Chosen Family by Madeleine Gray (W&N £20, 368pp)
I loved the Australian author’s hilarious 2024 debut, Green Dot, about a dissatisfied twentysomething having an affair with an older colleague.
This book stars best friends, co-parents and occasional lovers Eve and Nell, and is especially astute about long-term friends who morph into family.
Soulmates since attending an all-girls school where neither fitted in, Eve and Nell end up having a baby together after a period apart.
They’re supposed to be co-parenting as friends but there are strong feelings between them, and the unspoken tension ratchets up. The narrative moves between their time at school, the early days of university, the process of having the baby and the period after Nell has left.
Gradually the past catches up to the present and we find out exactly what happened between these women. Funny, wise and moving.
You & Me and You & Me and You & Me by Josie Lloyd & Emlyn Rees (Harvill £16.99, 288pp)
You & Me and You & Me and You & Me is available now from the Mail Bookshop
Adam and Jules have been married for nearly 25 years but have lost their spark, spending most evenings vegetating on separate sofas and barely having sex.
When an old friend invites them to his lavish new house, Jules can’t help but compare their own, more frugal existence.
A fight ensues and Adam heads to the shed to drink whisky and listen to old mix tapes. He inserts one from 1989, the year he and Jules met, presses play and finds himself transported back to his teenage self – realising he has somehow activated a time machine. When Jules tries it, she also travels back in time. The couple take turns to revisit their history and set rules about not interfering in the course of events. But they soon break those. Compelling.
Like Family by Erin White (Serpent’s Tail £14.99, 320pp)
Set in Radclyffe, a small town surrounded by the idyllic countryside of the Hudson Valley in upstate New York, this sweeping saga about parenthood, partnership and secrets follows three couples.
Caroline and Mike, Ruth and Wyn and Evie and Tobi are neighbours and friends and spend a lot of time together with their various young children.
All are in long marriages, and almost all are hiding something significant from either their partner or the others. Then a death in their rural community forces long-buried resentments and tension to the surface.
It’s brilliant on family dynamics and the characters feel pleasingly real. An enjoyable exploration of modern family life.
