Here are 100 books that Here We Are fans have personally recommended if you like
Here We Are.
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I came to the U.S. in my early twenties to pursue a PhD, trading the familiar for the unknown. I am a scientist, an immigrant, and a daughter whose life was irrevocably fractured when my mother passed away in India while I was navigating the demands of graduate school. Grappling with grief, identity, and belonging in a foreign land shaped me to my core. The books on this list, centered on themes of family, loss, and the search for home, resonated with my experiences in profound ways. They offered me hope and a vital sense of connection, and I hope they speak to you just as powerfully.
I loved What We Carry for the intricate, nuanced relationship between Maya and her mother.
The woman she thought she knew gradually revealed herself in unexpected ways, leaving Maya—and me—grappling with confusion, longing, and a sense of loss. Witnessing Maya come to terms with her mother’s complexities and her own understanding of what it means to be a mother was both heartbreaking and uplifting.
The book pulled me with its honesty and vulnerability and stayed with me long after the last page. I have re-read this book a couple of times.
“A gorgeous memoir about mothers, daughters, and the tenacity of the love that grows between what is said and what is left unspoken.”—Mira Jacob, author of Good Talk
If our family stories shape us, what happens when we learn those stories were never true? Who do we become when we shed our illusions about the past?
Maya Shanbhag Lang grew up idolizing her brilliant mother, an accomplished physician who immigrated to the United States from India and completed her residency all while raising her children and keeping a traditional Indian home. Maya’s mother had always been a source of support—until…
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
I write, coach, and lead at the intersection of identity, healing, and leadership, especially for women navigating cultural complexity. As a South Asian woman raised in the U.S., I spent years unpacking inherited narratives about devotion, obedience, and silence. This list reflects books that helped me reclaim power, soften shame, and lead from a place of alignment rather than survival. Each title here offered me tools, language, or perspective that shaped not just how I show up in the world, but how I guide others to do the same.
I saw myself in this book in ways I didn’t expect.
Stephanie Foo’s story of complex trauma, the gaslighting she endured, and her drive to overachieve just to feel worthy hit close to home. Like her, I turned to spiritual practices seeking peace, and like her, I often felt alone in that process.
This book reminded me that my thoughts and feelings are not only valid, but worthy of compassion. The therapy sessions toward the end were especially powerful. I felt like her therapist was speaking directly to me, and something in me softened.
If you're breaking intergenerational patterns, this book offers deep healing, insight, and a sense of being profoundly understood.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A searing memoir of reckoning and healing by acclaimed journalist Stephanie Foo, investigating the little-understood science behind complex PTSD and how it has shaped her life
“Achingly exquisite . . . providing real hope for those who long to heal.”—Lori Gottlieb, New York Times bestselling author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, Cosmopolitan, NPR, Mashable, She Reads, Publishers Weekly
By age thirty, Stephanie Foo was successful on paper: She had her dream job as an award-winning radio producer at This American Life and…
I write, coach, and lead at the intersection of identity, healing, and leadership, especially for women navigating cultural complexity. As a South Asian woman raised in the U.S., I spent years unpacking inherited narratives about devotion, obedience, and silence. This list reflects books that helped me reclaim power, soften shame, and lead from a place of alignment rather than survival. Each title here offered me tools, language, or perspective that shaped not just how I show up in the world, but how I guide others to do the same.
I was stunned by the similarities between the men in Gupta’s life and my own. This book laid bare the violence of the model minority myth and how it erases pain, demands silence, and turns belonging into a performance.
I saw so much of myself in her unraveling of that narrative. They Called Us Exceptional reminded me that telling the truth about our families isn't betrayal, it’s a form of generational care. Prachi writes with a kind of fierce compassion that made me feel seen, especially in the messiness.
If you've ever felt the pressure to be exceptional at the expense of being whole, this book is a balm, a reckoning, and a quiet act of rebellion.
“In this vulnerable and courageous memoir, Prachi Gupta takes the myth of the exceptional Indian American family to task. . . . [Her] resilience and her hope to be fully seen are an inspiration in both personal and political terms.”—The Washington Post
“I read it in one sitting. Wow. It aims right at the tender spot where racism, sexism, and family dynamics collide, and somehow manages to be both searingly honest and deeply compassionate.”—Celeste Ng, New York Times bestselling author of Little Fires Everywhere
A SHE READS BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE…
In the small town of Grady, Montana, twenty-four-year-old Tad Bungley has a reputation for trouble. When he lands a job at Come Around Ranch, however, his life seems to take a positive turn. As he develops a soft spot for Sam, the ranch owner's disabled son, and a special bond…
I write, coach, and lead at the intersection of identity, healing, and leadership, especially for women navigating cultural complexity. As a South Asian woman raised in the U.S., I spent years unpacking inherited narratives about devotion, obedience, and silence. This list reflects books that helped me reclaim power, soften shame, and lead from a place of alignment rather than survival. Each title here offered me tools, language, or perspective that shaped not just how I show up in the world, but how I guide others to do the same.
Growing up, I absorbed mythology that glorified sacrifice and obedience in women. They were stories that shaped how I understood devotion, duty, and my own worth. This retelling gave Sita a voice that was both fierce and tender, and it helped me see that I can reimagine the stories I was raised on in a way that affirms my truth.
This book softened the part of me that had grown resistant to my culture after feeling betrayed by it. It reminded me that agency and reverence can coexist, and that rewriting inherited stories is a sacred act.
'One of the most strikingly lyrical voices writing about the lives of Indian women' -- Amitav Ghosh
'Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni turns the Ramayana around by telling it in the voice of Sita ... this inversion is a gift - it presents us a with a way to know an already well-known story better and to love an already beloved story more'
-- Arshia Sattar
'This inspired evocation of the goddess Sita is an epic song of strength and solidarity told with joy and intensity. It brings to life the personalities and predicaments of the Ramayana' -- Namita Gokhale
COVID killed my father early on during the pandemic. Every day, I blogged about him. First, when he was in the ICU and I was begging the universe to save him. Then, after he died, as I grieved in a world that seemed cold and lonely. I wrote about Dad, telling stories of happier times, to keep him alive through my memories and to share his life with others. Soon, friends started recommending books about grief. In reading, feeling, and absorbing the pain of others, I somehow felt less alone.
I loved this book because it was another daughter reminiscing about her relationship with her father following his death.
I could empathize with the emptiness Schultz felt in the midst of her father’s absence, but also feel the joy she experienced when remembering him. Also, I like reading books written by other lesbians, especially books about family.
In hard times, we rely on family to support us emotionally, and Schulz, through her relationship with her partner, demonstrated that beautifully.
'Extraordinary . . . a profound and beautiful book . . . a moving meditation on grief and loss, but also a sparky celebration of joy, wonder and the miracle of love . . . Witty, wise, beautifully structured and written in clear, singing prose' - Sunday Times
Longlisted for the 2022 National Book Award for Nonfiction
Eighteen months before Kathryn Schulz's beloved father died, she met the woman she would marry. In Lost & Found, she weaves the stories of those relationships into a brilliant exploration of how all our lives are shaped by loss and discovery - from…
COVID killed my father early on during the pandemic. Every day, I blogged about him. First, when he was in the ICU and I was begging the universe to save him. Then, after he died, as I grieved in a world that seemed cold and lonely. I wrote about Dad, telling stories of happier times, to keep him alive through my memories and to share his life with others. Soon, friends started recommending books about grief. In reading, feeling, and absorbing the pain of others, I somehow felt less alone.
Even though Adichie’s father did not die from COVID, it happened during the pandemic when the world shut down. To this, I could relate all too well.
I spent the pandemic, and months afterward, grieving my father’s death, and I found comfort reading the stories of other daughters whose dads have died.
A personal and powerful essay on loss from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the bestselling author of Americanah and Half of a Yellow Sun.
'Grief is a cruel kind of education. You learn how ungentle mourning can be, how full of anger. You learn how glib condolences can feel. You learn how much grief is about language, the failure of language and the grasping for language'
On 10 June 2020, the scholar James Nwoye Adichie died suddenly in Nigeria.
In this tender and powerful essay, expanded from the original New Yorker text, his daughter, a self-confessed daddy's girl, remembers her beloved father.…
When a high security prison fails, a down-on-his luck cop and the governor’s daughter must team up if they’re going to escape in this "jaw-dropping, authentic, and absolutely gripping" (Harlan Coben, #1 New York Times bestselling author) USA Today bestselling thriller from Adam Plantinga.
“Where do you get your story ideas?” I’m often asked. The answer is, “I’m cursed.” As in the Chinese curse: May you live in interesting times. I was a serial wife and a single mom. I’ve been both poor and rich. I’ve travelled to far-flung places around the world. I’ve done extraordinary things, like the time I rode with the New York City Mounted Police in researching my novel, Trail of Secrets. I write what I know, about life with all its ups and downs, beauty and ugliness, magic and mystery.
I come from a dysfunctional family. Perhaps that’s why I’m drawn, like a rubbernecker to the scene of an accident, to novels about dysfunctional families.
To quote Tolstoy: “Happy families are all alike. Unhappy families are different, each in their own way.” To call the family that inhabits the house in We All Live Here unhappy is putting it mildly. They’re more like survivors of a shipwreck adrift at sea in a lifeboat, hoping to be rescued before they die or kill each other.
This novel is funny, wickedly so at times, with a lot of heart. And like the patriarch of its fictional family, a failed actor with substance abuse issues and a habit of stretching the truth when it suits him, never dull.
The #1 New York Times bestselling author, whose books so many love, brings us a fresh, contemporary story of a woman and her unruly blended family
“Nobody writes women the way Jojo Moyes does.” —Jodi Picoult
Lila Kennedy has a lot on her plate. A broken marriage, two wayward daughters, a house that is falling apart, and an elderly stepfather who seems to have quietly moved in. Her career is in freefall and her love life is . . . complicated. So when her real dad—a man she has barely seen since he ran off to Hollywood thirty-five years ago—suddenly…
Researching my novel Set in Stone, I did some hands-on carving in Jurassic limestone—I loved the fact that the materials and techniques are fundamentally unchanged over hundreds of years. My tutor is an expert in letter-cutting, and soon I wanted to try that, exacting though it is. This became an ingredient of my new novel. I began to think of a female character, dedicated to her solitary craft, very independent, but becoming involved in complicated relationships nevertheless. She walked into my mind very confidently as Meg, one of my three viewpoint characters. I hope you’ll enjoy my book selection!
This book includes one of the most famous portrayals of a sculpture on stage, and is one of my favorite Shakespeare plays. One of his later works, it combines a story very like the tragedy of Othello with a second half that has an entirely different mood of youth and hope, love, and redemption.
In the play’s final scene (spoiler alert!), a party including King Leontes and his newly-found daughter, Perdita, gathers to admire the work of a celebrity sculptor, Julio Romano. The statue perfectly depicts Leontes’ wronged wife, Hermione, whom he believed dead.
In this glorious moment, Hermione comes back to him in the form of a living statue stepping down from its pedestal. There’s a delightful ballet version of the play, too.
The Winter's Tale, one of Shakespeare's very late plays, is filled with improbabilities. Before the conclusion, one character comments that what we are about to see, "Were it but told you, should be hooted at / Like an old tale."
It includes murderous passions, man-eating bears, princes and princesses in disguise, death by drowning and by grief, oracles, betrayal, and unexpected joy. Yet the play, which draws much of its power from Greek myth, is grounded in the everyday.
A "winter's tale" is one told or read on a long winter's night. Paradoxically, this winter's tale is ideally seen rather…
I am a long-time ER nurse, aid worker, and writer, and I have long been fascinated by true crime/mysteries; much of that interest honed in the ER, where I was often stumped when patient injuries or recollections of witnesses didn’t quite add up. As amateur detectives, we ER nurses often hounded detectives with our own theories, and in one especially big murder case, we had figured out exactly what had happened and who the real killer was before the detectives did. I am also a voracious reader and love a good mystery/thriller to take me away from real life, except when I am solving real life crimes on Dateline.
I love anything that Lisa Jewell writes, and this is the perfect mystery, albeit a little predictable.
A 15-year-old girl has gone missing and her family is frantic. The characters were so well drawn, I felt as though I knew them. And for me, that is often what keeps me reading.
From the New York Times bestselling author of Invisible Girl and The Truth About Melody Browne comes a “riveting” (PopSugar) and “acutely observed family drama” (People) that delves into the lingering aftermath of a young girl’s disappearance.
Ellie Mack was the perfect daughter. She was fifteen, the youngest of three. Beloved by her parents, friends, and teachers, and half of a teenaged golden couple. Ellie was days away from an idyllic post-exams summer vacation, with her whole life ahead of her.
An auctioned storage locker comes with a box of Raggedy Ann books and a dresser drawer stuffed with grisly momentos. A small college town in Georgia is now ground zero for a mind-bending cold case.
Local journalist James Murphy wishes he had never bought the storage unit which either contains…
A wise (and wily) Jedi once said that “many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view,” and I’m fascinated by storytelling that gives you more than one point of view or voice to ponder. Even as a kid, I searched for books that delved into the minds of more than one character. I’ve explored this in my own writing but also as a teacher working with undergraduate students who were finding their own voices while exploring the literary voices of others. I also love so-called genre fiction—the fantasy, sci-fi, and romance of it all—which is definitely reflected in this list, well!
I’ve seen this book described in terms of confectionery repeatedly, and sure—it’s a sweet love story. It’s also a story about grief and loss, family secrets, and deepening a connection between mother and daughter across time and place. And did I mention the sweet love story? Because I’m a sucker for a good (and believable) romance, and this is an A-plus entry in the genre.
Added bonus: it definitely made me want to travel to Italy even more than I already did.
The dying wish of 16-year-old Lina's mother was for her daughter to live in Tuscany and get to know her father, whom Lina has never met. "Howard is the best man I've ever known," her mother says, "he'll keep you safe." Why did her mother wait so long to tell her about him? Lina has a happy life in Seattle and doesn't want to leave. Shortly after she arrives at Howard's home, Lina meets Sonya, who gives Lina a diary that belonged to Lina's mother, the one she…
