We Are the Brennans
Right up there - competing for my book of the year, in the thumping good read category. Great family story - you’ll be rooting for every Brennan, even if they make you nuts (sounds like real families). I knew I’d recommend this one from the first page, but I could NOT put it down. I was all in for all Lange’s characters and you will be too. See, Sunday Brennan has been living in Los Angeles for the last five years after running away from her family and her high school sweetheart in her lovely, 300-year old, rural-New York small town. Of course, dad and two brothers run the landmark family pub, and her ex is still her brother’s best friend and pub co-owner. She broke his heart and is keeping secrets that could tear them all apart, but she's not the only one with skeletons in the closet. When an accident forces her home, and the family comes together after so many years, she and everyone will have no choice but to finally confront all that has been unsaid. THUMPING good. - Sandy
In the vein of Mary Beth Keane's Ask Again, Yes and Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney's The Nest, Tracey Lange's We Are the Brennans explores the staying power of shame--and the redemptive power of love--in an Irish Catholic family torn apart by secrets.
When twenty-nine-year-old Sunday Brennan wakes up in a Los Angeles hospital, bruised and battered after a drunk driving accident she caused, she swallows her pride and goes home to her family in New York. But it's not easy. She deserted them all--and her high school sweetheart--five years before with little explanation, and they've got questions.
Sunday is determined to rebuild her life back on the east coast, even if it does mean tiptoeing around resentful brothers and an ex-fiancé. The longer she stays, however, the more she realizes they need her just as much as she needs them. When a dangerous man from her past brings her family's pub business to the brink of financial ruin, the only way to protect them is to upend all their secrets--secrets that have damaged the family for generations and will threaten everything they know about their lives. In the aftermath, the Brennan family is forced to confront painful mistakes--and ultimately find a way forward, together.