We all have baggage — but some of us have a full matching set labeled Dad. Whether he was absent, overbearing or just emotionally unavailable, the father figure looms large in literature.
These eight books dive headfirst into the complicated, messy, sometimes tender, but often painful relationships we have with our dads or the haunting absence of one. From poetic memoirs and raw confessionals to sharp fiction that slices right to the core, these stories explore how fathers shape us, scar us and sometimes surprise us.
Blue Sisters by Coco Mellors
Avery, Bonnie and Lucky Blue are scattered across the globe — London, LA and Paris — each trying to outrun their demons in style. But a year after the sudden death of their fourth sister, Nicky, they’re pulled back to New York to stop the sale of their childhood apartment. What follows is a reunion soaked in grief, secrets and sibling tension as they confront not just who they are now, but who they were forced to become growing up. Their father? Emotionally absent, coldly pragmatic and the kind of man who leaves scars without ever raising his voice. His legacy isn’t just the apartment — it’s the lifelong ache of never being truly seen. As the sisters unpack their trauma (and some buried secrets), it becomes clear: real estate isn’t the only thing that needs reckoning.
Daddy issue score: 🥃🧊🛋️💔— emotionally unavailable dad leaves behind one final fixer-upper: his daughters’ unresolved grief.
What My Father and I Don’t Talk About, edited by Michele Filgate
If you’ve ever stared into the middle distance after a phone call with your dad and thought, “Well, that was … something,” this anthology is for you. In this follow-up to the viral hit What My Mother and I Don’t Talk About, a stellar lineup of writers cracks open the silence surrounding their relationships with their fathers — whether loving, fraught, absent or somewhere in that vague, emotionally confusing middle ground. From stories of fathers who showed love through quiet acts of service to those who vanished entirely, this collection spans the awkward, the heartbreaking and the oddly funny. There are fix-it dads, emotionally distant dads, fiercely devoted dads and dads who haunt the page more than they ever showed up in real life. No two essays are the same, but together they map the unspoken territory between expectation and reality, longing and acceptance.
Daddy issue score: 🧩📞💭— this book doesn’t just unpack daddy issues; it hands you a key, a flashlight and a well-written map of the emotional minefield.
Intermezzo by Sally Rooney
Peter and Ivan Koubek are brothers, but that’s about where the similarities end. Peter’s a high-functioning Dublin lawyer with a pill habit and an emotional toolbox that seems to contain only denial. Ivan’s a brooding 22-year-old chess prodigy who thinks feelings are just poorly played moves. Their father’s recent death sends both spiraling in quietly chaotic ways — Peter juggles an old flame and a too-young girlfriend, while Ivan dives into a complicated relationship with an older woman just as lost as he is. As their lives fray and intertwine, grief cracks their facades wide open. What emerges is a quiet, aching exploration of masculinity, longing and the hollow spaces left behind by a father they never really got to understand.
Daddy issue score: ♟💊🧊— their father’s death is the starting gun for a slow emotional unraveling neither brother was remotely prepared for.
Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood
Patricia Lockwood’s father is a Catholic priest. Yes, really. He’s also a gun-loving, guitar-shredding, towel-optional man who found God on a submarine and somehow got Vatican clearance to skip the celibacy clause. Growing up in a Midwestern town haunted by nuclear waste and existential dread, Lockwood’s childhood was a cocktail of absurdity, fundamentalism and barely contained chaos. When a financial crisis sends her and her husband back to the family rectory, Lockwood must once again share space with her riddle-speaking mother and her holy/unholy father, all while unraveling the damage of her deeply religious upbringing. Priestdaddy is a riotous, razor-sharp memoir that ricochets between the hilarious and the haunting as Lockwood tries to reconcile family, faith and her irreverent truth.
Daddy issue score: ⛪🎸🚩— he’s holy, he’s unhinged, and he’s still the weirdest thing to come out of the Midwest since Fallout.
The Conditions of Will by Jessa Hastings
Georgia is basically a human lie detector — trained in body language and fluent in family dysfunction. She’s been happily exiled in London, far away from her old-money Southern roots and the suffocating expectations that come with them. But when her father dies, she’s dragged back to the land of bourbon, secrets and genteel passive aggression. Cue the emotional hurricane: Georgia’s only real ally is her brother (gay, alcoholic, and also holding a torch for Georgia’s unexpected new crush, Sam), and their recently deceased father? He’s still managing to cause chaos from beyond the grave, thanks to a suspicious will and a bequest to someone no one’s ever heard of. Georgia’s finely tuned BS radar is suddenly the family’s most valuable inheritance.
Daddy issue score: 💸🔍🫖💔— because nothing says “I love you” like dying and leaving your secrets in a manila envelope for your emotionally estranged daughter to decode at a funeral.
Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
Jeannette Walls grew up in a family that was equal parts brilliant and bonkers. Her father was a dazzling dreamer — sober, he could explain the stars and make life feel like an adventure. Drunk, he turned into a volatile mess who couldn’t hold down a job or a promise. Her mother? A self-declared “artist” who thought parenting was optional and dishes were a tool of the patriarchy. So the Walls kids raised themselves — scavenging food, dodging chaos and clinging to each other as their parents bounced from one broken dream to the next. Somehow, they made it out. Their parents? Not so much — they followed their grown children to New York and chose to live on the streets. The Glass Castle is a raw, luminous memoir about surviving a wild, untamed childhood with grit, wit and a deep (if complicated) love for the people who made it all so messy.
Daddy issue score: ✨🥃🏚️— he promised them the stars, but gave them instability. Still, his love was real — and so was the damage.
Betty by Tiffany McDaniel
Born in a bathtub in 1954, Betty Carpenter grows up in the wilds of Breathed, Ohio, the daughter of a Cherokee father with a poet’s soul and a white mother whose love comes with violence and silence. As one of eight siblings, Betty’s world is filled with beauty and brutality in equal measure. The Appalachian landscape becomes both her sanctuary and her battleground, especially when the ugliest truths about her family begin to surface. Betty adores her father, a storyteller who paints the world with myth and wonder — but even his love can’t shield her from the traumas that lurk inside their home. Poverty, racism and generational abuse threaten to consume everything. And yet, Betty endures. With fierce loyalty to her sisters and a pen that becomes her greatest weapon, she begins to bury the pain she can’t yet speak aloud — literally and figuratively.
Daddy issue score: 🌿📖💔— her father is her protector, her muse and her blind spot, making his love as complicated as the legacy she’s forced to write her way out of.
Educated by Tara Westover
Tara Westover didn’t step into a classroom until she was 17. Raised in the rugged mountains of Idaho by a doomsday-prepping, anti-establishment father and a mother who doubled as a midwife and herbalist, her childhood was built on isolation, fear and absolute loyalty to family — no matter the cost. Hospitals were forbidden. School was the devil’s playground. And violence, when it came, was met with silence. But Tara wasn’t willing to stay in the dark. She taught herself algebra, grammar and history — enough to get into Brigham Young University and eventually earn degrees from Harvard and Cambridge. Her journey is one of grit and transformation, but also profound heartbreak as she begins to see her family — and especially her father — through new eyes. Educated is a riveting memoir of self-invention and the painful cost of breaking free. It’s about the power of knowledge, the price of truth, and the impossible tug-of-war between love and survival.
Daddy issue score: 🔥📚💥— equal parts prophet and tyrant, her father built a fortress of fear around her childhood — and escaping it meant redefining everything, including herself.
