Title
Chosen Family A Novel
Author
Madeleine Gray
Publication Date
Jul 14 2026
Rating
4.25 / 5 🌕🌕🌕🌕🌘
Image source: https://covers.bksh.co/cover731539-medium.png
Description
Nell Argall and Eve Bowman are both brilliant, odd, and friendless. When they meet on the brutal battlefield that is their posh all girls’ high school during their first year there, both their lives are changed forever. From school, to university, to careers, Nell and Eve’s relationship is a life raft that is also a poison apple that is also a Medusan stare, frozen in time.
When the passion, guilt, shame, and joy that perpetually twists and turns between them finally implodes, Nell abruptly walks away, leaving Eve alone at the helm of the gloriously unorthodox family they’ve built with their seven-year-old daughter, Lake. Eve finds herself left wondering: Can the wounds of adolescent betrayal ever really heal? Can we ever really understand what’s going on in someone else’s head? And what’s love got to do, got to do with it?
Written with Gray’s characteristic big-heartedness and dark wit, Chosen Family is a queer modern classic that reminds us again and again that sometimes the most fulfilling and life-saving relationships are the ones that are the hardest to define.
Awards
N/A Pending Release
Review
A heartbreaking tale of finding love, navigating trauma, and building a family when the blueprint you were handed was unreadable.
Eve and Nell remind me exactly what it was like navigating early life during a time period that was not ready for you to be who you knew yourself to be. I felt like I was back in middle and high school reading their early life. For those of us navigating the uneasy queer scaffolding that has become a sturdier foundation in our adulthood. Those internalizations are something many of us have had to unpack in extremely messy ways, just like Eve and Nell.
Their friendship throughout the years had me screaming in frustration and crying silently recalling similarities. This is a profoundly human novel that does not shy away from showing the struggle of building oneself up from multiple stumbles. It’s a coming of age story that is absolutely a must read for those navigating what it means to be queer, fighting for acceptance, love, and self-worth.
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