Holiday season is upon us and bringing all of the family drama with it! If you’re excited to be getting together with family or if this the year that you finally have an excuse to skip the drama and stay home with a cozy fire, we have the books about dysfunctional families to make you feel reassured that yours isn’t that crazy (or maybe it is, and these books can help you feel better that someone else is in the same boat). We’re ranking from the lightest kind of drama, where we end up laughing along with our eccentric uncles, to the bone chilling kind of madness that will keep you on the edge of your seat, hoping that the narrator makes it out alive. As Tolstoy’s saying goes, “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

Lighthearted Family Hijinks

• Musical Chairs by Amy Poeppel: Bridget wants to spend a quiet summer at her quirky farm house in Connecticut with her new boyfriend while she figures out the professional future of the trio she’s been a part of with her best friend since they graduated from Julliard. However, before she knows it her life is thrown into upheaval as her adult children, her father, a famous conductor, her sister, and the entire village seem to be convening on her and throwing her plans into merry disarray. -E

• I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith: Cassandra Mortmain is a mostly pragmatic seventeen year old, living in a falling down castle with her author father, artist’s model stepmother, dreamy older sister and younger brother, and recording their artistic adventures in her journal. When the owners of the castle come back to the estate, adventures ensue and the family will never be the same. -E

• Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan: Rachel is a middle class professor of economics at NYU, who was raised by a single mother and is madly in love with Nick, her boyfriend who is also a professor at NYU. When he takes her home to Singapore for his best friend’s wedding, she learns he is the heir apparent to one of the wealthiest and most private families in Asia. Between his disapproving mother and grandmother, competitive cousins and the extreme wealth, Rachel finds herself in way over her head. - D

Drama Filled Dysfunction

• Seating Arrangements by Maggie Shipstead: When Daphne Van Meter planned her wedding on their exclusive island off of Cape Cod, it was supposed to be a perfect weekend. But her father Winn, is going through a crisis, her sister has just had her heart broken by Winn’s rival’s son, and the wedding party seems determined to create drama. Add in some problematic New England sea life and the perfect wedding seems like it may become a total disaster. -E

• Commonwealth by Ann Patchet: This tale covers the multi generational repercussions of an impulsive affair and the way that it impacts the adults and children. When one of the children, Franny, begins an affair with a famous author and their family’s story become part of his latest novel, the family must confront their shared history and relationships. -E

• The Husband’s Secret by Liane Moriarty: Like all of Moriarty’s novels, the families that seem the most perfect often have the most going on below the surface. When Cecilia Fitzpatrick discovers a letter that her husband wrote to her, only to be read upon his death, she finds out that her entire life has been skating on top of a dark secret that could destroy the family that she has worked so hard to build. -E

• The People We Hate at the Wedding by Grant Ginder: When their wealthy, beautiful and perfect step sister invites siblings Alice and Paul to her wedding in London, they’re dreading the trip and everything associated with the weekend. -E

• I’ll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson: This book centers around two twins, Jude (a girl) and Noah (a boy), with the first half of the book set when they are thirteen, as told by Noah, and the second half set three years later, when their family has fallen apart and told from Jude’s perspective. The writing style is incredibly unique and the book truly feels like it’s written from inside the brains of the two characters. While this is YA, there are very mature themes and emotions as the siblings unravel and find their way back to each other. - D

• The Favorite Sister by Jessica Knoll: If you love the idea of a sister dynamic, set against the backdrop of a Bravo-style reality show, luxury fitness studios and a murder, then this is the book for you. When Brett, the owner of a group of popular spin studios and cast member of the reality show “Goal Diggers” has her sister join the cast of the show, everything changes and not for the better. How did Brett die and what happened leading up to it? - D

The Kind of Crazy that Makes Your Family Look Shockingly Normal

• The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls: Jeanette’s parents chose to live a very unconventional life, which began with exciting adventures for the kids but then took a dangerous turn into poverty and neglect in the mountains of West Virginia. Jeanette and her siblings had to fend for themselves, but they grew from the experience and made their way out, telling an amazing true story about survival and success in the face of innumerable challenges. -E

• Educated by Tara Westover: The memoir follows Tara from her upbringing in Idaho, with an extremist and paranoid father who doesn’t believe in schools, hospitals or the government, and keeps the large family extremely isolated, to her journey through the higher education system. Tara recounts the intense abuse and delusions of her family, and how as she pursues her education, she struggles to put distance between herself and the mountain home of her family. - D

• We Were Liars by E. Lockhart: Set on a private island off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard, the story follows Cadence Sinclair Eastman, who is the eldest grandchild in a very privileged family. When Cadence is 15 she suffers a brain injury and loses her memory. The book picks up two years later, when she returns to the island and is thrust back into the midst of the competitive and complicated dynamic between her mother and two aunts, and the dynamics between her cousins, all the while trying to figure out what happened to her two years before. - D