Tracey Lange has a deft touch with We Are the Brennans. The family (and adopted son Kale) have some major problems, and major secrets that they're keeping from each other. But somehow all of the secrets and issues never bog the book down and leave the reader feeling exhausted and overwhelmed. Instead, there's something about the way they circle the wagons for each other that makes you wish you were a part of their messed up family, drinking a pint at the family bar. The story is mainly told by only daughter Sunday, who's returned to New York after fleeing five years ago. Denny, the oldest, goldest child, who's not balancing the bar books or his marriage so well. And Kale, the family friend and business partner whose tenuous marriage gets even more rocky as his former fiancée returns home. The story occasionally also works in the perspectives of the Brennan patriarch, younger brother Jackie and Kale's wife Vivienne to provide additional hindsight into the family dynamics. Sunday's return is the dam the breaks everything open, and as the family starts opening up to each other it feels both realistic and cathartic. To some extent I wish Lange had either not provided POVs for Mickey, Jackie or Vivienne, or incorporated them into the storytelling a little more but it's still an on point look at complicated family dynamics, where things can get messy and not everything is a fairy tale ending.