21 Must-Read Found Family Books

Book Summary

When Venetia is widowed after fifty years, she’s left with plenty of cash, a huge house, and plenty of qualms about her past. She’s ready to fully embrace her life again after feeling like she’s mentally missed the last five decades.

While some think it’s reckless, Venetia buys the delapitated Phoenix Ballroom, which also serves as a spiritalist “church”. She’s a witty and spunky character whose generosity, courage and kindness provide a refuge for a touching cast of damaged and lonely people.

As she develops relationships with many of the ballroom’s attendees, the Phoenix lives up to its name with fresh starts and a new found family being formed.

Book Summary

Joe’s mum has spent her whole life trying to prepare him for independence, knowing he’ll have to find a way to be okay when she is gone. As long as he has a routine or clear instructions, he can do anything. But when his routine breaks or new aspects are introduced, he has a hard time coping. So she writes everything down in an instructional notebook, it’s his own personalized guide for life.

Joe is in his early 20s now and ready for a job. If his mom can get him all set in his new routine, maybe he can spend a night alone at their home so she can get her first break in his lifetime. His new job at the Compass store brings both friendship and bullies, but the job isn’t the only big change in his life this year.

Book Summary

Newlywed Ruth is a law school graduate and has an independent streak stronger than most young women in her posh neighborhood. However, she still wants to impress her mother-in-law, who has signed Ruth up for etiquette lessons with Lillian Diamond. 

Fellow etiquette-classmate Carrie is quiet, but has a dark secret. As witty Ruth befriends Carrie, they form an unbreakable bond. Ruth pushes Lillian and all of her Diamond Girls to question the status quo and stretch beyond their comfort zones as they unite to protect one of their own.

Book Summary

April has a rough life, fending for herself in a motorless motorhome that her father won while playing poker. She works at a diner but dreams of being a songwriter. After flunking out of school and another fight with her dad, April sets off to find a better life for herself.

Along the way, she meets others with complex stories, which are the perfect inspiration for her songs. But even more important than that, she finds that family doesn’t have to mean the community you were born into. Instead, people you meet can become family.

Book Summary

Forty-four-year-old Alice is in the midst of deep grief. She’s unexpectedly lost her husband, her job is a dead-end, and even her beloved beekeeping hobby isn’t bringing her the usual joy. She has even begun to have anxiety attacks thinking about how far her life has strayed from her dreams.

As she’s transporting 120,000 bees in her truck, she nearly collides with Jake. He’s a troubled, paraplegic teenager with the tallest mohawk in Hood River County. When Alice sees Jake’s genuine interest in the bees and learns about his own difficulties at home, she impulsively invites him to see the farm.

The third member of the unlikely trio that makes up this novel is Harry. He’s twenty-four, and his social anxiety has prevented him from getting a traditional job. He answers Alice’s ad for part-time farm help and is shocked to be hired. Alice, Jake, and Harry become fast friends when they have to work together to stop a pesticide company that is threatening the bees. Through their new friendship, they each begin to heal.

Book Summary

Twenty-seven year old Ava is struggling one month after the death of her ex-boyfriend. Although she lives in Ohio, she receives a mysterious letter with an ad to become a caretaker for a cantankerous older man and his cat in the small town of Driftwood on the Alabama coast. Despite her normally fearful approach to life and her suspicion that her ex is now haunting her, Ava takes a risk and heads to the quaint beachside town.

In Driftwood, thirty-eight year old Maggie runs Magpie’s, a coffee and curiosity shop where magic is found when the old and new are paired. While she’s cheerful on the outside, she’s still mourning the loss of her mom and worried about her aging father. Newcomer Ava might be just what Maggie needs to learn to let go of the past.

Magical realism is sprinkled throughout the novel with unexplained predictions and events, and through the use of butterflies.

Book Summary

Forty-something Emma realizes that her life might have gotten a bit too hectic and tiring when she wakes up after falling asleep in an IKEA showroom. Between trying to be a good mother to her kids, a good daughter to her ailing mother, and a good wife, she’s struggling to keep up. Thank goodness for her best friend, Roz, who keeps her sane. But when Roz climbs through her bathroom window one day with terrible news to share, Emma loses all confidence in her ability to keep it together.

Thurston’s once-full life is empty these days. He’s recently widowed, and without his wife of sixty-two years, he no longer finds joy or purpose in his life. When driving his niece to work one day, Thurston has a chance encounter with Emma and quickly gets drawn into the whirlwind of her chaotic life.

Thurston’s calming presence helps Emma put her problems in perspective, and soon, the two form an unlikely friendship.

Book Summary

After losing her husband in WWII and her daughter to illness, Iris walled herself off from the world. She’s spent many decades hiding behind the tall fence around her home. In place of human connection, Iris has surrounded herself with a family of flowers. Propagating her daylilies and roses and tending to a garden that helps her keep memories of those she loved alive.

In the early 2000s, Abby is a young mother whose husband has recently returned from military service in Iraq. When Abby’s family rents a cottage along Lake Michigan, next door to Iris’ property, the older woman can’t help but view the young family as a window to the life she once had.

As Iris and Abby are drawn together by their shared love of flowers, the friendship that blossoms between them is a testament to the healing power of both gardening and human connection.

Book Summary

Sloane is a small-town librarian in Idaho who enjoys her daily visits from the town curmudgeon, Arthur. She loves verbal sparing with him so much that she instantly notices when he doesn’t show up one morning. When another day passes without a visit, her worry intensifies.

When Sloane tracks Arthur down at home and finds him almost bedridden, she needs a way to cheer him up. An impromptu book club with other lonely library patrons soon begins and unlikely friendships form through their shared love of books.

Book Summary

In London, between the houses of No. 77 and No. 79 on Eastbourne Road, there’s a neglected community space called the “Twilight Garden”. In the 1970s, it was a sanctuary for the neighbors who needed it most, but now the garden’s gate is locked closed.

But it only takes one person’s idea to inspire change. Can the Twilight Garden be resurrected, or will a new neighbor put a stop to the healing garden that the others hope to restore?

Book Summary

Missy is 79 years old and lives in a stately London home alone. Her husband, Leo, passed away after a challenging illness, and her favorite child, son Allistair, broke her heart by moving to Australia. Daughter Melanie lives much closer in Cambridge, but they have a contentious relationship.

As Missy walks alone through a park, her primary mission is to experience something worthy of including in her next email to Allistair. While she prefers keeping to herself, she forces herself to interact with some interesting characters she encounters on her walk. When she faints, her new acquaintances not only help her in the moment, they invite her to a nearby coffee shop.

But is 79 too old for new friends and a new outlook on life?

Book Summary

Lucy is a 26-year-old teacher’s aide hoping to adopt her student, seven-year-old Christopher. He tragically lost his parents, but she needs to be in a better financial situation for both the actual adoption process to be approved and to take care of Christopher long-term.

She’s always found comfort in books, especially the Clock Island series by Jack Masterson. The author stopped writing and became reclusive years ago, but she still regularly re-reads his work. Just when Lucy is about to give up on adopting Christopher, Jack Masterson re-emerges and announces a new book. However, it’s not a standard release. Four contestants will get to come to the real Clock Island and compete for a chance to win the single copy in existence, which is worth at least six figures.

Book Summary

Britt-Marie is a socially awkward 63-year-old perfectionist who comes across as constantly critical of others despite her best intentions. But inside, she has big dreams and a warm heart.

After leaving her cheating husband, Britt-Marie begins a new season of life as the caretaker of a rec center and inherits a variety of odd regular visitors, including kids desperate for a football (soccer) coach. Can she get past her fussy nature and turn the town into a place where she finally feels she belongs?

Book Summary

This dual-timeline novel opens in 2019 at the funeral for BettyKay in a small town in Iowa. BettyKay’s daughters are shocked when Hollywood movie star Kitty Devereaux walks in and places something into their mother’s casket. Over the course of the weekend, BettyKay’s daughters discover a whole other side to their mother as Kitty shares stories of their lifelong friendship, which all began in 1967 at a St. Luke’s Nursing School in the fictional town of Greensboro, Iowa. 

BettyKay grew up on a farm in the Midwest and risked everything to attend nursing school against her parents’ wishes. Her assigned roommate, Kitty, came to Iowa to escape her past in Atlanta but already had her sights set on Hollywood. The two, having little in common, became unlikely friends. Another new student, Jenny, completed their trio. Jenny had aspirations of becoming a doctor, but she knew that the combination of being a woman and being Black meant that the odds were stacked against her in the late 60s. 

The bond these three women formed at their Iowa nursing school would carry them through the years as their lives led them in different directions – from the jungles of Vietnam to the movie sets of Hollywood.

Book Summary

Joanna Teale has thrown herself into dawn-to-dusk work studying nesting birds in rural Illinois for her graduate program. It’s a great distraction from the loss of her mother and her own breast cancer battle.

Out of nowhere, a bruised girl named Ursa shows up. The girl claims to have been sent from the stars to witness five miracles but provides no other background information. Concerned about the bruises, Joanna lets the girl stay while enlisting the help of her reclusive neighbor to solve the mystery of where the girl came from.

Miracles occur over the summer, but as the end of summer and the fifth miracle approach, Ursa’s dangerous past also gets closer.

Book Summary

Lillian and Madison were boarding school roommates and friends from very different backgrounds. However, they’ve barely spoken since a scandal forced Lillian to leave school.

A decade later, Lillian’s life is not on the track she’d imagined for herself, so when she receives a call from Madison asking her to help care for Madison’s twin step-children who are moving in, Lillian figures she has nothing to lose.

But there is a catch: both kids spontaneously burst into flames when they are agitated. Madison needs to keep this fact somehow a secret while her husband runs for public office. Despite knowing nothing about raising kids, Lillian agrees to take on the role, and throughout one summer, she and the kids learn together how to keep their cool – literally. It may even prove to be the start of a whole new life for Lillian.

Book Summary

Eudora has lived a long, full life, but at the age of 85 she’s decided she’s done with it all. She’s already witnessed the indignities and suffering of old age, and she wants the end – her end – to be on her own terms. She’s called a clinic in Switzerland to set her plan into motion. But then she meets 10-year-old Rose.

Rose is rainbows and sparkles and cheer. And as much as Eudora just wants to be left alone, she can’t help but be drawn into her young neighbor’s world of adventure. Along with her affable and recently widowed neighbor Stanley, they join Rose for afternoon teas, shopping sprees, trips to the beach, and birthday celebrations. As they all await the arrival of Rose’s new baby sister, Eudora is secretly waiting for approval to go ahead with her plan.

As this unlikely trio grows closer, the joy that her new friends bring to her life forces Eudora to reconsider whether she’s really ready to say goodbye.

Book Summary

Widower Hubert Bird spends days at his English home, never seeing a single soul. However, his real life is much different than the stories he weaves on his phone calls with his daughter, Rose, who lives in Australia. He paints a picture of the ideal retirement life, full of friendship and fun.

But then he receives the big news that Rose is coming to visit. This leads to a seemingly impossible task – he must make his real life resemble his fake life before his daughter learns the truth. On his quest to find new friends, Hubert discovers that he’s not the only senior suffering in the loneliness epidemic.