We Are the Brennans

From the moment Sunday Brennan gets into a bad accident, her scars on the inside are the ones that make you root for her healing. I’m a sucker for a family drama with a flawed woman at the center who must return home to make peace with her painful past. I couldn’t wait for all the tea to be spilled!

We Are the Brennans is the story of an Irish-Catholic family fractured by shame and secrets. When eldest daughter Sunday wrecks her car after a night of heavy drinking in LA, she sets her pride aside and moves back east to her family’s New York home. But her once tight-knit family is not as she left it: Her father is losing his memory, her brother is struggling to keep his pub afloat, and her ex-fiancé is now married to another woman. As Sunday tries to keep her head down and find her place in this changed home, tales of past mistakes and long-held secrets unfold, forcing the family to come together, rebuild, and find redemption.

Reading this moving novel made me feel like I was lurking in the Brennan home eavesdropping on what these characters said to themselves and each other when they thought no one else was around. This book explores the burdens we carry, sometimes to the grave, and the ripple effects they often have on generations to come. When the lies begin to unravel, you won’t be able to turn the pages fast enough to discover how this family can find forgiveness and be made whole again.

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.