About The Best We Could Hope For: From a #1 New York Times bestselling author comes a powerful novel about family, the weight of secrets, the choices we make, and the repercussions of the decisions made for us.

“It’s ten pm, do you know where your children are?” Sure, we laugh about that ad now but when I was a kid in the 80s, parents had to be routinely reminded that they had children, that it was getting close to bedtime, and that maybe they should do something about that.

I didn’t grow up in a neighborhood where parents had to work two jobs and neglect was born of socioeconomic necessity. I grew up on Park Avenue, in the same zip code I would go onto become a nanny. And yet I knew a kid who watched TV by himself every night until Johnny Carson finished his opening monologue. He hit upon that as a good cue for putting himself to bed.

There was more than one family where the parents up and left the city, either because the husband was ready to retire (school-aged children be damned) or to follow a new stepfather to greener pastures. Either way, they left behind teenagers with a sporadically attentive cleaning lady and pizza money. What could go wrong?

There were girls who rolled into school drunk, high, or simply out of the limo of the professional athlete they’d slept with the night before.  There were run-ins with the law. There were kids whose coping strategies became bad habits and then addictions.

When I was young, I thought this was unique to New York City. As I got older, I thrilled to come upon novels and memoirs that chronicled other Gen-Xers experiences of doing things too dangerous, too young, or choosing an insane situation that would recreate the one they’d only barely outgrown. All in the name of just trying to survive—or outrun–their childhoods.

In my novel, The Best We Could Hope For, I follow siblings and half-siblings from a sprawling family of divorce over multiple decades as they try to understand the forces that shaped their childhoods.   Because none of us can move forward, get better, do better, be better, until we map and name where we’ve come from:

The land where people forgot they had children.

You All Go Away and Leave Me by Piper Weiss

Weiss navigates surviving and years later investigating a headline-grabbing pedophile with no help from the adults around her. In her thirties, Weiss learned that her tennis coach famously tried to abduct her teammate, an incident she has no memory of. The quest for answers leads her into tough territory with her mother, which she handles with surgical deftness. A tour de force.

How To Build a Girl by Caitlin Moran

Inspired by her own life story, Moran’s novel centers on a girl who moves to London at fifteen years-old to make her fortune as a music critic. Sex, drugs, rock-and-roll and one very memorable UTI ensue.  And while the book is hilarious, Moran also has some scathing insights about being “home-schooled” with seven siblings her parents could neither afford to clothe nor feed. Unsurprisingly, Moran grew up to be a vocal birth control advocate.

Running With Scissors by Augusten Burroughs

Sometimes you read about a Gen-X childhood and think, “Oh my God, where were the grown-ups?” In Burroughs’ case you think, “Oh shit, these were the grown-ups?”  Burroughs chronicles the years after his mother left his abusive father and moved them in with her psychiatrist’s family. Utterly bonkers insanity ensues.  When I say that Gen X is the first conscious generation people will often say to me, “But Boomers were trying to find themselves.”  Yes, yes, they were.  And that worked out great for everyone.

Happens Every Day by Isabel Gilles

Gilles opens her brilliant memoir depicting the wall of family photos her husband lovingly installed the week they moved into their new home for his new job at Oberlin. Within months, he left her and their two infant sons for a French professor. You spend much of the novel wondering why Gilles was attracted to her husband with the borderline personality disorder in the first place.  But Gilles is deliciously and admirably restrained. You only meet her mother once, but all the answers are laid bare.

Are You My Mother? by Alison Bechdel

Ok, technically she may be a squeak older than Gen-X but this graphic novel about trying to forge any kind of connection with her mother through the 70s and 80s is a perfect portrait of the women in this generation who were there in body but wholly absent in spirit. Oh, and smoking. So. Much. Smoking.

Oh the Glory of It All by Sean Wilsey

In the 80s, Wilsey’s wealthy dad left his mom for her best friend, Dede. Dede was then bent on annihilating her husband’s ex and children from the narrative of her new life. In this hilarious and heartbreaking memoir, Wilsey chronicles a childhood sacrificed to the bloodsport of the narcissistic adults around him.

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers

If you have never read this book, drop everything and start. Unlike the other authors on this list, Eggers became a literal orphan in his early twenties, tasked with raising his eight-year-old brother. Which he does!  Because Gen-X are superheroes capable of not only self-actualizing against enormous odds but bringing everyone we love along with us.

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As many of you know, June is Pride Month and what better way to celebrate diversity than reading some of the fantastic LGBTQ+ books that have been published! From Will Grayson, Will Grayson by the ever-popular John Green to Julie Murphy’s recent release Ramona Blue, here are seven books for you to check out!

Drag Teen by Jeffery Self | Goodreads

This super quick read is all about drag teens! Drag Teen is Self’s second young adult novel and follows a boy named JT who’s been denied every scholarship he’s applied for so he can make it to college. But when his boyfriend Seth finds a drag teen race granting the winner a scholarship, JT isn’t so sure about it. JT, Seth and their friend Heather all go on a trip to New York City for a fun adventure, and with this book being less than 300 pages, it makes for a fun and one heck of a read!

Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan | Goodreads

Guess who our main characters are? Will Grayson, but times two. This novel is about two boys with the exact same name who meet and strike up a friendship, plus a few extra sparks! Published back in 2010, there has been no rumours about a movie yet, despite every other John Green novel has been adapted into a film. However, a companion novel was released two years ago titled Hold Me Closer: A Tiny Cooper Story by David Levithan.

Of Fire and Stars by Audrey Coulthurst | Goodreads

This book was featured in the December Owlcrate, which is a book subscription box, and people have been eating it up since then! The novel follows Princess Dennaleia who is supposed to get married to a prince, but instead she falls in love with a huntress named Mare instead. This is Coulthurst’s debut novel and after its big success, she’s already working on another two books!

Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli | Goodreads

Also a debut novel for Becky Albertalli, Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda has been widely received by many after its publication in 2015. With it currently set to be released as a film next year starring Thirteen Reasons Why‘s Katherine Langford and Miles Heizer along with Colton Haynes, Nick Robinson and Jennifer Garner, this is one book you definitely need to check out! The novel sees Simon outed to his whole class after an email he sends falls into the wrong hands and becomes blackmailed by a classmate. Albertalli’s recently released second novel, The Upside of Unrequited, is as much of a hit as her first.

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel | Goodreads

You may know this comic because of the Tony Award-winning musical sharing the same name. Well it was a book first! Fun Home follows Bechdel’s life growing up as she questions her own sexuality, but doesn’t know her father is also in the closet.

Ramona Blue by Julie Murphy | Goodreads

Remember Dumplin? This is the same author with a brand-new story! Ramona has always loved girls, but when she finds an old swimmer friend, she starts questioning whether or not if she just likes girls or not. Ramona Blue came out last month and has been widely praised by the book community.

History Is All You Left Me by Adam Silvera | Goodreads

Adam Silvera certainly has a way with words and his latest novel was published at the start of this year. History Is All You Left Me follows Griffin. After his first boyfriend Theo left him in pursuit of his dreams and a new boy named Jackson, Griffin believed the two would be together again one day but he soon learns Theo has suddenly passed away. After his death, Griffin finds himself uncertain about life and makes a new connection… with Jackson. This novel is a heartbreaking contemporary which will have you shedding a tear, or a river.

Didn’t see your favourite LGBTQIA+ novel? Tell us your favourite one down below!

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