Almost ready!
In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.
Log in Create account
Shop Small Sale
Shop our limited-time sale on bestselling audiobooks. Don’t miss out—purchases support local bookstores.
Shop the sale
Limited-time offer
Get two free audiobooks!
Now’s a great time to shop indie. When you start a new one credit per month membership supporting local bookstores with promo code SWITCH, we’ll give you two bonus audiobook credits at sign-up.
Sign up todayThe Survivor's Guide to Family Happiness
This audiobook uses AI narration.
We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.
Learn moreThree women, three lives, and one chance to become a family—whether they want to or not.
Newly orphaned, recently divorced, and semiadrift, Nina Popkin is on a search for her birth mother. She’s spent her life looking into strangers’ faces, fantasizing they’re related to her, and now, at thirty-five, she’s ready for answers.
Meanwhile, the last thing Lindy McIntyre wants is someone like Nina bursting into her life, announcing that they’re sisters and campaigning to track down their mother. She’s too busy with her successful salon, three children, beautiful home, and…oh yes, some pesky little anxiety attacks.
But Nina is determined to reassemble her birth family. Her search turns up Phoebe Mullen, a guarded, hard-talking woman convinced she has nothing to offer. Gradually sharing stories and secrets, the three women make for a messy, unpredictable family that looks nothing like Nina pictured…but may be exactly what she needs. Nina’s moving, ridiculous, tragic, and transcendent journey becomes a love story proving that real family has nothing to do with DNA.
Maddie Dawson grew up in the South, born into a family of outrageous storytellers. Her various careers as a substitute English teacher, department-store clerk, medical-records typist, waitress, cat sitter, wedding-invitation-company receptionist, nanny, day-care worker, electrocardiogram technician, and Taco Bell taco maker were made bearable by thinking up stories as she worked. Today she lives in Guilford, Connecticut, with her husband. She’s the bestselling author of four previous novels: The Opposite of Maybe, The Stuff That Never Happened, Kissing Games of the World, and A Piece of Normal.
Reviews
An Amazon Best Book of the Month: Literature & Fiction
POPSUGAR Fall Must-Read Selection
“Dawson (The Opposite of Maybe, 2014, etc.) is a generous storyteller, creating characters who are both complex and unexpected while being wholly relatable.” —Kirkus Reviews
“In this heartfelt novel, Dawson (The Opposite of Maybe, 2014) weaves together the stories of three very different women who are bound by blood, delving deeply into the true meaning of family.” —Booklist
“In Nina, Dawson (The Opposite of Maybe) introduces a lovable, flawed character challenged by day-to-day life and searching for love and a feeling of belonging...Nina is delightful and spirited, and her engaging, charming story illustrates the humor and quirkiness of life.” —Library Journal
“Engaging writing and compelling characters seize readers from the first chapter of Dawson’s latest novel. The examination of family—in all its forms and fashions—makes this an ideal book club read.” —RT Book Reviews
“Maddie Dawson writes a charming story about family in her new novel, The Survivor’s Guide to Family Happiness...an endearing story of love and loss.” —Associated Press
“Maddie Dawson has been a longtime favorite writer of mine because she has the gift of tapping into the emotions and complexities of a woman's heart and effortlessly combining tension with joy. She's done it again with The Survivor's Guide to Family Happiness. Put it on your list of not-to-be-missed fiction.” —Marybeth Mayhew Whalen, cofounder of She Reads and author of The Things We Wish Were True
“Like authors Liane Moriarty and JoJo Moyes, Maddie Dawson is one of those gifted writers who spins seemingly comic, romantic tales that tackle our most universal longings for love, connection, and family. In her newest book, she delivers the story of two sisters given up for adoption. Their journey to discover each other and the mother who gave them up is by turns heart-wrenching and laugh-out-loud hilarious. I loved every witty sentence.” —Holly Robinson, author of Chance Harbor and Beach Plum Island
“Maddie Dawson has done it again. Witty, warm, and full of insights into life’s maddening complexities, her novels should come with a warning label: May cause tears, laughter, or all of the above.” —Sarah Knight, bestselling author of The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F*ck
Expand reviews
Stock up with our Shop Small Sale!
Libro.fm for Business
Start a membership, get two free audiobooks