Review: The Best We Could Hope For by Nicola Kraus

Title: The Best We Could Hope For
Author: Nicola Kraus
Publication Date: May 6, 2025
Publisher: Little A
Format Read: Kindle e-book
Genre: Literary Fiction

---

Being completely honest, I picked The Best We Could Hope For by Nicola Kraus by basically pulling it out of a hat. That’s right. I’m a bit quirky, and I often choose my backlist reads from a large pool of books on my TBR using a random number generator. Every book in that pool comes recommended by BookBrowse or was highly rated by friends, followers, or other bloggers, so I know there’s a good chance I’ll enjoy whatever gets selected. My friends who have read this praised it, and so did BookBrowse, so it made the list. And here we are.

Jayne grows up in the ’50s and ’60s alongside her younger sister, Bunny, the family favorite. That is, until Bunny runs away from home at sixteen. Jayne doesn’t see her again until 1972, when Bunny arrives with two children in tow and another on the way. After experiencing complications during the birth of her third child, Bunny leaves all three children with Jayne and then doesn’t return for years. When she finally resurfaces, her return ultimately tears the family in two. For decades afterward, the children are left with questions.

Kraus has written characters who feel like real people you could encounter while walking the streets of New York City. They are tangible, with distinct likes and dislikes, flaws and virtues, quirks and memories. The NYC setting is also perfect. Despite the vastness of the city, reading this novel feels like peering inside one of the cardboard houses the youngest daughter creates and closely examining this one family and its history. Jayne and the youngest daughter, Linden, serve as the story’s narrators, with their perspectives presented entirely through close third person.

Kraus’s prose blends metaphor-rich description with close interiority, using long, flowing observations, repetition, and sharp fragments to connect physical details with memory and emotion. The story explores motherhood, abandonment, chosen versus biological family, inherited trauma, family secrets, memory, and identity. Perhaps most importantly, it examines the lasting consequences of parental choices.

The Best We Could Hope For was a surprisingly quick read. Early on, I didn’t expect to become so absorbed in a story that lacks both the comedy of a rom-com and the nail-biting suspense of a thriller. Nonetheless, I found myself completely drawn into this family’s history. I finished the novel carrying the weight of its characters’ emotions, which is exactly what I want from a compelling family drama.

I recommend this one to readers who enjoy stories centered on family in all its forms: the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Nerd Rating: 🤓🤓🤓🤓 — an absorbing portrait of a family fractured by secrets and abandonment

---

Click here to learn more about The Best We Could Hope For and Nicola Kraus.

---

Let’s Discuss:
Do you enjoy books that slowly unravel the secrets and history of one complicated family?

---

Support Indie Booksellers

Thinking about picking up a copy? Purchasing through the link below supports independent bookstores, and I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Thank you for supporting indie booksellers and I Speak Book Nerd. 

Get your copy on Bookshop.org.

This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase through these links, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.