Category: Family Drama

book-review, books, Family Drama, reading, Women's literature

The Wedding People by Alison Espach

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When you read the book’s description, you expect a fun romantic comedy. Phoebe Stone is the only hotel guest who isn’t part of a big wedding in Newport, Rhode Island. It sounds like a light story. But that first impression is wrong.

Phoebe arrives in Newport with only a green dress and a plan to end her life. She even blurts out her plan to the bride, Lila, in the elevator. Lila becomes angry because a death at the hotel would ruin her perfect wedding week.

Phoebe, who has spent years hiding her pain, suddenly starts telling the truth to everyone around her. This honesty opens her up to new possibilities in her personal and work life.

Lila also begins to trust Phoebe. She feels Phoebe is the only person who will be honest with her, even about small things—like food stuck in her teeth. Lila admits she has been living the way she thinks others expect her to, not the way she truly wants.

As Phoebe and Lila push each other to face the truth, both women confront their own grief, fears, and hopes. Whether dealing with failed IVF, divorce, or loss, they are each trying to build a future where they don’t feel alone. These deeper conversations make the book much more emotional and thoughtful than a typical rom‑com.

books, Family Drama, literature, reading

Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout

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Elizabeth Strout brings many of her familiar characters back together in Crosby, Maine. By pulling in people and histories from her earlier books, she continues the character‑driven storytelling she’s known for.

This time, Lucy Barton and her ex‑husband William, Bob Burgess and his wife Margaret, and Olive Kitteridge and her friend Isabelle Goodrow all end up in the same orbit. It’s an unusual mix, and even when I tried to map out how everyone was connected, it still felt tangled. What holds the book together is the way these characters pair off and share stories about other people. There is a lot of this. Bob hears about his sister‑in‑law’s declining health from his sister instead of his brother. Olive learns about Isabelle’s future living situation from the retirement‑home staff. Bob hears about Lucy’s plans from William. Almost everything comes secondhand, like gossip passed along before reaching the source. It made me want to know the full truth behind each story.

Each character is trying to understand not only their own place in the world but also what life means more broadly. Lucy and Olive meet to talk about “unrecorded lives,” hoping to shine light on people who might otherwise be forgotten. The fear of not being remembered—or not mattering—runs through many of Strout’s stories about these women, and it feels like the force behind their need to tell and retell these moments.

Bob’s murder case also ties into this theme of being seen. The young man accused of killing his mother has lived a life mostly unnoticed while caring for her. Bob helps bring him into a world he has been shut out of. This storyline requires action based on what Bob observes in the present, while many of the other stories rely on looking back at things that have already happened.

I enjoyed reading about these people, but this is a very contemplative book.

book-review, books, Family Drama, literature, reading, romance

Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reed

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This story explores the expectations society places on women and the personal cost of trying to meet them. It takes place in the male‑dominated world of 1980s space exploration, where women are only beginning to break through. Reading it reminds us how much has changed in the last 40 years.

The book uses two timelines that eventually come together. This structure shows how each choice Joan Goodwin makes leads her to the moment she is living now. The back‑and‑forth kept me engaged, trying to connect her past to her present and guess what would happen next.

Joan tells her own story. As a child, she loved the stars and pushed through tough science classes to become an astronomer. She earned her doctorate and became a professor at Rice University. She was proud of what she had achieved and didn’t expect to go any further. Is it a mirror opposite of her sister, Barbara, who challenged rules in her own way but still felt trapped by society’s expectations. Barbara’s daughter, Franny, is raised by both her mother and Joan.

Everything changes when Barbara finds an ad calling for women to apply to NASA and shares it with Joan. Joan applies on a whim, never thinking she’ll be chosen. But she is—and suddenly she must put her own goals first. As she steps into this new world, her relationships shift, especially with her sister. Joan begins to see how often she lets others define her place in their lives.

During astronaut training, Joan forms a new circle of friends—Hank Redmond, John Griffin, Lydia Danes, Donna Fitzgerald, and Vanessa Ford. They help her see new possibilities for her life. As her love for space grows, so does her sense of self. When she falls in love for the first time, she again faces pressure to hide who she is and fit into a role others expect.

When the two timelines finally meet, Joan understands what she wants, who she is, and what she stands for. She stays true to herself and supports the people she loves as they try to do the same.

book-review, books, Family Drama, literature, reading

Peace Like a River by Leif Enger

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This novel is a tribute to family, faith, and love. Told through the voice of 11‑year‑old Reuben Land, the story begins with the miracle of his birth. His father, Jeremiah, arrived late to the delivery room. After 12 minutes without breathing, the doctor told Reuben’s mother there was nothing more to be done. But Jeremiah picked up his son and commanded him to breathe in the name of the living God—and Reuben did. From then on, however, Reuben lived with severe asthma.

Jeremiah had once studied medicine but gave it up to follow the path of God. He worked humbly as a janitor at the town school. A man of deep faith and honor, he saved his son’s teenage girlfriend from being attacked in the boys’ locker room during a football game. The boys involved were known troublemakers who had terrorized the town, and they soon turned their anger on the Land family. They harassed them repeatedly, even kidnapping the youngest daughter, Swede, and hurting her before returning her home. At that point, Reuben’s older brother Davy realized the danger would never end. Armed with a shotgun, he waited in his room. When the two boys broke into the house, Davy shot them dead.

Although Davy believed he was protecting his family, he knew he had taken human lives. He was arrested but later escaped from jail and disappeared. Jeremiah, desperate to find his son, gathered the family into an Airstream trailer and set out toward the Badlands.

Both Davy and Reuben were the focus of their father’s prayers, but those prayers came with a cost. Reuben had been given life, yet his breathing remained weak and difficult. Davy knew his father prayed for God’s help against the family’s tormentors, but the price was heavy—Davy’s own act of violence. The novel suggests that faith can bring solutions, but those solutions are not always the same as justice.

The writing is strong, though at times the events feel a little unbelievable. Still, the family’s love and faith in one another never waver, making this a powerful story about resilience and devotion.

book-review, books, Family Drama, reading

The Swimmers by Julie Otsuka

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We start by meeting a group of people dedicated to swimming in a community pool. The habits of these people, told with no emotion, are detailed. The pool rules are detailed and lived by. The people, from all walks of life, have different reasons for being there. All are detailed for us.

A crack is found in the pool, and the reactions of the pool staff, specialists, and swimmers are all detailed. There are things that can be done, they don’t know what the source is, the cracks disappear for a few days, but then they are back. The unknown is making people uneasy, the swimmers start to find other places to go, only a few remain to the very end.  

Throughout, there is Alice – swimming and unperturbed by what is going on. 

The second half of the book focuses on Alice. She is being placed in a memory care ward by her family. The slow decline of Alice – from waiting by the door for her husband to pick her up to not knowing who is visiting is heartbreaking. At home her husband refuses to change the sheets or wash her nightgown, as he misses her.

The story – starting with the swimming pool – is about the decent into dementia. The impact a fissure in the brain, the specialists trying to help, the inexplainable coming and going of symptoms, and the inevitability of the disease. This unique way of bringing the story alive made it all the more moving by needing to make the connections in your own head shows the complexity of the disease.

Well written and thought provoking, I look forward to more from this author.

book-review, books, Family Drama, reading

The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters

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A migrant family from Nova Scotia picks berries in Maine each summer. These regular workers come and set up house, welcoming the same migrant families to the farm with them to share the labor. The families are full of love and joy as they gather each year together. One summer, however, things take a bad turn. The two youngest – Joe and Ruthie, 8 and 4 respectively – are out one afternoon. Joe leaves Ruthie sitting on a rock in the sunshine not far from the house, and she disappears. The family is distraught, and spends days, and then years searching for her. They only stop returning each summer after Charlie is killed. While neither of these tragedies is their fault, they are blamed because they are Indian.

Norma grows up in a home stifled by an overprotective mother. Norma was the miracle child after many miscarriages. She spent her life under constant watch of her mother, never allowed to be out of her sight. Photos of her before the age of 5 don’t exist, and Norma was told they were lost in a fire. Her Aunt June provides a respite from this stifling love. Norma was plagued by nightmares as a child – the smell of open fires and potatoes, a mother that is not her mother, and more. She is told they are her imagination. She even names her doll Ruthie and has an imaginary friend named Joe.

Told in alternating voices of these two people as they reflect on what had been real, what had been hidden in plain sight, and the agony of not putting things together are heard from both. The regrets of things not understood, things being ignored, or things being kept from them, shaped their lives.

Anger and sadness – two sides of a single coin. Anger consumes Joe, the last person to see Ruthie before she disappeared, as he runs from his family, himself, and his sadness for decades. Sadness consumes Norma, the person that chooses to be by herself because she can’t accept joy of building a family when she feels there is something missing, and the anger at being lied to by all she thought she loved. By facing themselves, forgiving others, and allowing others to help, both are given the gift they were both looking for – love.

book-review, books, Family Drama, literature, reading

The redhead by the side of the road by Anne Tyler

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This is the story of Micah, a fortyish year-old man that lives in a basement apartment where he is the super, runs a free-lance computer tech business, and lives a regimented and predictable life. We see how Micah is in need of this structure, but yet his dreams and his visualizations tell you otherwise. When he is running each morning without his glasses, he believes that the fire-hydrant is a redhead child and that there are other objects that resemble people also. Then there is the dream of a baby being left at a store in an actual dream.

When a teenage boy shows up on his doorstep asking if Micah is his father, however, what Micah thinks is normal is turned on its head. He begins to examine his life, and his choices, that have left him alone (his girlfriend Cass of three years had just left him) and unhappy. This awakening, something that Anne Tyler writes about in such beautiful language, is how the book ends.

Similar themes as in most of Tylers books, this is yet another example of how living a small life comes at a cost. 

book-review, books, Family Drama, reading

Herring Cove Road Trilogy by Michael Kroft

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On Herring Cove Road: Mr Rosen and the 43lb anxiety

Still on Herring Cove Road: Hickory, Dickory Death

Off Herring Cove Road: The trouble with being Blue

This is a series that is heartwarming and heartbreaking at the same time. In the first book you meet Ruth and Avriel Rosen. An older couple that has retired and recently moved to a new home on Herring Cove Road. In the first book you first meet Dewey Dixon, a ten year old boy that lives next door to the Rosen’s. Being unwelcome as Jews by the father, Mr. Rosen is a bit offended when addressed as Mr. Jew by the young child. Ruth, however, befriends Dewey’s mother Lisa, who is horrified to hear her son call them this, as she didn’t know her bigoted husband had impacted her son this way. Dewey, however, just thought it was their last name. 

As the friendship between the two families grow, Lisa and Dewey come to rely on the Rosen’s. Through death, poverty, drugs, and kidnapping, a family of choice emerges. They take care of each other, and put all on the line to ensure the safety, physical and mental, are taken care of for all. 

Over three books you see the back stories of these people, how they became who they are, and how they learn to rely upon each other. With the first book being my favorite, the other books give a satisfying if not joyful conclusion to the story. There is also a prequel in the series but I did not read that.

A fun and gentle story of how we all rely on each other; how we just need to be open to allowing others to help.

book-review, books, Family Drama, reading

Dinner at the Lakeside Supper Club by J Ryan Stradal

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This novel follows generations of women – matriarch Betty, her daughter Florence, granddaughter Mariel and great granddaughter Julia – as they live their lives in the north woods of Minnesota. This is a story of generational expectations, familial obligations, and family conflict. This story shows that those that know you best are the ones that hurt you the most.

The story flips back and forth between times and people, which at times can be confusing and difficult to keep track, especially if you are listening to this. The technique, however, is effective in revealing the story – as you are never really sure of the full history of life in a linear way as you hear the history and revisit it with different eyes of experience and maturity.

In linear fashion: Betty arrives with Florence in tow and finds a job, purpose and a future at the Lakeside Supper Club in Bear Jaw MN. Florence, in desperate need for love and acceptance creates that security for her mother with Floyd, while destroying it for him and his male partner. She is not formally banished from the place, but knows she is not welcome because of the price Floyd paid for her selfishness. Florence becomes a mother herself, and becomes preoccupied with keeping her daughter Mariel safe and close. When Mariel meets Ned, the heir to a family chain of restaurants, they fall in love and marry. After tragedy again strikes near Florence, impacting others deeply again, there is a distance between Mariel and Florence that keeps her from Bear Jaw again. Through a series of events when Florence waits to be picked up by Mariel at the church – for two months – Florence reveals that she was simply waiting for when Mariel was ready to let her in.

The complex relationships between these women also hides difficult realities. Betty is searching for security after she runs away with Florence from the Yellow House. The implication is that they fled abuse happening there, and Betty would do anything to make sure she didn’t face that again, including making Floyd give up on his secret love. Florence married and gave birth to Mariel, but couldn’t bear to let her out of her sight. She was doing the same thing that Betty did – trying to make sure she was secure, even at the cost of her daughter’s dreams of moving away. Mariel, having given up on her hopes, finds new ones with Ned, but again her mother’s focus on the wrong thing ruins everything for everyone else. After forgiveness has been found, and Mariel gives birth to Julia, there is little time for these two to get to know each other, for Mariel dies of lung cancer when Julia is four. Her father takes over the Lakeside Supper Club, but Julia knows that this has been saved for her future, as she will inherit it. She hates working there, loving nature instead. Ned allows her to strike out on her own at college in Ohio, and comes back to sell the Supper Club when she is 21. Julia had kept waiting for her mother to come to her to show her the way, but she never appeared. After she sells the place to someone local that will love it as her family did, her father then lets her in on the fact that her mother would be proud Julia was able to make her own destiny.

book-review, books, Family Drama, reading

The Real Mrs Tobias by Sally Koslow

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This is the story of three generations of wives that have married into the Tobias family. Veronika, a survivor of WW2, married David; Melanie (Mel) married their son Jake; and Birdie married the grandson Micah. Veronika is a psychiatrist, Melanie is a social worker and Birdie is an aspiring author. Birdie and Michah have been having challenges in their marriage, which comes to a head when a drunk Michah hits a woman with his food truck and runs from the scene. The meddling and self serving interference of both mother Mel is annoying. If we are to have any compassion for her it is very hard. All revolves around what she wants – to have her granddaughter with her always, regardless of what is best for the child or her parents. She is also unethical by keeping a patient she has a conflict of interest with (it was her nanny that Micah hit) and her counsel to her patients was about how it made her feel for her own choices. Veronika, also a meddler, is not easy to care about either. Condescending and self-righteous, she too meddles to her family’s life. In the end, however, all seems clear that the meddling can do some good, even if it is misguided. While I never liked most of the characters, I did want to learn how it was all going to wrap up.