This Is How It Always Is: A Novel

Name: This Is How It Always Is: A Novel
Rating: 7.98 (701 reviews)
ISBN: 9781250088567

New York Times Bestseller
The Reese Witherspoon x Hello Sunshine Book Club Pick

“Every once in a while, I read a book that opens my eyes in a way I never expected.” —Reese Witherspoon (Reese’s Book Club x Hello Sunshine book pick)

People Magazine’s Top 10 Books of 2017
Bustle’s 17 Books Every Woman Should Read From 2017
PopSugar’s Our Favorite Books of the Year (So Far)
Refinery29's Best Books of the Year So Far
BookBrowse’s The 20 Best Books of 2017
Pacific Northwest Book Awards Finalist
The Globe and Mail's Top 100 Books of 2017
Longlisted for 2019 International DUBLIN Literary Award

“It made me laugh, it made me cry, it made me think.” —Liane Moriarty, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Big Little Lies

This is how a family keeps a secret…and how that secret ends up keeping them.

This is how a family lives happily ever after…until happily ever after becomes complicated.

This is how children change…and then change the world.

This is Claude. He’s five years old, the youngest of five brothers, and loves peanut butter sandwiches. He also loves wearing a dress, and dreams of being a princess.

When he grows up, Claude says, he wants to be a girl.

Rosie and Penn want Claude to be whoever Claude wants to be. They’re just not sure they’re ready to share that with the world. Soon the entire family is keeping Claude’s secret. Until one day it explodes.

Laurie Frankel's This Is How It Always Is is a novel about revelations, transformations, fairy tales, and family. And it’s about the ways this is how it always is: Change is always hard and miraculous and hard again, parenting is always a leap into the unknown with crossed fingers and full hearts, children grow but not always according to plan. And families with secrets don’t get to keep them forever.

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Published Jan 23, 2018

336 pages

Average rating: 7.98

701 RATINGS

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What Bookclubbers are saying about this book

✨ Summarized by Bookclubs AI

Readers say *This Is How It Always Is* is a heartfelt, beautifully written story that blends humor and emotional depth with relatable characters. Many...

Sue Dix

Mar 14, 2026

8/10 stars

I don't want to give any hints as to what this book is about. Don't read about it first, don't read the blurb on the dust jacket. Don't read a recap. Just read it, as I was told to do. You won't regret it.

SuzyQ

Aug 11, 2025

NY BOOKCLUB 2025

KikiStoneCreek

Jun 03, 2023

8/10 stars

The Book gets too much into the mother's work near the end, which totally eludes the main focus--Poppy.

Dale Wilde

May 12, 2020

October 2019 selection

spoko

Apr 28, 2026

6/10 stars

I’m not sure this book knows what it wants to be. It’s written like a YA book, so you’d tend to think that it’s a book about a trans kid beginning to discover and express their identity. But on the other hand, it doesn’t really seem to be about Poppy—it seemed to be more about her parents. In the end, I think it’s a book about parenting a trans kid, more than about being a trans kid. But it is certainly written with the depth and complexity of a not-very-challenging YA book. The characters, relationships, conversations and situations all have a very didactic quality to them. Everyone is playing a type, and every plot point is serving a purpose. This isn’t to say that no moments have any real impact—the scene when Poppy calls her mom to tell her that everyone knows is one example that I thought landed powerfully. But it’s also one of the few instances when the writing has real restraint; I wish such instances were more significant and/or more frequent. In the end, there was very little that I disagreed with, and from a human level I was able to empathize with these parents and their decisions (even the passive ones, that often had so much impact). But I just never really felt engaged. Once you get The Lesson of the book, there’s not much else for you.