Looking for an unforgettable collection of YA books about mother-daughter relationships? As an award-winning author and veteran blogger about issue-driven YA fiction, I’ve spent over a decade analyzing and recommending the most impactful books that explore the nuanced dynamics between teenage daughters and their mothers.
You’ll find detailed reviews of many of my favorites in the roundup below Sometimes these books will make you smile. Sometimes they’ll make you cry. But in the end, you won’t forget them.
Against the Pack by Khristina Chess
Mother-daughter Themes
Psychological & emotional bonds
What It’s About
After a brutal dog attack leaves them stranded in a remote ravine in rural Appalachia, a teenage girl must claw her way toward rescue to save her wounded mother before time runs out--and in the process, the daughter comes to a place of healing and acceptance.
Why I Love It - Review
“All I knew with absolute confidence was that I could move and she couldn’t. If I stayed, we might both die waiting. If I left, we might both die alone. If I left, she might die alone, but I might find help and live. Or I might find help in time, lead them to the shelter, and we might both live.” ― Khristina Chess from Against the Pack
What if survival meant leaving the one person you love the most behind?
Ignore the cover. Trust the story. Against the Pack is a pulse-pounding, emotionally charged YA novel that dives into deep themes of love and resilience.
It starts with a bang. While walking on a rural road, Melender and her mom are attacked by a pack of dogs—forced over a near-vertical hillside into a ravine. They’re trapped. Wounded. Stranded on a narrow ledge with no food, no water, no shelter. No phone. No way out.
No one knows where they are.
No one even knows they’re missing.
The only thing Melender has is her will to survive.
She doesn’t want to abandon her critically injured mom, but if she doesn’t find help soon, neither of them will make it.
Melender is gritty, determined, and unforgettable. What makes Against the Pack so special is that her fight isn’t just physical—it’s psychological and deeply personal. As the hours stretch into days, the novel doesn’t just test her endurance but also unravels complicated truths about her relationship with her mother.
If you love high-stakes wilderness survival stories with emotional depth, Against the Pack delivers in every way. Think Hatchet meets How to Make Friends with the Dark.
Regretting You by Colleen Hoover
Mother-daughter Themes
Love, loss, & family secrets
What It’s About
Alternating between the teenage daughter's POV and her mother, this story will tug on your heartstrings.
Why I Love It - Review
“I’m confident that I’ll never spend a single second of my life regretting you.” ― Colleen Hoover from Regretting You
In this amazing novel, I found tragedy, mystery, romance, and a mother-daughter relationship with deep wounds in need of healing. What a combination! The viewpoint shifts between Morgan (the mother) and Clara (the sixteen-year-old daughter), and both stories are compelling. First love clashes with a tortured old love. I loved the mystery and story questions about what happened with Chris. The ending was just right.
Regretting You is another perfect Colleen Hover book—great for readers of young adult or mature readers.
The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah
Mother-daughter Themes
Complex relationships and secrets between mother and daughter
What it’s about
An epic story about a young girl growing up in a remote homestead in Alaska in the 1970s with a father who is an unstable and abusive Vietnam veteran and former POW.
Why I Love It - Book Review
“Love and fear. The most destructive forces on earth. Fear had turned her inside out, love had made her stupid.” ― Kristin Hannah from The Great Alone
Leni is 13 when her parents decide to relocate to Alaska. It’s 1974. She’s used to moving around a lot and not fitting in, so her expectations about this place aren’t very high, either. Children of all ages share the same schoolhouse, and there is one other kid her age. A boy, Matthew Walker. They become fast friends.
Alaska is beautiful and beautiful. Although the new homestead is wonderful at first, the descent of winter and darkness brings out her father’s abuse. A former POW from the Vietnam war, he is now a violent, alcoholic, and paranoid man whose rage targets his fragile wife.
So many good and terrible things happen in this sweeping novel. Leni is a compelling character, and in fact, there is a whole cast of interesting people in Alaska who care for one another. Survival depends on community in this wild land.
If you like reading tough topics and novels about complex family dynamics, The Great Alone is a fabulous and important read.
Everything Beautiful Is Not Ruined by Danielle Young-Ullman
Mother-daughter Themes
Codependency, grief, and healing
What It’s About
A beautiful story about a girl in a wilderness program for at-risk teens who comes to terms with her relationship with her famous diva mother.
Why I Love It - Review
In this absorbing novel, the mother-daughter relationship drives everything that’s happening, both in the present and in the past. The present is awful. Ingrid has been sent away to a 3-week wilderness program for at-risk teens, although she didn’t realize what she was signing up for at the time, and now she’s wet, miserable, mosquito-bitten, and trapped with a misfit group in the middle of nowhere. But she’s determined to see things through to prove something to her mother and earn the carrot, which is permission to attend a music school abroad.
The past is a complicated story about her mother’s beautiful opera voice and depression. There is a strong codependency relationship between the mother and daughter, since the mother is a depressed diva. From an early age, Ingrid took care of her mother since no father was in the picture.
I loved the mystery about how Ingrid ended up in this program, and I was rooting for her to make it out.
If you are looking for a YA book about mother-daughter relationships, this one is one of my new favorites.
The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo
Mother-daughter Themes
Identity & rebellion
What It’s About
A powerful story about a mother-daughter relationship in which the Afro-Latina heroine uses poetry to find her way.
Why I Love It - Review
“And isn't that what a poem is? A lantern glowing in the dark.” ― Elizabeth Acevedo, quote from The Poet X
What a surprising and lyrical story!
I wasn’t sure I’d like this book, which is told entirely in verse, but I couldn’t put it down. Xiaomara is a young girl whose traditional Catholic mother prohibits her from doing anything. Xiomara is a good and dutiful daughter. But she wants to participate in the poetry group.
The mother-daughter relationship was well-developed, and there was a powerful moment when the mother did something truly awful. Moments like those between mothers and daughters are the ones that can define the relationship forever. I liked the choices Xiaomara made in response to that. In fact, all of the primary and secondary characters played important roles in her journey. I loved her father, the teacher, the priest; it was refreshing to see so many supportive adults in a young person’s life in a YA novel.
This award-winning YA book about mother-daughter relationships definitely deserves all the accolades, hype, and great reviews it has received. Check it out!
How to Make Friends with the Dark by Kathleen Glasgow
Mother-daughter Themes
Identity, grief, and healing
What It’s About
A girl's mother dies suddenly, leaving her adrift in the foster care system.
Why I Love It - Review
“It's very hard to think of your parents as people. Full of bad checks and bad decisions, fistfights and broken hearts, all of it. Because if they can't goddamn take care of themselves, how will they take care of you?“ ― Kathleen Glasgow from How to Make Friends with the Dark
After Tiger Tolliver's mom dies of a brain aneurysm, she becomes a ward of the state, an orphan, suddenly faced with an uncertain future. She doesn't have any living relatives. She doesn't know anything about her father. It's just her and her mom--and now just her. A minor.
What Tiger begins to learn is that her mom kept some important secrets from her. For example, she has a living dad. And a sister.
This YA novel about mothers and daughters is a real tear jerker! Tiger strikes me a sheltered girl with little real life experience; on the day her mom died, she was kissing a boy for the first time. She wasn't prepared for the events that followed as she entered the foster care system. Yet, despite her tragic circumstances, she makes a path for herself. She makes mistakes but doesn't fall off a cliff. She keeps people at a cautious distance, but she does make friends and finds a way to build a new family for herself.
How to Make Friends with the Dark will tug at your heartstrings. Bring extra tissues for this one!
In Search of Us by Ava Dellaira
Mother-daughter Themes
Understanding & empathy
What It’s About
A girl goes on a journey to understand her younger mother and the choices she made.
Why I Love It - Review
“Maybe it's true that there are no happy endings. But, right now, Angie is grateful to be at what feels like a beginning.” ― Ava Delliara, quote from In Search of Us
The love story between Marilyn and James is so compelling and sweet. I wanted to stay with them for the whole book, and I wanted to know what happened to them, why Angie was searching for the truth about his death. Maybe he was still alive. If her mom had lied about the accident, couldn't she hope to find him and bring him back into their lives? This hope made her reckless and selfish.
That search was the only part that made Angie's story engaging for me. Her unanswered questions about her parents were also mine. I cared less about what was happening in her present with Sam and whether or not that might work out.
I sort of liked that Angie didn't really see her mom and dad as young people just like herself, full of love, dreams, hopes, and passions. But as a reader, I saw that. Marilyn as a mom was also Marilyn as a teen, and because of what happened to her, I was able to see it in her mothering. Her character arc was beautiful.
In Search of Us is definitely a great YA book about mother-daughter relationships.
I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika L. Sanchez
Mother-daughter Themes
Identity & rebellion
What It’s About
After the sudden death of her sister, a teenage girl expresses her grief through rebellion.
Why I Love It - Review
“She has compared me to my sister every single day of my life, so why should I expect that to change now that she’s dead?” ― Erika L. Sanchez, quote from I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter
I loved the cover on this novel, and with so many stars and enthusiastic reviews, I figured I would love this story. There is an interesting mystery about what happened to Julia’s older sister Olga, who died in front of a truck. There is an interesting view into Mexican culture.
But.
The mother-daughter relationship (which is the title of the book) is not the real focus of the story. The mother is portrayed as traditional and strict, but she’s also mostly a shadow and underdeveloped character. Julia, the daughter, is a hard character to like because she has so many hard edges, and I never reached a point of real empathy or connection with her—even though she is a grieving person. Instead, I felt like the book was a checklist of YA book “issues” without any depth or focus on any of them: immigration, depression, first-time sex, death of a sibling, food, Mexican culture, drug usage, attempted suicide, rape… The list could continue.
You will probably feel differently. Literally thousands of readers on Goodreads loved this book.
Still, this YA book about mothers and daughters definitely belongs on the must-read list for books in this category. It was a finalist for the National Book Award, after all.
Not a Drop to Drink by Mindy McGinnis
Mother-daughter Themes
Mother-daughter relationships (multi-generational)
What it’s about
In a dystopian world of poison water, an orphaned young girl must defend her family's freshwater pond to survive.
Why I Love It - Book Review
“There's different ways of doing things wrong, Lynn, and not all of it is choosing to hurt others. Sometimes it's the things you don't do that make you feel the worst.” ― Mindy McGinnis, quote from Not a Drop to Drink
In fact, Mindy McGinnis has become one of my favorite authors because of her unique stories and gritty protagonists, and Not A Drop To Drink is every bit of that.
Set in a future where drinking water is scarce and people fight for survival in a wild frontier, Lynn is a young woman in rural Ohio defending a pond and her homestead. Her mother raised her to distrust, to fight, and to live, and that's what she intends to do.
I enjoyed watching Lynn's fierce character evolve into a person who was willing to allow others into her life, to trust and even love. Despite her hardness, she had a kind heart. There were some interesting scenes in interactions with other people, like the stranger on the road, that tested her humanity.
Not a Drop to Drink was also a fast, thrilling YA book about survival, and its sequel, In a Handful of Dust, follows Lynn and her adopted daughter Lucy into the unknown after a mysterious plague drives them away from their home and community.
Bonus Round: Keeping Lucy by T. Greenwood
Mother-daughter Themes
Motherhood
What it’s about
A woman steals her 2-year-old daughter from a state-run institution and flees across state lines in a fight to be able to keep her.
Why I Love It - Book Review
“A body forgets, but the heart remembers.” ― T. Greenwood from Keeping Lucy
Inspired by a 1971 article about horrific conditions at the Belchertown State School for the Feeble-Minded, this thrilling historical novel by T. Greenwood explores the powerlessness of women at that time, society’s response to handicaps, and the unbreakable bond between mother and child.
After seeing an expose about the school where her daughter was taken at birth, Ginny decides to visit and see for herself. She is so shocked by the conditions that she checks out her daughter, who she is seeing for the very first time and who has Down Syndrome, and she flees with a friend to Florida. In the thrilling journey that follows, the two women are chased, have car trouble, take shelter in a seedy motel, and run out of money.
I loved the way the author portrayed the challenges Ginny faced. She’d never driven a car in her life. Any access to money came through her husband, who expected her to follow along and not ask questions. Her love for her daughter was fierce, and she became willing to do anything to fight for her. Although not a “young adult” novel, Keeping Lucy is a wonderful book about motherhood and the bond between a mother and child.
Bonus Round: The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah
Mother-Daughter Themes
Complex mother-daughter relationship & heartfelt journey to reconciliation
What it’s about
Set in America during the great depression and dust bowl, a woman faces sorrow, poverty, and the struggle to survive with her children.
Why I Love It - Book Review
“Courage is fear you ignore.” ― Kristin Hannah from The Four Winds
In Texas 1921, a sickly, ugly young-ish (25) woman named Elsa sneaks out of her house and meets a young man, and this tryst leads to an epic life journey as a farmer’s wife during the dust bowl in the 1930s. Famine and health eventually drive her and her children to California in search of work, food, and stability. But California is no paradise for the migrant workers who end up there.
It sounds easy enough, but The Four Winds is an epic novel that reminded me of Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath in the way it portrayed the brutal hardships of the depression and drought that destroyed so many lives. I loved Elsa’s grit and hopefulness despite so many things working against her. I loved how she turned her mother-in-law’s initial antagonism into real love and family kinship. I loved her friendship with other women at the migrant camp, as well as her second chance at love and her complex relationship with her daughter.
As with all of Kristin Hannah’s novels, I learned some unexpected things about this time period through Elsa’s story. For example, the most severe dust storms were black blizzards of grit and dirt that blocked the sun, permeated everything, and even caused “dust pneumonia.” Imagine!
Wonderful book. Great read. Pick it up today!
Other YA Books about Mother-Daughter Relationships
If you are looking other YA books about mother-daughter relationships, check out the Mother Daughter Relationship Books list on Goodreads. You may also be interested in my posts on Other Good Reads.
Author Bio
Khristina Chess is an award-winning author of a dozen young adult novels, including The Cutting Edge of Friendship, The Delinquent Hero, and Junior Missing. Hollow Beauty, her book about eating disorders, was named a finalist in the Next Generation India Book Awards. She tackles tough teen topics and writes binge-worthy books across multiple genres, including contemporary, thriller, mystery, and adventure.
In a recent interview from her alma mater, she described how her experience in the creative writing program prepared her for success.
