Books About Mother-Daughter Relationships That Will Help You Heal

Yesica Diaz-Taylor always keeps her feelings close, so for the past six months since her husband’s death, she’s taken her grief in stride. But when an angry outburst at work shatters the illusion, Yesica finds herself in mandated group counseling. Ana Diaz, Yesica’s mother, has been widowed for five years and since then has lived her life exactly as she did with her late husband. When her house floods, however, she’s forced to change her plans and move in with her daughter. Their already-strained relationship becomes so much more tense as they navigate sharing a home, their heartbreak, and facing the haunting family secrets that have kept them apart.

Jennette McCurdy recounts in unflinching detail her struggles as a former child actor—including eating disorders, addiction, and a complicated relationship with her overbearing mother—and how she retook control of her life. Cast in a new Nickelodeon series called iCarly, she was thrust into fame. Though her mom was ecstatic, Jennette was riddled with anxiety, shame, and self-loathing. These issues only got worse when, soon after taking the lead in the iCarly spinoff Sam & Cat, her mother died of cancer. Finally, after discovering therapy and quitting acting, Jennette decided for the first time in her life what she really wanted.

In Shaker Heights, a progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is planned. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principle is playing by the rules. Enter Mia Warren—an enigmatic artist and single mother—who arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenaged daughter, Pearl, and rents a house from the Richardsons. Soon all four Richardson children are drawn to the mother-daughter pair. But Mia carries with her a mysterious past and a disregard for the status quo that threatens to upend this carefully ordered community. When old family friends of the Richardsons attempt to adopt a Chinese-American baby, a custody battle erupts that dramatically divides the town—and puts Mia and Elena on opposing sides. Suspicious of Mia and her motives, Elena is determined to uncover the secrets in Mia’s past. But her obsession will come at unexpected and devastating costs.

The 12 central characters of this novel lead vastly different lives. From a nonbinary social media influencer to a 93-year-old woman living on a farm in Northern England, these unforgettable characters also intersect in shared aspects of their identities, from age to race to sexuality to class. Sparklingly witty and filled with emotion, centering voices we often see othered, and written in an innovative fast-moving form that borrows technique from poetry, Girl, Woman, Other is a polyphonic and richly textured social novel that shows a side of Britain we rarely see—one that reminds us of what connects us to our neighbors, even in times when we are encouraged to be split apart.

Poignantly, hilariously, Bechdel embarks on a quest for answers concerning the mother-daughter gulf. She dives into the life of her own mother, who was unhappily married to a closeted gay man and whose artistic aspirations simmered under the surface of Bechdel’s childhood. It’s a richly layered search that leads readers from the fascinating life and work of the iconic 20th-century psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott, to one explosively illuminating Dr. Seuss illustration, to Bechdel’s own (serially monogamous) adult love life. And, finally, back to Mother—to a truce, fragile and real-time, that will move and astonish all adult children of gifted mothers.

William Waters grew up in a house silenced by tragedy, where his parents could hardly bear to look at him, much less love him—so when he meets the spirited and ambitious Julia Padavano in his freshman year of college, it’s as if the world has lit up around him. With Julia comes her family, as she and her three sisters are inseparable. With the Padavanos, William experiences a newfound contentment; every moment in their house is filled with loving chaos. But then darkness from William’s past surfaces, jeopardizing not only Julia’s carefully orchestrated plans for their future but the sisters’ unshakeable devotion to one another. The result is a catastrophic family rift that changes their lives for generations. Will the loyalty that once rooted them be strong enough to draw them back together when it matters most?

When Katy’s mother dies, she is left reeling. Carol wasn’t just Katy’s mom, but her best friend. To make matters worse, their planned mother-daughter trip to Positano looms. Katy has been waiting years for Carol to take her, and now she is faced with embarking on the adventure alone. But as soon as she steps foot on the Amalfi Coast, Katy begins to feel her mother’s spirit, and Katy feels herself coming back to life. And then Carol appears—in the flesh, healthy, sun-tanned, and 30 years old. Katy doesn’t understand what is happening or how—all she can focus on is that she has somehow, impossibly, gotten her mother back. Over the course of one Italian summer, Katy gets to know Carol, not as her mother but as the young woman before her.

In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family’s orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationships with their mother and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.

In 1874, in the wake of the war, trauma and namelessness haunt civilians, veterans, and wanderers. Twelve-year-old ConaLee, the adult in her family for as long as she can remember, finds herself on a journey with her mother, Eliza, who hasn’t spoken in more than a year. They arrive at the Lunatic Asylum in West Virginia, delivered to the hospital’s entrance by a war veteran who has forced himself into their world. There, far from family and the mountain home they knew, they try to reclaim their lives and find a new path as Eliza responds slowly to treatment. The vagaries of war and race rise to the surface throughout the story.

High-powered businesswoman Lana Rubicon has a lot to be proud of: her keen intelligence, impeccable taste, and the L.A. real estate empire she’s built. But when she finds herself trapped in a sleepy coastal town with her adult daughter Beth and teenage granddaughter Jack, Lana is stuck counting otters instead of square footage—and hoping that boredom won’t kill her before the cancer does. Then Jack happens upon a dead body while kayaking. She quickly becomes a suspect in the homicide investigation, and the Rubicon women are thrown into chaos. With Jack and Beth’s help, Lana uncovers a web of lies, family vendettas, and land disputes lurking beneath the surface of the community. But as their snooping advances into ever-more dangerous territory, the headstrong Rubicon women must learn to do the one thing they’ve always resisted: depend on each other.

Meredith and Nina Whitson are as different as sisters can be. One stayed at home to raise her children; the other traveled the world to become a famous photojournalist. But when their beloved father falls ill, Meredith and Nina find themselves together again, standing alongside their cold, disapproving mother, Anya, who even now offers no comfort to her daughters. As children, the only connection between them was the Russian fairy tale Anya sometimes told the girls at night. On his deathbed, their father extracts a promise from the women in his life: the fairy tale will be told one last time―and all the way to the end. Thus begins an unexpected journey into the truth of Anya’s life more than five decades ago. Alternating between the past and present, Meredith and Nina will finally hear the story of their mother’s life, and what they learn is a secret so terrible and terrifying that it will shake the very foundation of who they are.

This is the way the world ends, for the last time. Across the heart of the vast continent known as the Stillness, a great red rift has been torn into the heart of the earth, spewing ash enough to darken the sky for years. Essun comes home to find that her husband has brutally murdered their son and kidnapped their daughter. Now Essun must pursue the wreckage of her family through a deadly, dying land. Without sunlight, clean water, or arable land, there will be war all across the Stillness—a battle royale of nations not for power or territory but simply for the basic resources necessary to get through the long, dark night. Essun does not care if the world falls apart around her. She’ll break it herself, if she must, to save her daughter.