All Adults Here

Emma Straub's multigenerational novel opens with a death at a crosswalk that shocks small-town matriarch Astrid into honesty — about her adult children's secrets, about her own. The multi-POV structure is handled with real skill, and Straub's warm, humanistic prose makes even the messier characters genuinely likable. As literary fiction for book clubs, it earns its good reviews. That said, Penny readers should know going in: this book centers an LGBTQ storyline (Astrid comes out as bisexual; there is a transgender teen character), an unmarried pregnancy, and a subplot involving an online predator and a teenager. These elements are handled with care, but they make the book a poor fit for faith-conservative households. If that's not your concern, Straub delivers a genuinely readable family story.