Chosen Family

By Madeleine Gray

About The Book

'Madeleine Gray writes so acutely about the mess of desire and the human condition.' Nigella Lawson

A sexy, romantic, queer, epic literary novel for all readers by the award-winning author of the internationally acclaimed bestseller Green Dot.
 
Books about friendship are not often described as love stories, but this is one.

Nell Argall and Eve Bowman are both brilliant, odd and friendless. Traumatised in their first year of high school, their lives are changed forever when they meet.
 
Set in Sydney over eighteen years, Chosen Family follows Nell and Eve as they grow into themselves, as they both love and destroy each other. From school, to university, to careers, to motherhood, Nell’s and Eve’s is a relationship that is a life-raft that is also a poison apple that is also a Medusan stare, frozen in time.

Together, Nell and Eve are a double helix. Love, guilt, shame, joy – these emotions twist and turn between them. Can the wounds of adolescent betrayal ever really heal? Can we ever really understand what is going on in someone else’s head? And what’s love got to do, got to do with it? 


'Warning: Clear your schedule for the all-consuming read.' Books+Publishing
 

‘I inhaled this book, holding my breath at passages that felt ripped straight from my high school diary in 2007.’ LUCINDA PRICE (@Froomes), author of All I Ever Wanted Was to Be Hot

‘Hilarious and devastating ... This book is everything to me.’ SIANG LU, Miles Franklin-winning author of Ghost Cities


 

About The Author

Photograph © Zan Wimberley
Madeleine Gray

Madeleine Gray is a writer and critic from Sydney. Her first novel, Green Dot, was an acclaimed bestseller in Australia and the UK. In 2024, Madeleine won the ABIA for Matt Richell New Writer of the Year Award and the 2025 Russell Prize for Humour Writing. Madeleine-gray.com @madeleine_gray_ 

Product Details

  • Publisher: S&S/Summit Books (October 28, 2025)
  • Length: 368 pages
  • ISBN13: 9781761635724

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Raves and Reviews

'Warning: Clear your schedule for the all-consuming read that is Madeleine Gray’s second novel, Chosen Family ... an epic and thought-provoking tale about growing up and finding your people.'

– Books+Publishing

‘I inhaled this book, holding my breath at passages that felt ripped straight from my high school diary in 2007 . . . Madeleine Gray makes real the humiliation and exhilaration of teenage girlhood, and the ways it shapes the women, partners and parents we become.’ 

– LUCINDA PRICE (@Froomes), author of All I Ever Wanted Was to Be Hot

‘In Chosen Family, Madeleine Gray skilfully picks apart the ties that bind us, the ones that break and the ones that can be sewn back together. Told with Gray’s inimitable wit and verve, this is a story of queer love betrayal forgiveness sex family and above all friendship, in all its gory glory. Chosen Family has it all.’
 

– DOMINIC AMERENA, author of I Want Everything

‘I laughed, I cried, I fell in love with Chosen Family. Beautiful, devastating, hilarious and full of life.’ 

– JESSICA STANLEY, author of Consider Yourself Kissed

‘This novel is an x-ray of the savage and terrified minds of teenage girls. Even once we’re moving through adulthood, do those snarling younger selves stay trapped inside somewhere? Chosen Family is about two people reaching for love despite being burned by the world and each other. Gray is pulling all the strings: funny, devastating, shocking, heartbreaking.’ 

– BRI LEE, author of Seed

‘I loved Chosen Family’s capacious heart, and the vivacious kick of its language. Gray’s generosity to her characters doesn’t preclude a tough, comic astringency when it comes to revealing the foibles and posturing of her characters. Yet the mocking is never cruel: this is a novel that has a lot to say about the nature of love and of friendship. And just as importantly, a lot to say about the nature of desire and friendship. I started reading and couldn’t stop till I reached the final page. It is joyously good.’

– CHRISTOS TSIOLKAS, author of The In-Between

‘Hilarious and devastating. I was caught in the Medusa’s gaze of Chosen Family. This book is everything to me.’
 

– SIANG LU, Miles Franklin-winning author of Ghost Cities

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Chosen Family

By Madeleine Gray
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