**Jewish Culture and Adoptee Experiences: A Collection of Powerful Contemporary Books**

For me, teaching about Jewish culture has been incredibly eye-opening, especially with authors who share their personal experiences as adoptees. One of my favorite books by an author named her is "This is My Favorite Book By Her" - it's just so intense, like it's sad, but really good. The intensity of the book is not diminished by its emotional impact.

Next up, we have "Far From the Tree" by Robin Benway, which I affectionately refer to as the "Parenthood TV Show in a Book." I don't know why I love this show so much, though; it's just incredibly sad. But that's what makes this book so compelling - it delves into themes of adoption and found family in a way that is both heart-wrenching and ultimately uplifting.

The story follows three characters: Grace, Maya, and Joaquin, each with their own unique experiences as adoptees. Grace is the only child who was adopted at birth and discovers that she's the middle child of a family she never knew existed. Maya lives in a house with her biological sisters and struggles to come to terms with being an outsider within her own family. Meanwhile, Joaquin bounces from foster home to foster home before finally finding stability with loving parents who are uncertain about their ability to keep him.

As the story unfolds, each of these characters comes together to learn that they share a common mother - and thus, discover their shared heritage as siblings. This book is ultimately about found family at its core, showing that just because our family isn't defined by blood ties or traditional notions of parenthood, we can still find love, support, and connection with one another.

One author who has made significant contributions to this theme is Cynthia Hand, whose novel "The Last Will of Freda at Night" explores the complexities of adoption and identity. In this book, Cassandra discovers a cache of letters from her biological mother that reveal a rich history of love, loss, and sacrifice. As she delves deeper into these letters, Cassandra grapples with questions about her own identity, family dynamics, and the reasons behind her adoption.

Hand's writing is both poignant and evocative, weaving together a narrative that is as much about the journey of self-discovery as it is about the power of love and connection. By exploring themes of faith, family, and belonging, Hand has crafted a story that is both deeply personal and universally relatable.

Finally, I'd like to recommend "Little Do We Know" by Tamiya Ireland Stone, which was published three years ago and has left an indelible mark on my heart. While not as overtly intense as some of the other books on this list, "Little Do We Know" tackles themes of faith and identity with remarkable nuance.

The story follows Hannah and Emery, two former best friends who find themselves drawn into a complicated web of relationships and family secrets. As they navigate their way through grief, forgiveness, and ultimately, redemption, these characters come to realize that true friendship can be a source of healing and strength.

This book is also notable for its thoughtful exploration of faith and spirituality, as Hannah's father struggles to maintain his own sense of purpose in the face of family turmoil. Through her relationships with Emery and others, Hannah begins to question everything she thought she knew about her faith - and finds a new path forward that is both authentic and transformative.

Throughout these books, I've been struck by their common themes of identity, community, and resilience. Each author has brought their unique voice and perspective to the table, crafting stories that are both deeply personal and universally relatable. Whether you're an adoptee, someone who's struggled with faith or family dynamics, or simply looking for a compelling narrative about human connection - these books are sure to resonate with you.

**Recommendation**

If you're interested in exploring more books about adoption, identity, and found family, I'd be happy to recommend some additional titles. Each of these books offers a unique perspective on the complexities of human experience - and has left an indelible mark on my heart.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhello everyone today i am here to film some of my favorite hard-hitting y contemporaries recently i did a video talking about my favorite white categories and they were kind of the romance genre super cute ones but i do enjoy those but i've also really enjoyed some really hard-hitting ones and what does that mean that means more intense that the subject matter is just a lot more intense it's not romance or cuteness at the core it's a lot more serious subject matter you know they're books that will more than likely make you cry i enjoy reading them from time to time when i'm in the mood because i have to be in a certain mood to read a sad book because that's just how i am but i have read a lot of really hard-hitting really good ones over the past few years that i wanted to talk about so yeah let's get into these obviously there's gonna be trigger warnings for a lot of these a lot of these talk about different um subject matters there's gun violence there's death of like a loved one maybe a family member as far as like getting ill as well there's just a lot of there's rape culture there's just a lot of different things that are involved in all of these books so just be warned going into that but nevertheless all of these books have really affected me in some sort of way taught me something and they're just amazing so let's get into it first book i want to talk about is one that i've read like the longest ago but it's still one of my favorite hard-hitting ones it may have been my first hard-hitting one i've read i don't know that is second chance summer by morgan matson so if you don't know morgan matson really writes a lot of fluffy summary why contemporary and by the cover of this you would think that is the same thing no no no it's quite different yes it is cute it does have a lot of serious matter at it at the core of it so in this book we found a character named taylor who has um she usually goes to their summer house with her parents every year but she hasn't gone in so many years and her parents decide hey let's go for one last summer and i don't want to spoil it for you i'm pretty sure you learned that one of her parents is not doing physically well and so it's kind of like their last summer together so taylor goes there she also runs into kind of her first like first crush named henry and so this summer is all about second chances for her to reconnect with her family with her friends she once knew and it's just a beautifully told book that really focuses on family on friendship and things like that it will probably make you cry but it's one of my favorite morgan matson books honestly like it was just really emotionally beautiful next up we have one of my favorites a lot of these are my favorites a heart and a body in the world by deb coletti i read this a few years ago and it blew me away like it was it's a beautifully written book first of all and it covers a lot of really serious subject matters so in this book we follow a character named annabelle whose life was really great she had a lot of friends things were going in school and then something tragic to her happened and as a reader you do not know you have to kind of go through the book with annabelle to figure out exactly what happened so now annabelle is very different this event has really shaped her and really traumatized her if you will and so she runs she's a good runner she runs all the time and she decides hey i'm gonna run from like seattle to washington dc or it's like this big thing that's happening in washington dc she's going to do it to make a difference and so like she kind of pairs up with her granddad who has rv and so her brother maps out their destination so she runs a while for a few she runs a while each day then you know has dinner with a grandpa and sleeps in the rv and they drive and you know more running and it's just a very beautifully told book like each chapter begins with like different things about the heart if you will and it's just you figure out a lot about it i will say i don't want to spoil it for you for the subject matter because you don't know but i feel like it could be a big trigger warning so it is important to know that so this book does talk a lot about gun violence and how that's really affected annabelle so i'm sorry i spoiled it for you but i do think that's important to know in case that triggers you understandably so but the way deb palette writes it the way annabelle has to go through this it's just beautiful and sad and just really intense honestly except we have a recent read that i read did i read it last year i think it may have been one of my final reads of the year and that is long way down by jason reynolds this is actually the graphic novel version of it and it's illustrated by danica noregoff no nov hopefully pronounced that correctly i haven't read the actual book the actual book is told in verse this one is honestly also told in verse but it's with pictures if you can't tell which i think really resonated with the story so this book we fought character character will whose life has really been kind of hard he's lost his dad to gun violence his uncle to gun violence he just lost his brother at the beginning this gun violence and he there's a set of rules that his family has always taught him like the men and his family like you know you know don't snitch don't tell anybody and like get revenge and so he decides i'm gonna get revenge on the guy i think that killed my brother and so he goes to this guy's um apartment place gets in the elevator and all of a sudden the elevator starts going down and on each floor somebody from his past that has actually passed away gets on the floor his uncle his dad his brother other people that have lost their lives to gun violence and the whole book kind of ends with uh will he kind of fall in the same trajectory path as these other people that do gun violence or will he kind of start a new path and not go towards it and obviously it talks about gun violence if you can't tell and it really teaches you and i just love the way jason reynolds wrote this he wrote it so eloquently eloquently is that the right word but it was very intense you really saw a lot of different things that have gone that has gone on will's life that has shaped him to who he's been and who he's going to be and he has this big decision of whether or not to go through with this and the book does end up on a cliffhanger if you will you don't quite know what exactly is going to happen but i gosh this was an intense read but it was amazing then we have the names they gave us by emery lord oh this one's sad so this book we found a character named lucy who everything's going really good for lucy she's about to be a senior she's like the captain of the swim team now her mom has defeated cancer like everything's going really good for her her dad's a pastor and then she learns that her mom's cancer has returned and so what happens every summer is usually lucy goes with her parents this big church camp and things like that her mom wants her to go to the camp across like the lake where the troubled teens kind of go she wants her to be a counselor there because her mom was one there and she's learned a lot from that and so i want you to grant me this wish i want you to go over to this um camp but just learn from these teens that have had it really a lot they've had a lot more struggles than you have and just kind of learn from that and so she does that begrudgingly because she does not want to leave her mom obviously because she's sick she meets new friends she learns that about what's happening and it's just gosh it's a book that's hard to read because cancer is a subject near and dear to my life as well like honestly when i hear a tagline of a book that has cancer in it i kind of stray away from that because i've experienced it a lot my life i also have really really bad medical anxiety so i'm just like but it was a beautiful book i'm not gonna lie to you a lot of books like that are but you just have to be emotionally ready for it and i really loved how this book also talked about faith because it's a hard thing to it's a hard thing to read as a faith-based person if you don't know i am religious i am christian and i'm very you know grounded in my faith and so whenever i hear a book it's kind of about that i'm like oh are they gonna you know paint it in a bad way but i really love the way emory lord painted it she painted it very realistic for me because lucy struggled with their faith as everyone does in their faith journey at some point so just you know have the tissues ready for this one and all of them probably next up we have one that's like not quite super super heavy but i still wanted to mention it and that is eliza and her monsters by francesca zappia this booklet fall character name you guessed it eliza and she has this really popular web like series yeah webcomic called monstrous c like it is insanely popular i don't know what platform it's on but let's just say like millions like look for it every single week and she keeps her identity hidden of who she actually is while writing it and then she meets a new guy at school when in wallace who actually she learns is monstrous c's biggest fan fiction writer and um so wallace thinks eliza is just another fan of the comic little does he know that she actually is creating the thing and a friendship relationship kind of really sparks from there so the heaviness part of this book comes from eliza a lot of struggles a lot with anxiety social anxiety pressure with her family with anxiety of trying to keep you know her identity separate from who she is online where she's very open and free to express herself where she's at in school where she's very quiet so this book does talk a lot about anxiety it's a person that struggles with anxiety that takes medication um i identified a lot with this book and i think it could help out with somebody and just maybe somebody would feel seen with this book with anxiety but it does have a lot of lightness in it with um their relationship and cuteness but it does strip but it does talk a lot about anxiety as well which is very important and also a very serious topic clap when you land by elizabeth acevedo is oh it's a beautiful book it's a book told in verse elizabeth acevedo is known for that i've read two of her other books one of them is in verse and they're both beautiful as well but clap when you land has got to be my favorite by her we follow two characters one named camino and one named yahira so they both lead very different lives so yahira lives in new york she's got a great mom she's got a great dad she goes to a great school everything's going great for her but one thing she doesn't love is that her dad always goes away for the summer never really tells his family where he's going to like visit his brother but she never really gets in contact with him but she just he leaves every summer then on the flip side we have camino who lives in the dominican republic with her grandmother her mom has passed away and she really loves the summers where her dad comes to visit putting two and two together quite yet and so this summer she's very excited for him to come and he doesn't he actually dies in a plane crash on his way to there basically through a whole turn of events kamino and yahiro realize that they share a father and their lives are really changed from that because they never even knew each other existed and so they kind of have to navigate this new relationship of sisterhood um with their father just passing away and it's just a really hard hitting book totem verse that has so many really impactful verses and just it's beautiful all around and it's it's a book that i think everyone should read you'll get a lot from it you'll learn a lot from it either way everyone should read this book it's beautifully told very impactful very intense just gosh i just i wish elizabeth vader wrote like a book every month i would read them all the time like they're that amazing and we have you'll miss me when i'm gone by rachel and solomon so this is the first book i read by her and rachel and solomon writes really kind of hard-hitting books um except her latest release which was like totally the flip side so in this book we follow twin sisters and they don't get along they really don't something that's happened to them something that happened in them a while ago has just really affected their relationship but their mother has huntington's disease they learn that when they're 18 they can take this blood test to figure out if they will also have huntington's disease because i believe it's shared in the bloodstream and jeans and all that kind of stuff and so it's not to spoil anything one of them learns that they are going to have it and one of them doesn't so you really get to set you really get to figure out both these sisters how they're both very different and they're both like coping with their diagnosis and also coping with their mom as well and their dad they're also jewish they also are jewish as well so you learn a lot about the jewish religion and culture and gosh it was so it was a sad like gosh it's sad but she writes amazingly like i love how each one of her books also teaches a lot about the jewish culture because i don't know much about it but i this is my favorite one by her it's just so intense like it's sad but it was really good next up we have far from the tree by robin benway so this book is i call it the parenthood tv show in a book i don't know why i love that show can't re-watch it though because it's so freaking sad but this book we learn so in this book we have three characters to read about grace maya and joaquin and so each of them lead very different lives grace is the only child who was adopted at birth and she discovers that she is the middle child of a family that she never even knew then we have maya who who is also adopted lives in a house with all of her sisters that are biological and she really struggles with that and then we have joaquin who kind of bounces from foster home to foster home and he's finally at a home where he really loves the parents but he doesn't know if they're going to keep him and so basically they all learn that they share the same mother and so they all learn that they're together so how they learn together is grace actually is the one that's adopted that's the only child she actually becomes pregnant at 60 and decides to give her baby up for adoption and so going through that she knows that she's adopted she decides hey let me research some and then she finds maya and joaquin and so they kind of go on the search for their birth mother and whoo goodness me it's a book that's about found family at its core which is amazing it's a book that shows you that just because your family's not like blood family biological things like that they're still your family and it's just it was beautiful to read about ah this one was so sad but also amazing as these siblings found each other and found their groove with each other just a beautiful book about found family the how and the why by cynthia hands so this book has such a cool premise so we follow a character named cassandra who um has an amazing family a loving father a loving dad and she knows that she is adopted and so i think like on her birthday she decides that hey i'm gonna try to figure out where i came from who are my parents and so she finds these letters that her mom her biological mom actually wrote to her when she was still in the womb and she learned so much about her mom like it's basically goes back and forth of her mom when she was pregnant with cassandra and then cassandra now discovering all these things and it's just i love the way that she wrote it of how you learned why her mom decided to give her up for adoption the journey she's gone through it and how cassandra is dealing with it now it's just another book again about found family about adoption and just the beauty the beautifulness of it i it's just beautiful i loved it a ton the last book i would recommend is little do we know by tamiya ireland stone i read this like three years ago i loved it i don't think it's as tense as the other ones but i still think it's a like a serious subject matter i don't know why i did that but whatever this book follows two characters named hannah and emery who are next door neighbors and ex-best friends something happened you don't know what and they both are very different and so um emery is trying to you know get into ucla and trying to make the most of her must before she has um left with her boyfriend meanwhile hannah's strong faith is shaken and when her family's financial problems come to light and so she kind of turns to emery and so this book again is a lot about faith because um hannah's fam hannah's father is a pastor and she struggles a lot with her faith in this book and she has to you know kind of navigate that and how her friendship with emory really kind of helps with that and it's a book all about friendship like friendship that's kind of broken apart but maybe coming back together again also about faith family just it's a beautiful book it's not quite as intense as all the other ones but it's still kind of more intense i would say than like your regular like cutesy fluffy book because it's mostly about like family and friend relationships at its core those are all of my favorite hard-hitting y contemporary books quite a lot of them but i really love each of them for each different ways obviously and yeah i would love to hear if you've read any of these if you like them a lot if they impacted you as much as they impacted me i would love to hear thank you guys so much for watching and i will see my next video byehello everyone today i am here to film some of my favorite hard-hitting y contemporaries recently i did a video talking about my favorite white categories and they were kind of the romance genre super cute ones but i do enjoy those but i've also really enjoyed some really hard-hitting ones and what does that mean that means more intense that the subject matter is just a lot more intense it's not romance or cuteness at the core it's a lot more serious subject matter you know they're books that will more than likely make you cry i enjoy reading them from time to time when i'm in the mood because i have to be in a certain mood to read a sad book because that's just how i am but i have read a lot of really hard-hitting really good ones over the past few years that i wanted to talk about so yeah let's get into these obviously there's gonna be trigger warnings for a lot of these a lot of these talk about different um subject matters there's gun violence there's death of like a loved one maybe a family member as far as like getting ill as well there's just a lot of there's rape culture there's just a lot of different things that are involved in all of these books so just be warned going into that but nevertheless all of these books have really affected me in some sort of way taught me something and they're just amazing so let's get into it first book i want to talk about is one that i've read like the longest ago but it's still one of my favorite hard-hitting ones it may have been my first hard-hitting one i've read i don't know that is second chance summer by morgan matson so if you don't know morgan matson really writes a lot of fluffy summary why contemporary and by the cover of this you would think that is the same thing no no no it's quite different yes it is cute it does have a lot of serious matter at it at the core of it so in this book we found a character named taylor who has um she usually goes to their summer house with her parents every year but she hasn't gone in so many years and her parents decide hey let's go for one last summer and i don't want to spoil it for you i'm pretty sure you learned that one of her parents is not doing physically well and so it's kind of like their last summer together so taylor goes there she also runs into kind of her first like first crush named henry and so this summer is all about second chances for her to reconnect with her family with her friends she once knew and it's just a beautifully told book that really focuses on family on friendship and things like that it will probably make you cry but it's one of my favorite morgan matson books honestly like it was just really emotionally beautiful next up we have one of my favorites a lot of these are my favorites a heart and a body in the world by deb coletti i read this a few years ago and it blew me away like it was it's a beautifully written book first of all and it covers a lot of really serious subject matters so in this book we follow a character named annabelle whose life was really great she had a lot of friends things were going in school and then something tragic to her happened and as a reader you do not know you have to kind of go through the book with annabelle to figure out exactly what happened so now annabelle is very different this event has really shaped her and really traumatized her if you will and so she runs she's a good runner she runs all the time and she decides hey i'm gonna run from like seattle to washington dc or it's like this big thing that's happening in washington dc she's going to do it to make a difference and so like she kind of pairs up with her granddad who has rv and so her brother maps out their destination so she runs a while for a few she runs a while each day then you know has dinner with a grandpa and sleeps in the rv and they drive and you know more running and it's just a very beautifully told book like each chapter begins with like different things about the heart if you will and it's just you figure out a lot about it i will say i don't want to spoil it for you for the subject matter because you don't know but i feel like it could be a big trigger warning so it is important to know that so this book does talk a lot about gun violence and how that's really affected annabelle so i'm sorry i spoiled it for you but i do think that's important to know in case that triggers you understandably so but the way deb palette writes it the way annabelle has to go through this it's just beautiful and sad and just really intense honestly except we have a recent read that i read did i read it last year i think it may have been one of my final reads of the year and that is long way down by jason reynolds this is actually the graphic novel version of it and it's illustrated by danica noregoff no nov hopefully pronounced that correctly i haven't read the actual book the actual book is told in verse this one is honestly also told in verse but it's with pictures if you can't tell which i think really resonated with the story so this book we fought character character will whose life has really been kind of hard he's lost his dad to gun violence his uncle to gun violence he just lost his brother at the beginning this gun violence and he there's a set of rules that his family has always taught him like the men and his family like you know you know don't snitch don't tell anybody and like get revenge and so he decides i'm gonna get revenge on the guy i think that killed my brother and so he goes to this guy's um apartment place gets in the elevator and all of a sudden the elevator starts going down and on each floor somebody from his past that has actually passed away gets on the floor his uncle his dad his brother other people that have lost their lives to gun violence and the whole book kind of ends with uh will he kind of fall in the same trajectory path as these other people that do gun violence or will he kind of start a new path and not go towards it and obviously it talks about gun violence if you can't tell and it really teaches you and i just love the way jason reynolds wrote this he wrote it so eloquently eloquently is that the right word but it was very intense you really saw a lot of different things that have gone that has gone on will's life that has shaped him to who he's been and who he's going to be and he has this big decision of whether or not to go through with this and the book does end up on a cliffhanger if you will you don't quite know what exactly is going to happen but i gosh this was an intense read but it was amazing then we have the names they gave us by emery lord oh this one's sad so this book we found a character named lucy who everything's going really good for lucy she's about to be a senior she's like the captain of the swim team now her mom has defeated cancer like everything's going really good for her her dad's a pastor and then she learns that her mom's cancer has returned and so what happens every summer is usually lucy goes with her parents this big church camp and things like that her mom wants her to go to the camp across like the lake where the troubled teens kind of go she wants her to be a counselor there because her mom was one there and she's learned a lot from that and so i want you to grant me this wish i want you to go over to this um camp but just learn from these teens that have had it really a lot they've had a lot more struggles than you have and just kind of learn from that and so she does that begrudgingly because she does not want to leave her mom obviously because she's sick she meets new friends she learns that about what's happening and it's just gosh it's a book that's hard to read because cancer is a subject near and dear to my life as well like honestly when i hear a tagline of a book that has cancer in it i kind of stray away from that because i've experienced it a lot my life i also have really really bad medical anxiety so i'm just like but it was a beautiful book i'm not gonna lie to you a lot of books like that are but you just have to be emotionally ready for it and i really loved how this book also talked about faith because it's a hard thing to it's a hard thing to read as a faith-based person if you don't know i am religious i am christian and i'm very you know grounded in my faith and so whenever i hear a book it's kind of about that i'm like oh are they gonna you know paint it in a bad way but i really love the way emory lord painted it she painted it very realistic for me because lucy struggled with their faith as everyone does in their faith journey at some point so just you know have the tissues ready for this one and all of them probably next up we have one that's like not quite super super heavy but i still wanted to mention it and that is eliza and her monsters by francesca zappia this booklet fall character name you guessed it eliza and she has this really popular web like series yeah webcomic called monstrous c like it is insanely popular i don't know what platform it's on but let's just say like millions like look for it every single week and she keeps her identity hidden of who she actually is while writing it and then she meets a new guy at school when in wallace who actually she learns is monstrous c's biggest fan fiction writer and um so wallace thinks eliza is just another fan of the comic little does he know that she actually is creating the thing and a friendship relationship kind of really sparks from there so the heaviness part of this book comes from eliza a lot of struggles a lot with anxiety social anxiety pressure with her family with anxiety of trying to keep you know her identity separate from who she is online where she's very open and free to express herself where she's at in school where she's very quiet so this book does talk a lot about anxiety it's a person that struggles with anxiety that takes medication um i identified a lot with this book and i think it could help out with somebody and just maybe somebody would feel seen with this book with anxiety but it does have a lot of lightness in it with um their relationship and cuteness but it does strip but it does talk a lot about anxiety as well which is very important and also a very serious topic clap when you land by elizabeth acevedo is oh it's a beautiful book it's a book told in verse elizabeth acevedo is known for that i've read two of her other books one of them is in verse and they're both beautiful as well but clap when you land has got to be my favorite by her we follow two characters one named camino and one named yahira so they both lead very different lives so yahira lives in new york she's got a great mom she's got a great dad she goes to a great school everything's going great for her but one thing she doesn't love is that her dad always goes away for the summer never really tells his family where he's going to like visit his brother but she never really gets in contact with him but she just he leaves every summer then on the flip side we have camino who lives in the dominican republic with her grandmother her mom has passed away and she really loves the summers where her dad comes to visit putting two and two together quite yet and so this summer she's very excited for him to come and he doesn't he actually dies in a plane crash on his way to there basically through a whole turn of events kamino and yahiro realize that they share a father and their lives are really changed from that because they never even knew each other existed and so they kind of have to navigate this new relationship of sisterhood um with their father just passing away and it's just a really hard hitting book totem verse that has so many really impactful verses and just it's beautiful all around and it's it's a book that i think everyone should read you'll get a lot from it you'll learn a lot from it either way everyone should read this book it's beautifully told very impactful very intense just gosh i just i wish elizabeth vader wrote like a book every month i would read them all the time like they're that amazing and we have you'll miss me when i'm gone by rachel and solomon so this is the first book i read by her and rachel and solomon writes really kind of hard-hitting books um except her latest release which was like totally the flip side so in this book we follow twin sisters and they don't get along they really don't something that's happened to them something that happened in them a while ago has just really affected their relationship but their mother has huntington's disease they learn that when they're 18 they can take this blood test to figure out if they will also have huntington's disease because i believe it's shared in the bloodstream and jeans and all that kind of stuff and so it's not to spoil anything one of them learns that they are going to have it and one of them doesn't so you really get to set you really get to figure out both these sisters how they're both very different and they're both like coping with their diagnosis and also coping with their mom as well and their dad they're also jewish they also are jewish as well so you learn a lot about the jewish religion and culture and gosh it was so it was a sad like gosh it's sad but she writes amazingly like i love how each one of her books also teaches a lot about the jewish culture because i don't know much about it but i this is my favorite one by her it's just so intense like it's sad but it was really good next up we have far from the tree by robin benway so this book is i call it the parenthood tv show in a book i don't know why i love that show can't re-watch it though because it's so freaking sad but this book we learn so in this book we have three characters to read about grace maya and joaquin and so each of them lead very different lives grace is the only child who was adopted at birth and she discovers that she is the middle child of a family that she never even knew then we have maya who who is also adopted lives in a house with all of her sisters that are biological and she really struggles with that and then we have joaquin who kind of bounces from foster home to foster home and he's finally at a home where he really loves the parents but he doesn't know if they're going to keep him and so basically they all learn that they share the same mother and so they all learn that they're together so how they learn together is grace actually is the one that's adopted that's the only child she actually becomes pregnant at 60 and decides to give her baby up for adoption and so going through that she knows that she's adopted she decides hey let me research some and then she finds maya and joaquin and so they kind of go on the search for their birth mother and whoo goodness me it's a book that's about found family at its core which is amazing it's a book that shows you that just because your family's not like blood family biological things like that they're still your family and it's just it was beautiful to read about ah this one was so sad but also amazing as these siblings found each other and found their groove with each other just a beautiful book about found family the how and the why by cynthia hands so this book has such a cool premise so we follow a character named cassandra who um has an amazing family a loving father a loving dad and she knows that she is adopted and so i think like on her birthday she decides that hey i'm gonna try to figure out where i came from who are my parents and so she finds these letters that her mom her biological mom actually wrote to her when she was still in the womb and she learned so much about her mom like it's basically goes back and forth of her mom when she was pregnant with cassandra and then cassandra now discovering all these things and it's just i love the way that she wrote it of how you learned why her mom decided to give her up for adoption the journey she's gone through it and how cassandra is dealing with it now it's just another book again about found family about adoption and just the beauty the beautifulness of it i it's just beautiful i loved it a ton the last book i would recommend is little do we know by tamiya ireland stone i read this like three years ago i loved it i don't think it's as tense as the other ones but i still think it's a like a serious subject matter i don't know why i did that but whatever this book follows two characters named hannah and emery who are next door neighbors and ex-best friends something happened you don't know what and they both are very different and so um emery is trying to you know get into ucla and trying to make the most of her must before she has um left with her boyfriend meanwhile hannah's strong faith is shaken and when her family's financial problems come to light and so she kind of turns to emery and so this book again is a lot about faith because um hannah's fam hannah's father is a pastor and she struggles a lot with her faith in this book and she has to you know kind of navigate that and how her friendship with emory really kind of helps with that and it's a book all about friendship like friendship that's kind of broken apart but maybe coming back together again also about faith family just it's a beautiful book it's not quite as intense as all the other ones but it's still kind of more intense i would say than like your regular like cutesy fluffy book because it's mostly about like family and friend relationships at its core those are all of my favorite hard-hitting y contemporary books quite a lot of them but i really love each of them for each different ways obviously and yeah i would love to hear if you've read any of these if you like them a lot if they impacted you as much as they impacted me i would love to hear thank you guys so much for watching and i will see my next video bye\n"