9 Heartfelt Familial Books Like Hello Beautiful

When he is expelled from boarding school, Gabriel Gibbs is sent to live with his older brother Spencer in New York City of the 1950s. He expects to be punished and forced into a boring life, but instead he finds himself at the center of a dazzling world of parties and creativity. Amid cocktail-fuelled soirees and the haze of cigar smoke, Gabriel sets his sights on Lillian Dawes, a beautiful but elusive regular among this scene. But his brother is also enthralled by her...

Maggie, Eliza, and Tricia Sweeney grew up in the idyllic seaside town of Southport, Connecticut. Their lives were pretty much perfect, but their beloved mother's death from cancer 15 years prior left them devastated and splintered. They drifted apart, bound together only by their father Bill Sweeney, a writer and professor adored by the literary world. When Bill dies unexpectedly, his daughters return to their childhood home and are forced to confront their pasts, present, and uncertain future. 

It grows all the more complicated when a stranger crashes the party and reveals that she too is a Sweeney sister. Serena Tucker, a journalist, learned she had a 50% genetic match with her childhood neighbor Maggie. Now, she wants to find out more about Bill, her biological father, and her unexpected siblings.

We all know the story of the March sisters, the beloved and oft-imitated heroines of Louisa May Alcott’s most famous novel, Little Women. We also know that Amy March is often considered readers' least favorite sister. In The Other Alcott, Elise Hooper imagines the life of the woman who was the inspiration for Amy: Alcott's sister May. May Alcott was a dedicated artist and the extrovert of her clan. When Louisa's book Little Women becomes a cultural phenomenon and helps to ease the family's financial burdens, the Alcotts are thrilled. So is May, but she can't help but wonder if selfish, spoiled, and childish Amy March is what her beloved sister really thinks of her. May wants to be more than Amy, so she decides to find her true self away from the shadow of Little Women.

Virginia Loftin wants to become a celebrated writer and marry her best friend, Charlie. But then Charlie proposes to someone else, leaving her devastated. Ginny becomes obsessed with rewriting her past, creating a version of her story as she thinks it should have been. Still, success as a novelist eludes her. Things change when she attends a salon hosted in the Fifth Avenue mansion of John, a handsome author and friend of her brother. Amongst fellow artists, Ginny finds her voice. But soon she must choose between a new life with John, a man who seems to good to be true, and her long-held feelings for Charlie.

Charity lives in the small New England village of North Dormer. Born into poverty, she was rescued by a lawyer named Royall and now lives in comfort as his beloved ward. But the residents of North Dormer won't let Charity forget her dishonorable origins, and she feels trapped by the restrictions of this rigid and old-fashioned life. Her boring job in the local library is interrupted one day by the arrival of a young visiting architect, the handsome and sophisticated Lucius Harney. He seems like he could be the way out of North Dormer, but Royall and the village are hiding secrets that could change everything for her.

At the end of the Second World War, Cyril Conroy decides to make a major real estate investment. His first order of business is to buy the Dutch House, a lavish estate in the wealthy suburbs just outside of Philadelphia, a move that he hopes will lift the next generations of his family into the upper-middle class. But this decision sets in motion the undoing of everything he holds dear. Danny and Maeve, Cyril's children, are exiled by their stepmother from the house where they grew up. Now, they're forced back into a life of poverty, left with nothing to believe in except one another. Set over the course of five decades, The Dutch House delves into how the bonds of family are tested in the face of insurmountable change.

Barbara Kingsolver won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction with her radical but faithful retelling of Charles Dickens' David Copperfield. Her plucky protagonist is a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer in the rural plains of Appalachia. With no money, a dead father, and little prospects in life, Demon, as he is known, is determined to survive. But life throws everything at him, from the troubles of foster care to the devastation of the opioid crisis. 

Esteban Trueba is the tempestuous patriarch of his large and loving family. He's a proud but volatile man with a hunger for power, a drive that is tempered only by his love for his wife Clara, a beautiful woman with a mysterious connection to the spirit world. When their daughter Blanca embarks on a forbidden love affair, Esteban's fury is softened by the unexpected gift of Alba, his granddaughter. Having inherited the spirit of both preceding generations, Alba will lead her family and her country into a new future through revolution and the ultimate sacrifice.

In 1985, Yale Tishman, the development director for an art gallery in Chicago, is about to pull off the deal of his career by acquiring an incredible collection of paintings from the '20s. But amid his professional triumphs, Yale's life is overwhelmed by the trauma of the AIDS epidemic. His friends are dying one by one, leaving Yale increasingly alone save for Fiona, the little sister of his late friend Nico. 

30 years later, Fiona is in Paris to look for her estranged daughter who fell in with a cult. While staying with an old friend, a famous photographer who documented the AIDS crisis, she finds herself forced to confront the impact that the disease had on her life. Both she and Yale were forced to survive amid a devastating illness that the U.S. government ignored, and the trauma lingers under the skin every single day.