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 so many of us have asked ourselves: do my parents have a favorite?

Vivienne and Patrick Fisher have done an excellent job raising their three daughters, 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 for a weeklong celebration of Vivienne’s seventieth birthday. But when Patrick’s reaction to a freak accident on the first day of the trip inadvertently reveals that he has a favorite daughter, no one is prepared for the shockwaves it sends through the family.

Decades-old unresolved sibling rivalries are suddenly unmasked. And be it newly uncovered smoking habits, ancient crushes, or private doubts about life decisions both big and small, no one’s secrets are safe. Still-tender wounds are reopened amid an audience of friends, husbands, grandchildren, and even coworkers, and as the family's past is re-written, they find themselves suddenly unmoored.

In a lively, poignant examination of memory, sisterhood, and family ties, Fran Littlewood reminds us just why it is that people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.


Genre: General Fiction

"Fran Littlewood has that incredible ability to write minute family dynamics with such insane accuracy and wit that it feels like she's been observing you and your family for years. It's the incisive level of detail she holds that makes The Favourite such a brilliant read with a concept that is both relatable and hilariously messy. This is a novel that captures the big and little things about siblings and family life that create the beautiful and fractured thing we call family. You'll want to pass this book onto your siblings and your parents, but be warned!!" - Ore Agbaje-Williams

"The Favourite is fabulous - sharp and funny and brilliantly claustrophobic on family dynamics and the way everyone is the main character and unreliable narrator of their own lives." - Lauren Bravo

"Fran Littlewood is an expert chronicler of family dynamics, and particularly the complex, competitive, and sparkling nature of sisterhood. Once I picked up THE FAVOURITE, I did not want to put it down until the last page was turned." - Lottie Hazell

"Now and again I read a book which is so FABULOUS I get queasy with jealousy. This is one such book. God, I wish I had written it. Funny, dark, fascinating and utterly UTTERLY convincing. On my QWJ (Queasy With Jealousy) Scale, I award it 16/10." - Marian Keyes

"Fran writes like a wilder, more breathless Claire Lombardo . . . A huge talent. Set over the course of a family reunion that goes very wrong, THE FAVOURITE is a layered, textured story about the reverberations of the past and secrets in a family, and a psychologically astute look at love and relationships. It's wonderful and very funny. You're in for such a treat. I LOVED it." - Georgina Moore

"The Favourite sizzles with familial tension that keeps the pages turning. A heartbreaking, candid, and witty take on family and their determination to f**k us up at every level possible. I loved it." - Justin Myers

"So sharp, funny and pacey, and incredibly well-observed, especially when it comes to the small but treacherous undercurrents that run beneath the family. I loved it." - Rebecca Wait

"THE FAVOURITE is an absolute knockout - ferociously observed, fantastically funny and deeply relatable. I could not stop reading this dark-edged, pacy, moving novel and was consumed with thoughts about the characters whenever it wasn't in my hands. Sensationally good." - Rosie Walsh