I don’t know what it is, but I love reading about complicated families—all the more so if there’s a disputed inheritance thrown into the mix of all of the already-established drama. There’s something so intimate about being allowed a look inside someone else’s family, and for many there is no relationship more fraught or stressful than those of close relations.
What follows is an eclectic list of books that cross genres from contemporary fiction to YA fantasy all focused around families who can’t quite seem to get along.
This article has been pre-scheduled as I am currently on maternity leave.
The Homemade God by Rachel Joyce
The book that kicked off my obsession in 2025 with books about families that just can’t get along, The Homemade God is about three adult siblings confronted with the news that their pop artist father is planning to remarry after many years of being a widower. The woman he’s marrying? Much younger than him. This sends the three very different siblings into their own unique tailspins which are only worsened by the subsequent news of their father’s death at his Italian villa. The three descend on the villa, concerned about their inheritance and securing their father’s much-spoken of final painting that no one has actually seen before his new wife can. What ensues is messy, frustrating, and compelling to read.
Pineapple Street by Jenny Jackson
Did I dislike pretty much everyone in this book by the time I finished it? Yes. Did I still find the story of two generations of a Brooklyn family and their spouses utterly compelling reading? Also yes. Both things can be true at the same time, especially when this sharp contemporary novel has one of the most satisfying endings I’ve read in a long time.
Such a Bad Influence by Olivia Meunter
If you’ve ever felt uncomfortable about child or teen influencers, this is the book for you. A perfectly set up thriller—a journalist’s famous influencer sister goes missing after a cut-off live stream, prompting her to confront her difficult relationship with her mother as she searches for her sister—this book explores the very complicated relationship between mothers and daughters as well as between sisters. In addition to normal prose, Olivia Muenter uses other media like Reddit threads to build out the often toxic and sometimes frightening world of online commentary around influencers. The narrative pulls you along for a couple of twists including one that my friend and I spent quite some time messaging about.
If you enjoy Olivia’s book, I highly recommend giving her podcast with co-host and fellow author Becca Freeman, Bad on Paper, a listen.
The Notorious Virtues by Alwyn Hamilton
The book that got me reading the occasional fantasy novel in 2025, The Notorious Virtues is just a blast. Set in a 1920s-esque German fairytale-like world, Nora is the daughter of the heiress to the most powerful family in the land, making her the next in line to the family fortune and power that comes with it. But when her mother is killed, the title of heiress is up for grabs and can only be decided by a series of trials designed to identify who is the most virtuous of the eligible family members. Things only become more complicated when a mysterious, illegitimate cousin shows up just before the trials are set to start. If you are looking for something a little different, I highly recommend this one. Again, it’s a blast.
These Summer Storms by Sarah MacLean
More inheritance in jeopardy books for you, These Summer Storms is the story of Alice, the estranged daughter of a tech billionaire who is called home to an isolated island in Naraganset Bay. There she finds herself surrounded by her three siblings and her mother as they learn that in order to earn their inheritances they must all complete a series of odious-to-them tasks that their father laid out as a series of final tests. Alice’s only responsibility? Stay on the island with her family for an entire week. The forced proximity soon causes tempers to rise and cracks to show. For fans of Sarah MacLean’s historical romances, don’t worry. There is a forearm-bearing hero named Jack with a protective streak for Alice to reluctantly fall in love with.
The Cazelet Chronicles by Elizabeth Jane Howard
I’m not going to apologize for recommending a five-book series that stretches years because The Cazelet Chronicles is just that good. Starting with The Light Years, these novels focus on three generations of an upper middle class family who make a pilgrimage every summer to the family estate in Sussex. The books unfold with incredible detail about some of the most mundane but fascinating parts of the family’s life, and over the course of the five novels you’ll be rewarded as marriages thrive and fail, children grow up, and generations pass. I read all five books the summer I moved to London, and I am due a reread with the beautiful boxed set that The Gentleman got me when we were first dating. Just wonderful.
The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford
The first in a series of novels that are full of very thinly veiled references to the author’s own family, the famous Mitfords,1 this book is funny and acerbic in equal measure. Told from the perspective of Fanny, cousin to the wild and eccentric Radletts, the book is chock full of eccentric characters and love affairs. It would be a pleasure to read it and its companion Love in a Cold Climate for the first time again.
Leave a comment below sharing your own recommendations for books featuring complicated families!
I recommend The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family by Mary S. Lovell for a stranger than fiction biography of the family.
The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate are among my recurrent reading favorites. Thank you for reminding me of The Cazalet Chronicles - I enjoyed reading them some years back. Now I will again. I prefer 20th Century novels written in their own time period, or by someone who closely remembers that period - a window into the mores of the time, so different from a contemporary take on the past. Your novels are delightful, by the way!
Oh, Pineapple Street. My book club just read it and will discuss it at our next meeting. I definitely have complicated feelings about it, but I have also spent a lot of time thinking about it, so good for the author. I'm looking forward to reading her new book when I reach the top of the library hold list.