The Accidental Favorite

From the New York Times bestselling author of Amazing Grace Adams comes a wryly resonant and deeply moving family dramedy investigating the question every sibling has asked themselves: can parents really have favorites?

Vivienne and Patrick Fisher have done an excellent job raising their three girls, Alex, Nancy, and Eva. They’re well-adjusted women with impressive careers, caring partners, exciting hobbies, and sweet children. So it’s with great anticipation that three generations of Fishers gather at a beautiful glass house in the English countryside to spend a week celebrating Vivienne’s seventieth birthday. But when Patrick’s reaction to a freak accident on the first day of the trip inadvertently reveals who his favorite daughter is, no one is prepared for the shockwaves it will send through the family. Decades-old, unresolved sibling rivalries are suddenly unmasked.

Be it newly uncovered smoking habits, ancient crushes, or private doubts, no one’s secrets are safe as still-tender family wounds are reopened amid an audience of friends, husbands, grandchildren, and even coworkers. In a lively, poignant examination of memory, sisterhood, and family ties, Fran Littlewood reminds us again and again just why it is that people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.