This Is How It Always Is

By Laurie Frankel

Book Overview

New York Times Bestseller
The Reese Witherspoon x Hello Sunshine Book Club Pick
People Magazine's Top 10 Books of the year
The Globe and Mail's Top 100 Books of the year

"It made me laugh, it made me cry, it made me think."
--Liane Moriarty, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Big Little Lies

This is how a family keeps a secret . . . and how that secret ends up keeping them.

This is how a family lives happily ever after . . . until happily ever after becomes complicated.

This is how children change . . . and then change the world.

This is Claude. He's five years old, the youngest of five brothers, and loves peanut butter sandwiches. He also loves wearing a dress, and dreams of being a princess. When he grows up, Claude says, he wants to be a girl.

Rosie and Penn want Claude to be whoever Claude wants to be. They're just not sure they're ready to share that with the world. Soon the entire family is keeping Claude's secret. Until one day it explodes.

Laurie Frankel's This Is How It Always Is is a novel about revelations, transformations, fairy tales, and family. And it's about the ways in which this is how it always is: Change is always hard and miraculous and hard again, parenting is always a leap into the unknown with crossed fingers and full hearts, children grow but not always according to plan. And families with secrets don't get to keep them forever.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1250088569
• ISBN13: 9781250088567
• Release Date: January 2018
• Publisher: Holt Paperbacks
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.4" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

A book for every person who wants to know what a Trans Family experiences

This will appeal to the Clinicians, Parents of Trans Children, Individuals who want to understand what the Parenting experience is like and in my opinion anyone who wants to care! The writing style and rhythm of the writing takes a little getting used to, but it is well worth it! It may not bug you, but for me it was something to overcome. Ultimately, I felt like she was writing our lived story!

Not what it seems

I wanted to like this book so much. Unfortunately, the reality is that it's full of needlessly long-winded passages, poorly developed characters, the parents refer to their trans kid in uncomfortable ways, includes a ruthless and unnecessarily detailed description of violence against a trans woman, and a healthy dose of racism in part 3. It was focused on the parents virtue signaling rather than communicating with their daughter, the writing predictable and clumsy while trying to be quirky and endearing. It made me uncomfortable as a trans person to read, and I genuinely hope the author realizes it doesn't come off as the love letter to her trans daughter she intended. It had a few moments of coziness and endearing connection, but the bad, uninformed, and just plain tone-deafness of the novel really overtook the positives. I wouldn't recommend it to teach or entertain anyone

Incredible !

I have not even finished this book yet, and it is already one of the best books I have ever read. It is so important to read no matter what your age or your situation. It is elegantly written and so unapologetically honest.

Amazing

This is such a beautifully written story about a family’s love. I couldn’t put it down. Highly recommend! 💛