Eight Books for Mother's Day

In Search of Us, by Ava Dellaira

Over at Kirkus, I've pulled together a TBR list of eight recent books with strong mother/child elements:

Mother’s Day is coming right up, so here are a few recent books that highlight mother/child relationships. As I needed a way to narrow down my options, I’m only highlighting books that I haven’t read or written about—which is why Elana K. Arnold’s Bat books and Elizabeth Acevedo’s The Poet X aren’t here even though they’d both be a perfect fit.

Sidenote: I also decided to only feature books in which the mothers are ALIVE, rather than books in which their death serves as some form of plot device. And after a little bit of poking around, I found that a disproportionate number of stories about mothers with sons featured—wait for it—dead mothers. I’d love to see actual data on this, to see if it really is some sort of hideous and insidious trend, or if there have just been a large crop of those stories recently.

On to the actual books!