Michael Joseph The Favourite.

by Fran Littlewood

Michael Joseph The Favourite ABISBOOK Michael Joseph.

400 pages, Hardcover

Published June 12, 2025

Reviews

[Jo Fleming · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was enjoyable and entertaining, but it definitely feels longer than it needed to be to tell this story, like there was a word count to meet.

I thought it accurately represented how our families can often bring out the worst in us, and how we can often revert back to a younger, immature version of ourselves around them

[Liz · Rating 2 out of 5]

Average.
The changing POVs and toing and froing in time were annoying.

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not sure why this book has such a low rating, I enjoyed it a lot. I also loved the nod to the authors previous book.

[Golightly · Rating 4 out of 5]

A witty, messy, raw, layered family story that lingers long after the last page. The Fishers look like the perfect family, gathered in a stunning glasshouse holiday home to celebrate Vivienne’s 70th. But when an accident hints their dad may have had a “favourite” daughter, long-buried tensions bubble up.

The story flicks between childhood flashbacks and present-day drama, each memory is intentional, laying breadcrumbs toward what’s to come.

Middle child Nancy is my favourite of the three sisters- fierce, blunt, unafraid. But Alex and Eva’s struggles cut deep too, but at times their behaviour felt immature for forty-somethings…

What I loved most was how the book reflects on birth order, parental expectations, and the way eldest sisters often bear the weight of being “the other mother.” It’s also a reminder of how silence can split families wide open and how honesty, however hard, is the only glue that lasts.

“This is the vernacular of sisters. It’s childish and absurd and funny and infuriating and painful, and it’s beautiful.”

“Vivienne loves the fact of it — that they have each other, no matter what. It makes her less afraid.”

[Ari Imi02 · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book seemed really wishy washy and the narration seemed unstable. I hated the constant switch in PoV and voice, the time jumps… everything, it just felt dizzying, like an oncoming migraine. DNF after page 57, attempted to skim read but where that felt like a huge waste of my time, despite being unemployed at present, in which very little books have invoked from me. The whole plot just seems immature, that of which stems from the stubbornness of a petulant child, not a middle aged bloody women.

[Haxxunne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Family secrets and sibling rivalries laid bare
—
Home is where they have to take you in. When three sisters in their 40s, Alex, Nancy and Eva, are joined by their families at a remote designer house in the countryside to celebrate a new baby and their mother’s seventieth birthday, no-one knows what fractures will be revealed, what secrets uncovered at last, and what truths have always rung true. With husbands, partners and children of all ages in tow, the designer house made entirely of glass is not the place to hide anything from each other. After a freak accident appears to reveal who is their father’s favourite amongst the three sisters, a week cooped up together will force them to reckon with everything they’ve ever held back, every little worry that shapes their days, and the seemingly inevitable choices that they have to make.

At first, the metaphors are too clearly outlined for you to ignore: a tree falls in a forest, a huge house made entirely of glass—one of the characters even talks about people in glass houses—but they’re actually very clever red herrings to distract you from the real story behind the story, the secret that isn’t revealed until deep in the third act, even as a bigger disaster lands where it can do the most damage, do the most good. I’m not sure if I liked any of the characters, and some are designed for you to hate (or at the very least make you cringe), but I really liked how, by the end, everybody’s facade is stripped to the bone and the real relationships are reset, and with hope for the future.

[Tara Blais Davison · Rating 3 out of 5]

3/5 I found this book confronting. As the youngest of five with three much older sisters, and a brother a full decade older I found it hard to relate to the closeness of the three girls. There were obvious undercurrents to their interactions but the implied closeness and non-transactional caring seemed foreign to me.
In this narrative, the notion of the girls’ father having a favourite could be explained away as a misinterpretation of an action born out of a desire to redeem himself for a past transgression but which had built itself into family lore that tainted all future events.
These uneducated calculations often come about when the family dynamic is steeped in stoicism or emotional/mental instability and so the misconception grows into something destructive.
This novel explores the bounds of this destruction and how it catapults the various players in unexpected directions.

[Sarah Burton · Rating 3 out of 5]

It took me a while to get in to the flow of the writing and how the chapters worked together, but once I had figured that out the story became easier to follow and to link the past with the present.
An interesting but complicated story line.

[~Emmy~ REYN · Rating 4 out of 5]

Right. I'm usually a 5 Star Giver All Round.
I pushed really hard through halfway.
I iust tried my little heart out to to not DNF.
And I Feel that there was some Unresolved Issues.

I obviously Loved the Family Connections and the HEA - I just fell short on a few areas.

[Tamsin · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5*

[Sara · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

[Kirsten Mackie · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5*