soon as Halloween is over. That usually means reading several holiday-set novels. With this book, I found myself turning pages faster and faster, yet never wanting the book to end.

The hero worried me. He’d faced a tragedy and shut himself off from the world. Sometimes, that can be too dark for my reading pleasure. But Sarah is a masterful storyteller. Her heroine is so empathetic and caring (possibly at the risk of breaking her own heart) that the hero is ever-so-slowly coaxed back from the brink of disaster.

Even for readers not from the Christmas tradition, the unfolding story will be satisfying. 

I loved this book by Sarah Adams; it made me laugh out loud on an airplane. Cue odd looks from seatmates.

Sarah’s voice is fresh and original, so funny, yet sweet and sexy. I particularly adored her hero because he was masculine but not overly macho. He is a brother with three sisters. The family has a close, charming dynamic. The secondary characters made me hope for future books!

Being a romantic I loved Time and Again (as well as the movie) for the story’s construction. I appreciate verisimilitude in historical novels and Finney has done his homework. Having briefly visited New York City twice, I do not know it personally. 

Finney makes it breathe in 1882 with fascinating detail that never bores, and by using photographs. I thought the novel was perfect, and it stuck in my head as much for production/construction values as well as the story. When I first researched Treadwell at the Alaska Historical Library in Juneau I came across dozens of photographs, and the form for the novel coalesced in my head.

In retrospect I realize the novels I loved taught me about the architecture of story as well as entertaining me.

With the backdrop of medieval Scotland, this sweeping tale of lairds, kilts, and castles is no ordinary time-travel romance. This carefully-researched tale brings a courageous heroine and a fierce hero together to face enemies neither dreamed existed. My first in a long line of Kurland romances, this story has all the elements of how characters can evolve and love conquers all. 

My new book features a solitary time traveler in a key supporting role, so I feel well-equipped to say that Man in the Empty Suit is the pièce de resistance of absurdly trippy time travel stories.

A time traveler celebrates his birthday every year at an abandoned hotel in the year 2100 or so, with all his fellow time-traveling past and future selves in attendance – nobody else is ever invited. This year, however, he discovers the murdered corpse of next year’s instance of himself.

This makes him the lead detective in the case of his own murder, which ideally he’d like to prevent; and the only suspects are either younger versions of himself, although you’d expect him to remember committing the crime, or elder versions of himself, who somehow managed to survive the murder of their younger self – for the time being, anyway.

Twisty and mind-bendy goodness.

I loved this book for its innovative approach to time travel. It’s not concerned with altering history but about time travel on a granular level. Alice travels back to her 16th birthday, which her 40-year-old self knows was a pivotal night. 

In the present day, Alice has remained friends with her high school best friend, Sam. I suspect many authors would have had them lose touch as adults and I loved that the novel is not predictably about Alice revisiting their high school friendship.

I also appreciated how Alice is entranced, at first, by the freedom of being a teenager again, but she’s soon caught up in the same struggles. Sam is her through-line, her confidant, helping her decide what in her life should change and what should not.

This book is in a similar vein as Oona finds herself time jumping within her own life, suddenly living it out of sequence as she jumps to a different period in time with each birthday, forcing her to look within and realize what is important and worth holding on to and worth fighting for. I am a sucker for books where characters get the opportunity to experience alternate versions of their personal realities, and I could not put this one down. I’m all about my characters understanding that the choices they make create their ultimate realities. The ultimate messages about the importance of love and family and the choices we make really resonated with me.

Although this book is only 16 pages long, it tells a story that could easily have been a novel, which is that she is capable of condensing something so dense down to so few words without making it feel like anything was left out. Here we see a rather fantastical time travel tale, but one that, although at first seems quite light-hearted, ends up being one of the darkest of such tales I've ever read...and the most thought-inducing.

I loved this book and have a very difficult time reviewing it without giving too much away, but if you've got a spare thirty minutes (you know, for you slow readers), I'd highly suggest you pick this one up immediately.