This Is How It Always Is: A Novel
New York Times Bestseller
The Reese Witherspoon x Hello Sunshine Book Club Pick
"Every once in a while, I read a book that opens my eyes in a way I never expected." --Reese Witherspoon (Reese's Book Club x Hello Sunshine book pick)
Bustle's 17 Books Every Woman Should Read From 2017
PopSugar's Our Favorite Books of the Year (So Far)
Refinery29's Best Books of the Year So Far
BookBrowse's The 20 Best Books of 2017
Pacific Northwest Book Awards Finalist
The Globe and Mail's Top 100 Books of 2017
Longlisted for 2019 International DUBLIN Literary Award
"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 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.
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Community Reviews
The Resting Beach Face Book Club loved this book!
Claude wants to be a girl. Loving and supportive parents struggle with how to navigate the complexities of how to let Poppy (Claude) live her authentic life as well as ensure she is safe and secure. Rosie and Penn just want what is best for all their children. They are faced with many complicated choices! Not only are there decisions about when to make medical choices for a young child and how to ensure Poppy can live in a world that isn’t always accepting of someone who is different, but also making a choice for the betterment of one child that may have problematic effects on another child they love equally as much!
Perfect Book club book! So many nuance’s for discussion. How would you parent in a similar situation? Have you ever had to make a choice for one child knowing it may impact another child who you love equally as much? When is it ok to keep secrets or is keeping a secret never the best choice? These are just a few of the directions our book club discussion took us in while reviewing this book!
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