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    Far from the Tree
    Far from the Tree
    Far from the Tree
    Audiobook8 hours

    Far from the Tree

    Written by Robin Benway

    Narrated by Julia Whelan

    4.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    National Book Award Winner, PEN America Award Winner, and New York Times Bestseller!

    Perfect for fans of This Is Us, Robin Benway’s beautiful interweaving story of three very different teenagers connected by blood explores the meaning of family in all its forms—how to find it, how to keep it, and how to love it.

    Being the middle child has its ups and downs.

    But for Grace, an only child who was adopted at birth, discovering that she is a middle child is a different ride altogether. After putting her own baby up for adoption, she goes looking for her biological family, including—

    Maya, her loudmouthed younger bio sister, who has a lot to say about their newfound family ties. Having grown up the snarky brunette in a house full of chipper redheads, she’s quick to search for traces of herself among these not-quite-strangers. And when her adopted family’s long-buried problems begin to explode to the surface, Maya can’t help but wonder where exactly it is that she belongs.

    And Joaquin, their stoic older bio brother, who has no interest in bonding over their shared biological mother. After seventeen years in the foster care system, he’s learned that there are no heroes, and secrets and fears are best kept close to the vest, where they can’t hurt anyone but him.

    Don't miss this moving novel that addresses such important topics as adoption, teen pregnancy, and foster care.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateDec 5, 2017
    ISBN9780062852137
    Author

    Robin Benway

    Robin Benway is a National Book Award–winning and New York Times bestselling author of nine novels for young people, including Far from the Tree, Audrey, Wait!, the AKA series, and Emmy & Oliver. Her books have received numerous awards and recognition, including the PEN America Literary Award, the Blue Ribbon Award from the Bulletin for the Center of Children's Books, ALA’s Best Books for Young Adults, and ALA’s Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults. In addition, her novels have received starred reviews from BookPage, Kirkus Reviews, ALA Booklist, and Publishers Weekly and have been published in more than twenty-five countries. Her sixth novel, Far from the Tree, won the National Book Award for Young People's Literature and the PEN America Award and was named one of the best books of the year by the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, NPR, PBS, Entertainment Weekly, and the Boston Globe. In addition to her fictional work, her nonfiction work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Bustle, Elle, and more. Her newest book, The Girls of Skylark Lane, will be in stores in Fall 2024. Robin grew up in Orange County, California, attended NYU, where she was a recipient of the Seth Barkas Prize for Creative Writing, and is a graduate of UCLA. She currently lives in Los Angeles with her dog, Hudson.

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    Related categories

    Reviews for Far from the Tree

    4.5/5

    479 ratings38 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      Ahhh, my goodness. I haven’t been moved to tears by a book in a long time! This book is literally THIS IS US, but like on paper. Okay, it’s not exactly the same but it’s just as beautiful.

      Joaquin, Grace and Maya are three teenagers with the same birth mother who are adopted (Grace and Maya) and fostered (Joaquin) by different parents. When Grace, at seventeen gives up her own daughter for adoption, she becomes curious about her birth mother and finds out she also has siblings!

      My favorite thing about this book is the way all of the adoptive parents handle the birth parents of their children. Benway shows that adoption is warm and wonderful and not always as messy as it can seem. Still, she doesn’t hide the sometimes deplorable condition of the foster care system and all the trauma it can cause.

      Joaquin and Grace along with Raph were my favorite characters. Perhaps because I’m most like them? My heart swelled and contracted throughout the (beautiful) narration of this book (well done Julia Whelan!!!).

      Heartwarming, arresting and full of hope, FAR FROM THE TREE explores what real family means and shows that there’s a seat at the family table for everyone ❤️
    • 5/5
      All the stars in the world for this work of art. This is my new favourite book!!!!!
    • 2/5
      Kind of cheesy. A lot of contrived situations just falling in the characters' laps
    • 5/5
      This is a beautiful story about three siblings who grew up separately, each involved with the foster care and adoption systems in some way before finding each other. The “baggage” that each sibling carries affects how they relate to each other and learn from each other. I passed this book along as soon as I finished it. A story hasn’t made me cry this much in quite some time.
    • 5/5
      This book was so great! Loved the characters and I cant believe how many spots in this book I annotated so I can go back and reread. Needless to say this book gave me all the feels!
    • 4/5
      Far away from the tree is a compelling story about family and what makes it yours is blood really thicker than water? what if the only thing in common with each other beside the DNA is the love for a mother that never knew. Grace, Maya and Joaquin meet up later in life when Grace discovers that she doesn't only have brothers but that she's the middle child, that haves more in common with her mother that what she could had ever thought of and for that reason she try to convince her new found brothers in an adventure to find there mother, create blood ties, supporting each other to find answers that only can be found by the brave of heart.

      i enjoy so much how the story was written, i eat up every chapter founding the pages to short to tell the story of each brother. it's a beautiful contemporary story that i would recommend to anyone who looks for a good, entertaining story to read. the only thing that i would had change is how each brother shared a book when i would had read an individual book from each one since there outcome had been so different there stories where just shorten and i honestly think it was a missed opportunity.

      If you are looking for what really makes a family be called family, how to forgive, union, self acceptance, second chances and how to love and be loved Far from the tree by #RobinBenway is the story for you. i give it ⭐⭐⭐⭐ stars making it a #GreatRead in my book.
      Quotes that i loved:

      "he thought it was ironic that everyone was trying so hard to leave home, when all he wanted to do was stay in one"

      "nothing was worse than someone wanting you to talk when the words you needed to say hadn't even been invented yet"

      "words could shatter harder than a glass breaking against a wall, hurt more than a fist plowing through teeth"
    • 5/5
      I laughed aloud and cried - twice - while reading. I loved the characters. A feel good book.
    • 5/5
      Just awesome! Related to much to this story! Didn't want this story to end!
    • 5/5
      there are no words for how amazing this book is. I cried all the way through it. It was so powerful and written beautifully
    • 4/5
      Young adult contemporary fiction about the nature of family. Three teens learn they are siblings, having been given up for adoption by their birth mother. Their lives have taken different paths, and each is dealing with issues, including teenage pregnancy, depression, divorce, parental alcoholism, foster care disappointments, and breakups. The dramatic tension derives from how they cope with these issues. At the beginning of the book they are not aware of each other’s existence, but when one becomes pregnant and gives up her child for adoption, her perspective changes and she begins searching for her birth mother, discovering the siblings along the way.

      The book is structured in rotating chapters of each teen’s story. I felt Benway did an excellent job of capturing the personality of each teen, along with their sarcastic sense of humor. We see them bury their pain, struggle to express feelings, desire acceptance, fear rejection, and gradually learn to trust each other and other family members. A thread of hopefulness runs through it. It is an emotional and touching journey.

      Since this is a young adult novel, I will detail out the content warnings:
      - Liberal use of the f-bomb and other profanity
      - The aforementioned teenage pregnancy (with no sexual descriptions)
      - The teen mother is slut-shamed
      - One of the teens is in a lesbian relationship – limited to kissing
      - One of the teens is in a hetero relationship – limited to kissing
      - One of the teens has experienced past abuse which is described in the narrative
      - There is nothing extremely graphic in any of these descriptions, but I think it would be too intense for children

      Recommended to (high school age and up) fans of family drama and those interested in adoption and foster care experiences.
    • 5/5
      Three children, each born about one year apart with a different father, but all sharing the same mother, were given up for adoption in infancy. This book begins when those children are all in their teens, and have just learned of each other's existence.Chapters alternate from the point of view of each teen, though it is told in third person, not the first person that most books for this age audience are usually in. The youngest, Mya, lives with her wealthy adoptive parents, and their biological child, her younger sister. They love her as much as their birth child, but the mother is an alcoholic, and the parents are considering divorce. The second child, Grace, lives with her middle class adoptive parents, but has just gone through a teen pregnancy and given her own child up for adoption, which has traumatized her. The oldest, Joaquin, was never adopted. He was shuffled from one foster home to another all his life, and now at 17, is with foster parents who want to adopt him... but he's lost so much trust in people, he's not sure he wants them to. And Grace wants the three of them to track down their birth mother.With so many different families involved in this book has more family tension and drama in a few chapters than most books have on the whole. But it is beautifully told, with Mya, Grace and Joaquin each being a deeply sympathetic character in their own ways. Highly recommended.
    • 4/5
      teen realistic fiction (adopted teens with half-brother in foster care; fear of abandonment)
      Joaquin is half-Latinx; Grace gave her own baby up for adoption; Maya's adopted mom is an alcoholic and her parents get a divorce.
    • 5/5
      Usually books that have multiple narrators are frustrating because there is always one that I don't particularly like and want to skip over. I actually genuinely liked all three main characters and was actively rooting for them. There was some necessary suspension of disbelief, but the story was still extremely compelling. This was a young adult novel that was exciting, funny, and still very heartbreaking at times.
    • 5/5
      After Grace gives her baby up for adoption, she decides to find her own birth mother. She discovers two other siblings, an older brother and a younger sister, who have no interest in finding the "woman who abandoned them." Joaquin has been in foster care since he was a baby. Maya was adopted at birth like Grace. Can they be a family with three different lives?

      I loved this book. The audio was well done. It's an emotional read. I made the mistake of finishing it in the morning before school. My makeup needed a touch up before I left.

      p. 335
      "That's exactly what family is, Joaquin!" Maya shouted at him. "It means that no matter where you go, no matter how far you run, you're still a part of me and Grace and we're still a part of you, too! ... And sometimes family hurts each other. But after that's done you bandage each other up, and you move on. Together."
    • 5/5
      Stunning! Joaquin, Grace, & Maya define & re-define what a family can be!
    • 5/5
      I loved this book. One quibble: the character development for two of the romantic interests (Birdie and Claire) was pretty flat. I never got a good sense of who either of them is. But that was a small thing, since the main characters are all very well drawn and vibrant.
    • 4/5
      Grace, Maya, and Joaquin are half siblings. Given up shortly after birth, Grace and Maya were adopted by two separate families, while Joaquin was raised largely in the foster system. When Grace has a baby of her own as a teen and decides to give it up for adoption, it triggers an urge to seek out her biological siblings. But each has their own set of issues which they're hesitant to share.I enjoyed this one. Though portions of the book were maybe somewhat unrealistic, the story did bring a fresh perspective to the subject of adoption, teen pregnancy, and family. Each sibling's character was quite different, but yet the story was fleshed out quite interestingly. It's a somewhat emotionally charged book, but in a good way. Overall, a good discussion book for teens or adults.
    • 4/5
      Although not my type of book, it was a good read involving young adults dealing with adoption, rejection and the psychological trauma in trying to get things straightened out.
    • 4/5
      Great YA topics that will appeal to teens such as teen pregnancy, parent issues, adopted children, gay teens, etc. All of the storylines wrap up nicely at the end which YA readers generally enjoy.
    • 4/5
      I didn't think I was going to like this book much. I'm not big on "teen pregnancy" narratives because I find them boring and cliche and overdone (thanks, probably, to every teen drama TV show ever). I'm not sure why I picked up this book, then put it back, then picked it up again, but I did. And let me tell ya, was that ever a good choice.

      Have you ever read a book and not thought yourself very attached to it, then suddenly you're crying at the ending? That was me reading this.

      The writing isn't anything special, which actually kind of works in its favour because it lets you sink into the story and the characters. Sometimes I found the dialogue to be stiff, or awkward, or just really, really unrealistic. A couple of times, I thought the characters expressed anger or other strong emotions that came out of nowhere, and I wish there had been a bit more build up to those scenes.

      That's the bad stuff. Now onto the good.

      All three characters live very different lives, and I like how they were all treated equally, receiving full development arcs a piece. Each story was interesting on its own, and the rapport between the 3 of them was great. I loved watching their relationship with each other and the others in their lives develop, and I thought the way the relationships progress were very realistic and raw. Sometimes I found the plot to be a bit too optimistic (okay, I loved the ending but I'm also like--- why is everything all hunky-dory, BUT at the same time, these kids deserve all the happiness in the world), but it was optimistic in a sweet way, one that warms your heart rather than makes you roll your eyes.

      All in all, this book was special. I loved the characters, and I'm glad I had the chance to hear their stories.
    • 5/5
      When Grace gives her baby up for adoption, it sets her on a path to find her biological mom. Grace, Joaquin, and Maya are bio-siblings who find each other after all of them had adopted or put in the foster system. Each of them is working through a large amount of trauma related to not knowing their roots and the angst of growing up. They develop a bond and support system and find themselves on a quest to find their bio-mom. This was an emotional read full of trauma, overcoming hardships, and trying to find hope.
    • 5/5
      Three adopted siblings discover each other and learn the true meaning of 'family' is deeper than biology. Grace, an only child, is haunted by perfection and high expectations. Maya stands out as a dark-haired child in a bio family of light-skinned caucasians. Joaquin, half Mexican, has never known a real family and is shunted from foster home to home. The dialogue and pacing are superb and it is sure to speak to teens in all kinds of family settings. On the down side, each sib has a slew of problems which are After-School-Special-ish in terms of scope. More troubling, each seems remarkably articulate and self aware (older than their years). A minor quibble for a good book.
    • 3/5
      Three teens voices struggling w/ adoption, foster care , even a baby , shifting between them smoothly& bringing them together as long lost siblings who share the same mother: shall they seek her out ? Should they tell their adopted parents what they’re up to ? And how to embrace their newly found siblings and still remain true to their adopted siblings? Each one also deals with romance, budding or broken -one a lesbian relationship, handled matter of factly. Well written; definitely dialogue heavy - for teen readers who are eager to read about these issues
    • 4/5
      I listened to the audiobook and side from being extremely aware of overused phrases I loved it. the description cited "for fans of This is Us" and the similarites are in fact too strong to ignore. However, this book is unique enough from the show that there's no way to predict how the characters' lives will be.

      I will admit to having some problems with the book, such as the lack of a noticeable age difference between the biological siblings. They're teenagers and 6 months and a different grade makes a difference, so it felt unrelastic that this was absent.

      I would definitely recommend this book to a friend without concern for what they like to read, or what their lives are like. I think this book, even though it is young adult, has something for everybody.
    • 5/5
      My goodness! When I saw that this was a young adult novel, I knew that it would approach all kinds of issues with a punch you generally don't find in adult novels. I was completely unprepared for the number of issues that Robin addressed telling the stories of these three siblings who have just found each other. It was an intelligent novel, and the emotional impact it has is not to be ignored. If you read this novel, prepare to be blindsided by emotions you don't expect. You might even find yourself changed after you finish the last page.
    • 4/5
      I really loved the characters in this book - I just wanted to wrap them up in hugs. Grace is the catalyst for a journey of discovery. After giving her child up for adoption, Grace wants to find her own birth mother. Along the way she discovers two siblings - Maya who was also adopted and Joaquin who has lived in the foster care system. Each of them is grappling with their own emotional hurts but the way they come together as siblings and the healing that they discover with each other is really beautiful. Every adoption story is different, but I enjoyed the hopeful tone of this one.
    • 5/5
      Three half siblings learn about each other and the mother that connects them together. Robin Benway wrote a teary journey of three teens who learn what family is all about: Grace, who got pregnant and chose to give her baby to another family, Maya who is a dark haired daughter in a red haired family and Joaquin who wasn't lucky enough to be adopted and went through the foster care system.Each sibling struggles with their own issues but realize that it's family that holds them together, both biological and adopted. Far From the Tree is a totally enjoyable read and is a National Book Award winner.
    • 5/5
      I purchased this book from Amazon to read. All opinions are my own. ????? Far From The Tree by Robin Benway. Guys!!!!! This book has such complicated emotions and family situations and love and anger and forgiveness. If you are looking for a book filled with emotion THIS IS IT! It will tear your heart out and sew it back all in the same chapter. Maya, Grace, and Joaquin are three siblings all with the same birth mother but live very different lives in their own homes. Struggling with adoption, love, lack of love, pride, and secrets they all hold close they find that family is family and forgiveness is important. Review also posted on Instagram @borenbooks, Library Thing, Go Read, Goodreads/StacieBoren, Amazon, Twitter @jason_stacie and my blog at readsbystacie.com. **********For those of you that have read it, the car scene with the bow at Mark and Linda's did you cry too? I balled like a baby!!!!!!!
    • 5/5
      A must read for everyone!! I absolutely loved this story of family. love and loss.
    • 4/5
      I was a little worried when I picked this up, as I am pretty critical about books that involve children in foster care since I work within that field. I liked that this showed the emotional impact both foster care and adoption can take on an individual and a sibling group. So much of the story is what I see today in our youth within the system including their fear of letting go and letting someone into their lives.This was much better than I thought it was going to be and I highly recommend it!