10 Best Young Adult Books Featuring Family Bonds Between Mother-Daughter and Father-Son
Alright folks, let's get cracking on a topic that pulls the heartstrings a bit, shall we? We’re taking a stroll down the literary lane, highlighting some remarkable reads from the vast world of Young Adult fiction. Not your run-off-the-mill high school drama or dystopian hustle, but tales woven around the fundamentals of life - family bonds, specifically of the mother-daughter and father-son kind. We've got your ticket to some literary masterpieces that dive into the heart of these relationships, splashing us with an array of emotions, challenges, joy, and life lessons. These stories beautifully portray the complexities of parent-child relationships, steering away from stereotypes and clichés to offer a refreshing and intimate look into these ties that have profound influence in character growth and plot movement. Missile through adventures, endure teenage angst, and experience the healing power of familial love through these riveting tales. They're not just meant for the young adults among us, no siree. If you have a beating heart and a minute appreciation for good story telling, these books are sure to quench your thirst for high-standard literature. So, brace yourself for a literary joyride that promises to be nothing less than an emotional roller coaster. Buckle up!
『Red Dust Road』
Growing up in 70s Scotland as the adopted mixed raced child of a Communist couple, young Jackie blossoms into an outspoken, talented poet. Then she decides to find her birth parents... Based on the soul-searching memoir by Scots Makar Jackie Kay, Red Dust Road takes you on a journey from Nairn to Lagos, full of heart, humour and deep emotions. Discover how we are shaped by the folk songs we hear as much as by the cells in our bodies.
Author | Jackie Kay |
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Price | $9.99 |
Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
Release Date | Aug 10, 2019 |
Source | Google Books |
『A Legacy』
Two vastly different families—one Jewish, one Catholic—are joined in marriage in this “witty, elegant, and uproariously funny” historical drama set in pre-war Europe (Evelyn Waugh). “Partly ironic, partly nostalgic, A Legacy calls to mind other novels that portray the zenith and decline of an ostentatious old order.” —The Wall Street Journal A Legacy is the tale of two very different families, the Merzes and the Feldens. The Jewish Merzes are longstanding members of Berlin’s haute bourgeoisie who count a friend of Goethe among their distinguished ancestors. Not that this proud legacy means much of anything to them anymore. Secure in their huge town house, they devote themselves to little more than enjoying their comforts and ensuring their wealth. The Feldens are landed aristocracy, well off but not rich, from Germany’s Catholic south. After Julius von Felden marries Melanie Merz the fortunes of the two families will be strangely, indeed fatally, entwined. Set during the run-up to World War I, a time of weirdly mingled complacency and angst, A Legacy is captivating, magnificently funny, and profound, an unforgettable image of a doomed way of life.
Author | Sybille Bedford |
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Price | $9.99 |
Publisher | New York Review of Books |
Release Date | Mar 03, 2015 |
Source | Google Books |
『The House of Broken Angels』
In this "raucous, moving, and necessary" story by a Pulitzer Prize finalist (San Francisco Chronicle), the De La Cruzes, a family on the Mexican-American border, celebrate two of their most beloved relatives during a joyous and bittersweet weekend. "All we do, mija, is love. Love is the answer. Nothing stops it. Not borders. Not death." In his final days, beloved and ailing patriarch Miguel Angel de La Cruz, affectionately called Big Angel, has summoned his entire clan for one last legendary birthday party. But as the party approaches, his mother, nearly one hundred, dies, transforming the weekend into a farewell doubleheader. Among the guests is Big Angel's half brother, known as Little Angel, who must reckon with the truth that although he shares a father with his siblings, he has not, as a half gringo, shared a life. Across two bittersweet days in their San Diego neighborhood, the revelers mingle among the palm trees and cacti, celebrating the lives of Big Angel and his mother, and recounting the many inspiring tales that have passed into family lore, the acts both ordinary and heroic that brought these citizens to a fraught and sublime country and allowed them to flourish in the land they have come to call home. Teeming with brilliance and humor, authentic at every turn, The House of Broken Angels is Luis Alberto Urrea at his best, and cements his reputation as a storyteller of the first rank. "Epic . . . Rambunctious . . . Highly entertaining." -- New York Times Book Review"Intimate and touching . . . the stuff of legend." -- San Francisco Chronicle"An immensely charming and moving tale." -- Boston GlobeNational Bestseller and National Book Critics Circle Award finalistA New York Times Notable BookOne of the Best Books of the Year from National Public Radio, American Library Association, San Francisco Chronicle, BookPage, Newsday, BuzzFeed, Kirkus, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Literary Hub
Author | Luis Alberto Urrea |
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Price | unknown |
Publisher | Hachette UK |
Release Date | Mar 06, 2018 |
Source | Google Books |
『The Green Road: A Novel』
One of the Guardian's 100 Best Books of the 21st Century "With language so vibrant it practically has a pulse, Enright makes an exquisitely drawn case for the possibility of growth, love and transformation at any age." —People From internationally acclaimed author Anne Enright comes a shattering novel set in a small town on Ireland's Atlantic coast. The Green Road is a tale of family and fracture, compassion and selfishness—a book about the gaps in the human heart and how we strive to fill them. Spanning thirty years, The Green Road tells the story of Rosaleen, matriarch of the Madigans, a family on the cusp of either coming together or falling irreparably apart. As they grow up, Rosaleen's four children leave the west of Ireland for lives they could have never imagined in Dublin, New York, and Mali, West Africa. In her early old age their difficult, wonderful mother announces that she’s decided to sell the house and divide the proceeds. Her adult children come back for a last Christmas, with the feeling that their childhoods are being erased, their personal history bought and sold. A profoundly moving work about a family's desperate attempt to recover the relationships they've lost and forge the ones they never had, The Green Road is Enright's most mature, accomplished, and unforgettable novel to date.
Author | Anne Enright |
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Price | $9.99 |
Publisher | W. W. Norton & Company |
Release Date | May 11, 2015 |
Source | Google Books |
『The Family Fang』
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY TIME, PEOPLE, SALON, AND ESQUIRE “The Family Fang is a comedy, a tragedy, and a tour-de-force examination of what it means to make art and survive your family….The best single word description would be brilliant.” —Ann Patchett, author of Bel Canto A funny, poignant, laugh-and-cry-out-loud (sometimes at the same time) novel about the art of surviving a masterpiece of dysfunction. Meet The Family Fang, an unforgettable collection of demanding, brilliant, and absolutely endearing oddballs whose lives are risky and mischievous performance art. Basis for the major motion picture starring Nicole Kidman, Jason Bateman and Christopher Walken. Annie and Buster Fang have spent most of their adult lives trying to distance themselves from their famous artist parents, Caleb and Camille. But when a bad economy and a few bad personal decisions converge, the two siblings have nowhere to turn but their family home. Reunited under one roof for the first time in more than a decade and surrounded by the souvenirs of their unusual upbringing, Buster and Annie are forced to confront not only their creatively ambitious parents, but the chaos and confusion of their childhood. “It’s The Royal Tenenbaums meets Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? I’d call The Family Fang a guilty pleasure, but it’s too damn smart….A total blast.” —Hannah Pittard, author of The Fates Will Find Their Way
Author | Kevin Wilson |
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Price | $1.99 |
Publisher | Harper Collins |
Release Date | Aug 09, 2011 |
Source | Google Books |
『Let Go My Hand』
Louis Lasker loves his family dearly - apart from when he doesn't. There's a lot of history. His father's marriages, his mother's death; one brother in exile, another in denial; everything said, everything unsaid. And now his father (the best of men, the worst of men) has taken a decision which will affect them all and has asked his three sons to join him on one final journey across Europe. But Louis is far from sure that this trip is a good idea. His older half brothers are wonderful, terrible, troublesome people. And they're as suspicious as they are supportive... because the truth is that they've never forgiven their father for the damaging secrets and corrosive lies of his past. So how much does Louis love his dad - to death? Or can this flawed family's bond prove powerful enough to keep a dying man alive?
Author | Edward Docx |
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Price | unknown |
Publisher | Picador |
Release Date | Mar 08, 2018 |
Source | Google Books |
『Danny the Champion of the World』
This collectable hardcover edition will feature a beautiful cover and deluxe packaging, including color interior text and illustrations! From the bestselling author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Matilda comes the story of a boy, his dad, and a daring expedition. Just as important, it’s the story of the love between a father and his son. Danny has a life that any boy would love—his home is a caravan, he’s the youngest car mechanic around, and his best friend is his dad, who never runs out of wonderful stories to tell. But one night Danny discovers a shocking secret that his father has kept hidden for years. Soon Danny finds himself the mastermind behind the most incredible plot ever attempted against nasty Victor Hazell, a wealthy landowner with a bad attitude. Can they pull it off? If so, Danny will truly be the champion of the world.
Author | Roald Dahl |
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Price | unknown |
Publisher | Penguin |
Release Date | Sep 05, 2017 |
Source | Google Books |
『To Kill a Mockingbird』
Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning masterwork of honor and injustice in the deep South—and the heroism of one man in the face of blind and violent hatred. One of the most cherished stories of all time, To Kill a Mockingbird has been translated into more than forty languages, sold more than forty million copies worldwide, served as the basis for an enormously popular motion picture, and was voted one of the best novels of the twentieth century by librarians across the country. A gripping, heart-wrenching, and wholly remarkable tale of coming-of-age in a South poisoned by virulent prejudice, it views a world of great beauty and savage inequities through the eyes of a young girl, as her father—a crusading local lawyer—risks everything to defend a black man unjustly accused of a terrible crime.
Author | Harper Lee |
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Price | $13.99 |
Publisher | Harper Collins |
Release Date | Jul 08, 2014 |
Source | Google Books |
『Shelter』
"Kyung Cho's home is worth less money than he owes. A tenure-track professor, he and his wife, Gillian, have always lived beyond their means. Now their decisions have caught up with them, and Kyung is anxious for his family's future: all he wants is to provide the home that was denied him to their son. Not that he ever wanted for pleasing things -- his father moved the family from Korea, and made good money engineering patents for the university that now employs his son. Kyung was raised in the town's most affluent neighborhood, in the exquisite house where his parents, Jin and Mae, still live, but his childhood was far from comfortable. Jin was always swift to anger, and whenever he took a hand to Mae, she would inflict the wounds she suffered on Kyung. With the support of his parents' pastor, Kyung brought the cycle to a halt, but he cannot bear the thought of asking them for help. Yet when Jin and Mae become victims of a violent home invasion, the dynamic suddenly changes, and Kyung is compelled to take them in. As the carefully established distance between Kyung and his parents collapses, he must reckon with his childhood, even as the life that he has built begins to crumble. As Shelter veers swiftly toward its startling conclusion, Jung Yun's debut novel leads us through dark and violent territory, where, unexpectedly, the Chos discover hope. Taut and masterfully told, it as riveting as it is profound"--
Author | Jung Yun |
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Price | unknown |
Publisher | Macmillan |
Release Date | Mar 15, 2016 |
Source | Google Books |
『Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit』
The New York Times–bestselling author’s Whitbread Prize–winning debut—“Winterson has mastered both comedy and tragedy in this rich little novel” (The Washington Post Book World). When it first appeared, Jeanette Winterson’s extraordinary debut novel received unanimous international praise, including the prestigious Whitbread Prize for best first fiction. Winterson went on to fulfill that promise, producing some of the most dazzling fiction and nonfiction of the past decade, including her celebrated memoir Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal?. Now required reading in contemporary literature, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is a funny, poignant exploration of a young girl’s adolescence. Jeanette is a bright and rebellious orphan who is adopted into an evangelical household in the dour, industrial North of England and finds herself embroidering grim religious mottoes and shaking her little tambourine for Jesus. But as this budding missionary comes of age, and comes to terms with her unorthodox sexuality, the peculiar balance of her God-fearing household dissolves. Jeanette’s insistence on listening to truths of her own heart and mind—and on reporting them with wit and passion—makes for an unforgettable chronicle of an eccentric, moving passage into adulthood. “If Flannery O’Connor and Rita Mae Brown had collaborated on the coming-out story of a young British girl in the 1960s, maybe they would have approached the quirky and subtle hilarity of Jeanette Winterson’s autobiographical first novel. . . . Winterson’s voice, with its idiosyncratic wit and sensitivity, is one you’ve never heard before.” —Ms. Magazine
Author | Jeanette Winterson |
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Price | $9.99 |
Publisher | Open Road + Grove/Atlantic |
Release Date | Dec 01, 2007 |
Source | Google Books |
Alright gang, there we have it. Remember, one of the truest joys of reading is finding the stories that resonate with our own experiences, that help us understand the world and ourselves better. These novels we've just discussed are brimming with the daily miracles and trials of family life, the unshakeable bonds of love, the challenging complexities, and the tender moments that arguably make for the most meaningful part of growing up. Whether you find a piece of your own journey in the heartwarming mother-daughter or father-son narratives, or gain a little more empathy and perspective from the family bonds different from your own, let these stories remind you of the remarkable and enduring power of the family unit, and of love in all its ragged, radiant glory. So, grab a hot beverage, snuggle into your favorite reading nook, and immerse yourself in these potent tales of familial ties. Trust me, you're in for a treat with each turn of the page.
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