Blurb:

Who do you choose when the cracks begin to show?

When Lena buys DNA testing kits for her father Tom and twin sister Alison, she has no idea the gift will blow her family apart.

Tom, forced to admit that he isn’t his daughters’ biological father, is terrified they will reject him. Alison, trying to start a family with her wife, doesn’t think DNA should make a difference.

But Lena is obsessed with tracking down their biological father – and soon discovers they have a famous half-brother. Then she becomes obsessed with him, too…

From the Polari Prize-winning author of In at the Deep End, this is a hilarious and deeply moving novel about what it means to be a family.

Review:

Nuclear Family is another novel that I read for Sara and Cariad’s Weirdos Book Club. It’s probably not a book I would normally choose, but I am glad I read it and I really enjoyed it.

As you will see from the blurb, the focus of Nuclear Family is a particularly dilemma, and the two central characters, twins Lena and Alison, react very differently. Although you can never know how you’d react in a situation until you’ve experienced it, I’d like to think I’d react in the same way as Alison, and I did empathise more with her character. I felt like all the characters were very believable and Kate Davies’ writing took me to the heart of the Delancey family and made me feel like a part of it.

This novel has a number of layers and I loved Kate Davies’ exploration of the themes, including fertility, relationships, grief and LGBT issues. She has clearly researched these themes very thoroughly and it was interesting for me to learn more about procedures such as IVF, of which I had very little knowledge. Her writing is very sensitive and she is incredibly successful at conveying the emotions in the situation. She also adds a healthy dose of humour to her writing which makes both the characters and the story more relatable.

I have more of Kate Davies’ work on my TBR and I’m looking forward to reading it soon.

Nuclear Family is available from Amazon.