Here are 88 books that The Daughter fans have personally recommended if you like
The Daughter.
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I've always believed that the bonds of friendship and sisterhood among women are essential. Growing up in challenging circumstances, my sisters and I found solace and strength in each other, offering comfort and guidance during uncertain times. They became my closest friends and have remained so throughout my life. Stories that celebrate these deep connections never fail to move me. The unwavering support of my sisters has saved me more times than I can count, and I will forever admire authors who portray unity among women. I truly hope you enjoy these beautiful novels!
This book holds a cherished place in my heart as it delves into the intricate dynamics of mother-daughter relationships and the profound journey of self-discovery. Growing up, I often felt the weight of cultural expectations, and choosing a different path inevitably strained my familial bonds.
As I read, memories of my mother and sisters flooded back, reminding me of the unique connections we share. An artfully crafted story that made me question so much about myself and the way that culture has influenced me as a person. Tan’s lyrical prose eloquently voices the experiences of so many young girls who have long been silenced, making this, without a doubt, one of my most treasured reads.
'The Joy Luck Club is an ambitious saga that's impossible to read without wanting to call your Mum' Stylist
Discover Amy Tan's moving and poignant tale of immigrant Chinese mothers and their American-born daughters.
In 1949 four Chinese women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, meet weekly to play mahjong and tell stories of what they left behind in China. United in loss and new hope for their daughters' futures, they call themselves the Joy Luck Club.
Their daughters, who have never heard these stories, think their mothers' advice is irrelevant to their modern American lives - until their own inner…
The Victorian mansion, Evenmere, is the mechanism that runs the universe.
The lamps must be lit, or the stars die. The clocks must be wound, or Time ceases. The Balance between Order and Chaos must be preserved, or Existence crumbles.
Appointed the Steward of Evenmere, Carter Anderson must learn the…
Since college, psychology has been a subject I find intriguing. I am a retired Early Childhood Educator. Having daughters has enabled me to travel the time-worn path of mother-and-daughter relationships. After much trial and error, I’ve come to the conclusion that it is a complicated dynamic given the ages and stages, distinct personalities, social and cultural differences, socio-economics as well as generational challenges. An important thing is for mothers to understand that their daughters may have similarities to them, but they are not them. As they mature, they will make their own life choices.
I can honestly say that I felt a tingle of happiness after reading this book. I’m attracted to stories with different points of view. In this case, an 8-year-old girl has become fixated on the disappearance of her 16-year-old sister, who she was very close to.
I was fascinated by this child’s maturity while surrounded by her parents, a neighbour and the police. It was apparent that the dysfunction between the mother and the teenage daughter made her leave for good. I got wrapped up in the little sister’s world of worry and responsibility while receiving little comfort from her mother.
This book was unputdownable, as they say. I had to know what would happen next.
Set in the frozen north of Canada in 1972, this is a novel of painful histories and the moments in life when we can change for the better.
Clara's rebellious older sister is missing. Grief-stricken and bewildered, she yearns to uncover the truth about what happened.
Liam, newly divorced and newly unemployed, moves into the house next door and within hours gets a visit from the police.
Elizabeth is thinking about a crime committed thirty years ago, one that had tragic consequences for two families. She desperately wants to make amends before she dies.…
Since college, psychology has been a subject I find intriguing. I am a retired Early Childhood Educator. Having daughters has enabled me to travel the time-worn path of mother-and-daughter relationships. After much trial and error, I’ve come to the conclusion that it is a complicated dynamic given the ages and stages, distinct personalities, social and cultural differences, socio-economics as well as generational challenges. An important thing is for mothers to understand that their daughters may have similarities to them, but they are not them. As they mature, they will make their own life choices.
I love coming-of-age stories in the 50s and 60s, so I was thrilled to find this one. I know from my own passage into the teen years what these two sisters were experiencing. Their mother was like many others, taking care of her home, husband, and family. Women were on the cusp of new freedoms, and she fell under the spell of a divorced artsy feminist who moved next door to them. Then the secrets started.
I recall the whispers and dropped conversations as a young teen around my mother. Often we didn’t know the adult decisions that were being made. I wanted to hate the girls’ mother, and I couldn’t wait to find out how the story would end.
Do you ever really know your mother, your daughter, the people in your family? In this rich and rewarding new novel by the beloved bestselling author of Talk Before Sleep and The Pull of the Moon, a reunion between two sisters and their mother reveals how the secrets and complexities of the past have shaped the lives of the women in a family.
Ginny Young is on a plane, en route to see her mother, whom she hasn't seen or spoken to for thirty-five years. She thinks back to the summer of 1958, when she and her sister, Sharla, were…
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…
Since college, psychology has been a subject I find intriguing. I am a retired Early Childhood Educator. Having daughters has enabled me to travel the time-worn path of mother-and-daughter relationships. After much trial and error, I’ve come to the conclusion that it is a complicated dynamic given the ages and stages, distinct personalities, social and cultural differences, socio-economics as well as generational challenges. An important thing is for mothers to understand that their daughters may have similarities to them, but they are not them. As they mature, they will make their own life choices.
I fell into a dark family dilemma from the time I opened the first page. A young, big-city career woman becomes a caregiver to her dying mother. Her father has made the decision without her consent. I found myself on an emotional roller coaster. The mother is loving and kind, which makes her daughter feel more guilt for wanting out. How could she be so selfish? Then, I put myself in her shoes at that age.
The intensity of maternal love drew me in as I came to understand the changes in both women. A very emotional read for me.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A “hypnotically interesting” (The Washington Post Book World) novel from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Miller’s Valley
“[Anna Quindlen] writes passionately . . . painstakingly uncovering all the intensity, suspicion and primitive love that bonds mothers and daughters.”—The Boston Globe
Ellen Gulden is enjoying her career as a successful magazine writer in New York City when she learns that her mother, Kate, is dying of cancer. Ellen’s father insists that she quit her job and return home to become a caregiver. A high-powered career woman, Ellen has never felt she had much in common with…
I am an author and illustrator of children's picturebooks, having completed my MA at the Cambridge School of Art. I am endlessly fascinated with the picture book as a rich medium for children to safely and slowly approach topics that might be challenging for them. Picture books can be such a versatile, interesting place for curiosity and confidence to thrive, while also creating a lovely time for closeness between parent/carer and child. As we grapple with the long-term effects of the pandemic, I feel that children will need stories more than ever, to help them make sense of their experiences.
For older readers, The Hideaway blends themes of domestic violence, difficult family life, community, environment, and care together. Besides an unbearable home life, we are shown how Billy, our main character, finds safety and space in the unlikely setting of a graveyard. His relationship with the old man he meets and the careful work they engage in, help maintain the old man's connection with the past, and Billy's connection with the present. Beautifully illustrated by Smy, and written by her also, this book celebrates the graveyard not as a spooky or scary site, but as a special place where we remember, connect with, and love those we have lost.
The wonderful long-awaited second novel from Pam Smy, celebrated author and illustrator of Thornhill.
The Hideaway tells the story of a boy, Billy McKenna, who runs away from a difficult situation at home and takes refuge in an overgrown graveyard. While hiding there he meets an elderly man who is tending the graves in preparation for a day in November when something magical is set to happen.
The book is written in two alternating narratives, both different aspects of the same story. One thread tells of Billy's experience of hiding away in the graveyard, his mixed-up feelings and emotions, and…
I’ve always lived in a small city in Northern Ontario (Canada) that is surrounded by smaller towns and even smaller villages. I’m a first-generation Canadian who grew up without extended family any closer than Scotland. I’ve learned first-hand how wonderful found families can be. Once I started writing, I was drawn to happy endings and small-town settings where everyone knows your business but has your back too. I hope you enjoy these small-town recommendations as much as I do. Here’s to small towns, found families, and happy endings!
I love the strong found-family vibe in this one (like many of the books Jill Shalvis writes).
Harper arrives in the small town where she last felt happy. She has no idea what’s in store for her. She’s strong, independent, and most definitely not looking for a relationship. Oops.
Shalvis combines humor, love, found family, and a roller coaster of emotions in this wonderful found-family romance. A fabulous read!
New York Times bestselling author Jill Shalvis returns to Sunrise Cove with a beguiling, lighthearted story about fresh starts, second chances and true love.
When Harper Shaw's life falls apart, she knows it's time for a change. She removes everything that doesn't spark joy-from her soul-sucking job to eating kale to making lists-and sets off for the last place she was happy, Lake Tahoe (who wouldn't feel good there, right?) to fulfill her dream of opening her own bakery.
With her Sugar Pine Bakery in between a tavern, owned by sexy, grumpy Bodie Campbell, and a bookstore, run by her…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
I’m a Canadian kids’ author, and I’ve written a few books about kids longing for absent parents. There’s nothing more compelling and powerful for me than a book about a young person searching for a significant adult. It wasn’t part of my growing-up experience, but I know it is the truth for so many kids who would identify with the kids in these novels. There are so many excellent MG novels on this topic that it was hard for me to narrow it down to these five books. I love cheering on kids who struggle, and Opal, Chirp, David, Lucky, and Parvana are among my favorite book kids.
After I read this book, #1 in a trilogy, I wrote to the author (something I rarely do), enthusing about how much I loved almost-orphan Lucky and her inspiring, tragic, hopeful, and heartwarming story. Ten-year-old Lucky’s greatest fear is that she’ll end up in an orphanage following the death of her mother, leaving Lucky to be raised by her absentee father’s ex-wife, Brigitte.
I was drawn into the lives of each of the splendidly flawed, quirky, and very real people in Lucky’s life, but it’s Lucky herself who I fell in love with because she’s so believably innocent and imperfect, working hard, with the support of her friends of all ages, to find her way in her tiny world of Hardpan, population 43.
Lucky, age ten, can't wait another day. The meanness gland in her heart and the crevices full of questions in her brain make running away from Hard Pan, California (population 43), the rock-bottom only choice she has.
It's all Brigitte's fault -- for wanting to go back to France. Guardians are supposed to stay put and look after girls in their care! Instead Lucky is sure that she'll be abandoned to some orphanage in Los Angeles where her beloved dog, HMS Beagle, won't be allowed. She'll have to lose her friends Miles, who lives on cookies, and Lincoln, future U.S.…
My first true religion was being a boy alone in the woods and feeling a deep connection to nature in all its aspects. I felt a connection with all life and knew myself to be an animal—and gloried in it. Since then, I've learned how vigorously humans fight our animal nature, estranging us from ourselves and the planet. Each of these books invites us to get over ourselves and connect with all life on Earth.
What a weird and wonderful book. I've read and reread it several times now, and it always casts its spell. I've never been so willing—so eager—to suspend disbelief. It's Murakami's special gift.
The novel creates its own wondrous world out of what seems to be the stuff of this one—a young runaway, Colonel Sanders, alley cats, a beautiful librarian, a seashore painting, a demented old man—but the result is more magical than any fairy kingdom. I was completely carried along by the experience of an understanding beyond sense.
"A stunning work of art that bears no comparisons" the New York Observer wrote of Haruki Murakami's masterpiece, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle. In its playful stretching of the limits of the real world, his magnificent new novel, Kafka on the Shore is every bit as bewitching and ambitious. The narrative follows the fortunes of two remarkable characters. Kafka Tamura runs away from home at fifteen, under the shadow of his father's dark prophesy. The aging Nakata, tracker of lost cats, who never recovered from a bizarre childhood affliction, finds his highly simplified life suddenly overturned. Their parallel odysseys - as…
Anyone who’s attended high school knows it’s often survival of the fittest outside class and a sort of shadow-boxing inside of it. At my late-1970s prep school in the suburbs of Los Angeles, some days unfolded like a “Mad Max” meets “Dead Society” cage match. While everything changed when the school went coed in 1980, the scars would last into the next millennia for many. Mine did, and it’d thrust me on a journey not only into classic literature of the young-male archetype, but also historical figures who dared to challenge the Establishment for something bigger than themselves. I couldn’t have written my second novel, Later Days, without living what I wrote or eagerly reading the books below.
For years, I refused to re-embrace Holden Caulfield, because Mark David Chapman, John Lennon’s assassin, declared it inspired him to bloodshed. I’m glad I did, getting the juices circulating for my novel.
Holden, manic-depressed over his brother’s death, cut loose from his prep school, may speak in a stream-of-consciousness babble, but he enunciated an old-soul contempt of Ivy-League elitism that reverberates today.
When Holden declares, “The more expensive a school, the more crooks it has,” it’s a literary MRI on American classism still tearing us asunder.
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I’m a nerd by temperament (raised by a psychologist and a librarian, what else could I be?) and by profession (decades working as a U.S. diplomat and an academic administrator honed my people-watching faculties to a fine edge). So, of course, I’ve always been drawn to my opposite: that cynical loner whose pursuit of justice requires hard fists and a bent moral compass. Private eye mysteries are my perfect place. In them, I can exercise my passion for intellectual puzzles and my love for thrilling action. I enjoy the combination of social commentary and sheer entertainment I find when I dive into reading (or writing) a private eye mystery.
Los Angeles investigator Grayson Sykes is hired to track down a missing woman who may have disappeared for excellent reasons. As she digs into the secrets and betrayals surrounding her quarry, Gray uncovers unexpected commonalities with the missing woman. I enjoyed the intricate dance between two damaged and complex women, a dance that kept me shifting my loyalties and sympathies as the mystery deepened.
“Sharp, witty and perfectly paced, And Now She’s Gone is one hell of a read!” ―Wendy Walker, bestselling author of The Night Before
Isabel Lincoln is gone.
But is she missing?
It’s up to Grayson Sykes to find her. Although she is reluctant to track down a woman who may not want to be found, Gray’s search for Isabel Lincoln becomes more complicated and dangerous with every new revelation about the woman’s secrets and the truth she’s hidden from her friends and family.
Featuring two complicated women in a dangerous cat and mouse game, Rachel Howzell Hall's And Now She’s…
