Here are 100 books that The Unmumsy Mum fans have personally recommended if you like
The Unmumsy Mum.
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When I first became a mother, life as I knew it disappeared. I REALLY struggled with new motherhood, and funny, relatable books about parenthood showed me I wasn’t alone. Early motherhood inspired me to write the Bad Mother’s Diary – mainly because I wanted to cheer myself up and turn difficulty into comedy. I loved writing the Bad Mother’s series and am so honoured by all the emails and Facebook comments I receive begging for more books. Thank you readers!
This book is not a how-to-guide. It won't tell you how to get your baby to sleep, how to deal with toddler tantrums, how to be a good parent, a cool parent or even a renegade parent. It is a book about parenting that contains absolutely no useful advice whatsoever.
Instead it shares beautifully honest anecdotes and illustrations from the parenting frontline that demonstrate it is perfectly possible to love your children with the whole of your heart whilst finding them incredibly irritating at the same time.
From pregnancy to starting school, Hurrah For Gin takes you through the exciting,…
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…
As one of Australia’s bestselling observational comedy authors, I couldn’t pass on the opportunity to write about the fact that I’ve recently become my parents’ go-to expert on just about everything. From solving technological dilemmas to coaching through society’s ever-changing correctness and reminding them to eat their greens, the elders in my life have inspired me to look at the funny side to aging, and to explore how a middle aged child sometimes crosses over from being helpful to just plain interfering.
Okay, so this book is predominantly about the struggles of a boy going through puberty but its depiction of the magnetic older characters of Bert and Queenie in the Alderman Cooper Sunshine Home are among the funniest scenes in the book.
Of every book I’ve ever read, it remains one of the most hilarious and if you’ve read it previously, it’s well worth another visit.
I have been writing about motherhood, family, love, loss, and finding yourself for over fifteen years. I have been a journalist, wife, mother-of-three-boys (yes, that’s one word), aerobics teacher, puppy wrestler, and novelist. Being a novelist is by far the hardest job but it’s the most rewarding. (OK, boys, no – motherhood is – really.) I enjoy reading stories about family, love, and relationships in all their guises, good, bad, and messy, just like life – and I’m keen to write stories that readers will remember too. My latest book is about two sisters who, after a car crash, are affected differently, yet both are on a journey for the truth.
If there was ever a book that inspired me to write, it’s this!
Pearson captures the push-pull of motherhood and trying to have a career and the fragile relationship with Kate Reddy and her husband so well.
This book ‘talked’ to me as a mother and journalist and was one of the most ‘real’ books I’d ever read about family dynamics and having young children.
Kate Reddy is a fund manager and a mother of two who is trying to survive in a man’s world. Only she’s a woman! Loved it.
Meet Kate Reddy, fund manager and mother of two. Always time-poor, Kate counts seconds like other women count calories. Factor in a manipulative nanny, an Australian boss who looks at Kate's breasts as if they're on special offer, a long-suffering husband, her quietly aghast in-laws, two needy children and an email lover, and you have a woman juggling so many balls that some day something's going to hit the ground.
In an uproariously funny and achingly sad novel, Allison Pearson brilliantly dramatises the dilemma of working motherhood at the…
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…
When I first became a mother, life as I knew it disappeared. I REALLY struggled with new motherhood, and funny, relatable books about parenthood showed me I wasn’t alone. Early motherhood inspired me to write the Bad Mother’s Diary – mainly because I wanted to cheer myself up and turn difficulty into comedy. I loved writing the Bad Mother’s series and am so honoured by all the emails and Facebook comments I receive begging for more books. Thank you readers!
Fun comedy for parents of older children, focusing on chaotic family life around school, drop offs, pick ups and parents who think they’re superior to others. Lots of fun.
For Lucy Sweeney, motherhood isn't all astanga yoga and Cath Kidston prints. It has been years since the dirty washing pile was less than a metre high, months since Lucy remembered to have sex with her husband, and a week since she last did the school run wearing pyjamas. When Husband on a Short Fuse is no contest for the distractions of Sexy Domesticated Dad; Yummy Mummy No 1 has more cash flow than parenting advice; and Alpha Mum is putting a slur on your questionable domestic habits, it's hard to remember exactly why anyone would give up a career…
As a writer, wife, and mom, I love reading novels and memoirs about women who are navigating parenting, relationships, and careers simultaneously. My favorites are those that make me laugh out loud while presenting a relatable picture of all this juggling act entails. Smart and witty heroines who approach life with a can-do spirit and the ability to laugh at themselves as the world tosses one curveball after another their way capture my heart every time.
Who can resist a diary? It’s hard not to fall in love with the title character, who’s on a perpetual quest for self-improvement. As Bridget, a lovable thirty-something singleton, finds herself in dozens of entertaining and embarrassing situations, she navigates them with her trademark pluck.
Very loosely based on Pride and Prejudice and complete with its own Mr. Darcy, I adored this novel and yearned for Bridget to realize she’s a catch exactly as she is. I read this at a time in my life when I, too, was a work in progress, and finding Bridget felt like connecting with a funny friend.
A dazzlingly urban satire on modern relationships? An ironic, tragic insight into the demise of the nuclear family? Or the confused ramblings of a pissed thirty-something?
As Bridget documents her struggles through the social minefield of her thirties and tries to weigh up the eternal question (Daniel Cleaver or Mark Darcy?), she turns for support to four indispensable friends: Shazzer, Jude, Tom and a bottle of chardonnay.
Welcome to Bridget's first diary: mercilessly funny, endlessly touching and utterly addictive.
Helen Fielding's first Bridget Jones novel, Bridget Jones's Diary, sparked a phenomenon that has seen…
I love romantic comedies with an emphasis on comedy. I’m not in love with sugary-sweet romance because I don’t think it’s true to life. I know that I laugh daily because my life is very 'Bridget Jones'. You know a book genre is strong when you can describe yourself as a character written in the late nineties. My own books are full of awkward moments, endearing observations, and humour that pushes the boundaries. Why? Because what are we if we are not fallible and vulnerable to whatever life throws at us?
Who doesn’t immediately fall in love with Bridget Jones upon meeting her?
This book is full of laughs, tears, and now parenthood! I adored the other books in the Bridget Jones series, and this didn’t disappoint. If, like me, you like to read about a woman who feels ‘real’ and relatable, this book is just divine.
Bridget Jones is the sister to all of us women who need to hear that someone else goes through such highs and lows.
What do you do when a girlfriend's 60th birthday party is the same day as your boyfriend's 30th?
Is it wrong to lie about your age when online dating?
Is it morally wrong to have a blow-dry when one of your children has head lice?
Does the Dalai Lama actually tweet or is it his assistant?
Is technology now the fifth element? Or is that wood?
Is sleeping with someone after 2 dates and 6 weeks of texting the same as getting married after 2 meetings and 6 months of letter writing in Jane Austen's day?…
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 love romantic comedies with an emphasis on comedy. I’m not in love with sugary-sweet romance because I don’t think it’s true to life. I know that I laugh daily because my life is very 'Bridget Jones'. You know a book genre is strong when you can describe yourself as a character written in the late nineties. My own books are full of awkward moments, endearing observations, and humour that pushes the boundaries. Why? Because what are we if we are not fallible and vulnerable to whatever life throws at us?
I picked this book up as I suffer with OCD and welcomed a genuine account of the effects it has on day-to-day life.
This, however, was just that but also gloriously uplifting and funny. I both cried and laughed, and sometimes a mixture! So, although this is non-fiction it follows Bryony’s journey as if following a protagonist in a novel, making it compelling and heart-wrenching.
A new Sunday Times bestseller from Bryony Gordon, Telegraph columnist and author of the bestselling The Wrong Knickers. For readers who enjoyed Matt Haig's Reasons to Stay Alive and Ruby Wax's Sane New World, Mad Girl is a shocking, funny, unpredictable, heart-wrenching, raw and jaw-droppingly truthful celebration of life with mental illness.
'I loved it. A brilliant fast and funny and frank look at something that absolutely needs to be talked about in this way' Matt Haig
Bryony Gordon has OCD.
It's the snake in her brain that has told her ever since she was a teenager that her world…
I’m an Irish novelist and occasional screenwriter. My latest book, Duffy and Son, is my sixth. I can be drawn in by any well-told tale, of course, but I’ve always had the strongest reaction to stories with at least some element of comedy. I don’t know, I just find books in which no one says anything funny to be deeply unrealistic. It infuriates me when any piece of fiction is viewed as ‘lesser’ because there’s a chance it might make you smile. The books listed here will definitely make you smile. If you give them a chance, I hope you find them as worthy of your time as I did.
You can read a good screenplay with as much ease and pleasure as you read a novel, and the Fleabag scripts aren’t just good—they’re immaculate.
I pore over this book again and again, hoping that maybe this time I will see the trick, the moment of misdirection or sleight of hand that enables a story of profound personal pain—grief, loneliness, fear, they’re all here, all the big ones—to be so bloody funny. There is no trick, of course. There’s just flawless writing.
You should of course watch the TV show these scripts underpin, but do yourself a favour and read them too. Phoebe Waller-Bridge really did something here.
Go deeper into the groundbreaking, Golden Globe and Emmy-winning series with this must-have collection—“a completist’s dream of a book, including the show’s full scripts and Waller-Bridge’s commentary” (Vogue).
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY EVENING STANDARD
“Her coat falls open. She only has her bra on underneath. She pulls out the little sculpture of the woman with no arms. It sits on her lap. Two women. One real. One not. Both with their innate femininity out.”
Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s critically acclaimed, utterly unique series Fleabag took the world by storm with its piercing dialogue, ruthlessly dry wit,…
I have a passion for this topic because I grew up in Harlem, New York under segregation. Black is beautiful is in my DNA. As a former Black student activist, former Black Beauty queen, Miss Black New York State, and one of the first natural hair models in the 1960s this topic is who I am and who I am becoming. When I grew up in the 1950s, Harlem was a community of open hearts and open doors that loved its children. There was also a strong narrative "Black is Beautiful", "Black is Powerful" countering general societal views of Black inferiority. I developed the Positive Affirmation NiteBabyNite picture book series in remembrance of those times.
Having raised three children as a single parent, there have been complaints from said children post-childhood. This book saved my sanity. I got all three of them intact physically, two arms, two legs, working eyes, and brains. Hence the critiques. But, I digress. As a mother you give it your best shot, sacrifice, and work like a demon. Then you must let it go. As I said two arms, two legs, etc.
In an ideal world, mothers would have time to hand-sew their kids' costumes for the school play, prepare all-organic meals, and volunteer in the classroom at the drop of a hat. In reality, most moms have to settle for plopping their little ones in front of SpongeBob so that they can prepare yet another chicken nugget-based dinner, guiltily convinced they're falling down on the job.
In Good-Enough Mother, René Syler pulls back the curtain to reveal the truth about modern mothering and reassure time-stressed moms that even if their children are strangers to made-from-scratch cookies, they can emerge as happy,…
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…
Anna Malaika Tubbs is the author of the critically acclaimed book The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of MLK Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation. She is also a Cambridge Ph.D. candidate in Sociology and a Bill and Melinda Gates Cambridge Scholar. After graduating Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford University with a BA in Anthropology, Anna received a Master’s from the University of Cambridge in Multidisciplinary Gender Studies. Outside of the academy, she is an educator and DEI consultant. She lives with her husband, Michael Tubbs, and their son Michael Malakai.
This book is a beautiful combination of personal narrative and social commentary. McClain takes you through many of the complicated emotions of raising Black children in the United States while also leaving her reader with a sense of sisterhood and support. It’s a must when it comes to understanding the current landscape Black mothers are facing.
A warm, wise, and urgent guide to parenting in uncertain times, from a longtime reporter on race, reproductive health, and politics
In We Live for the We, first-time mother Dani McClain sets out to understand how to raise her daughter in what she, as a black woman, knows to be an unjust -- even hostile -- society. Black women are more likely to die during pregnancy or birth than any other race; black mothers must stand before television cameras telling the world that their slain children were human beings. What, then, is the best way to keep fear at bay…
