If you’re into “sad girl” books that lean more on character than plot, The Homemade God might just be your next read. Rachel Joyce’s latest novel dives deep into the emotional tangle of sibling dynamics, grief, and long-held family wounds in the wake of a complicated father’s death.

The story centers around four adult siblings navigating the aftermath of their famous artist father's sudden passing—and the shock of his recent marriage to a much younger woman. As they gather at his summer home in Italy, they’re forced to reckon not just with his legacy, but also with the very different versions of him that each of them knew. The way Vic, their father, manipulated and treated each child uniquely adds a layered and compelling tension to the story.

If you enjoyed Intermezzo or The Blue Sisters, you’ll likely appreciate this one. It's atmospheric, emotionally complex, and quietly powerful in the way it explores memory, identity, and the lifelong ripple effects of family dynamics.

This was my first book by Rachel Joyce, and I’ll definitely be exploring her other work.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for the free advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing- Dial Press for the ARC.

The patriarch of a family dies without a will and a new wife. His three daughters and son all grapple with the loss of their father. The children were fully fleshed out and beloved by me by the end of book and I am sure by any other reader who picks up this book. I kept picturing the dad from Succession as Vic!

This is my first Rachel Joyce and I plan on going back through her past work!

The Homemade God by Rachel Joyce is a story about 4 siblings and their estranged father, Vic. Once their mother dies, Vic has decided to marry a much younger woman and when he suddenly dies, the siblings rush to his Italian villa. As you would assume, accusations divide them. I loved her character development and this story line, although difficult to read (we all have family issues, so I get it) her writing is magnificent.
Thank you NetGalley and Random House Publishing for this ARC. I really enjoyed it.

I liked the idea of this novel.....but HOW did the same person who wrote the unputdownable, delightful Unlikely Pilgramage of Harold Frye, which was full of interesting, lovable, though fallible characters, write this? I felt little for any of the characters and the drama was a bit too much.

The Homemade God is a beautifully contemplative and quietly powerful novel that explores faith, loss, and the search for meaning in everyday life. Rachel Joyce has a gift for capturing the small, intimate moments that reveal so much about her characters’ inner worlds. The story centers around a community grappling with tragedy and the unexpected ways they find solace and connection. It’s not a story about big, dramatic gestures – it’s more about the quiet resilience that emerges when people come together to make sense of the inexplicable.

What I loved most is how Joyce doesn’t offer easy answers or a neat resolution. Instead, she lets the characters wrestle with their doubts and beliefs, creating a story that feels authentic and deeply human. The writing is poetic yet grounded, making you pause and reflect on your own sense of purpose. If you’re in the mood for a thought-provoking, beautifully written novel that lingers long after you’ve finished, The Homemade God is well worth your time.

Strange, but this latest work by Rachel Joyce did not engage me as completely as her earlier works, including those that made her famous. Enough has been revealed in the synopsis that I need not repeat details, but what put me off was this lacked the light touch she so brilliantly displayed in those other books. Much repetition, seemingly a lack of editorial input.

There's a lot to love about "The Homemade God" by Rachel Joyce. The novel features a large and eccentric family, lots of conflict and beautiful scenery, especially in Italy. There are some worthwhile messages related to midlife happiness/fulfillment, grief and art, too. What I found missing here was the sweetness that made me love Joyce's earlier book "The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry."

"The Homemade God" centers on four adult siblings whose famous father dies unexpectedly, shortly after he marries a much-younger woman. The siblings find themselves pitted against this interloper, and eventually against each other, in ways both surprising and ordinary. It turns out that none of them really knew their father, a self-taught and commercially successful artist, nearly as well as they thought they did. Though the four of them are quite different, I found them all entitled and stunted, which made spending time with this cast of characters less pleasant than I had hoped.

If you enjoy family dramas you will certainly like this book. The four siblings who are the main characters have such distinct personalities you wonder how they could be related. Their relationship with their father is complicated and gets even more so with the introduction of a mysterious, much younger wife. I felt the drama surrounding her was a bit too extreme but helped keep your attention. I had a hard time liking or connecting with most of the siblings but if you have lots of drama in your family you may enjoy this!

Thanks to NetGalley and Random House for the ARC. My opinions are my own.

If you needed one book to take with you on the Oregon Trail, this is it. It’ll take you that long to slog through it.

It was hard to believe this was the same author who wrote Harold Fry. The premise of this book had so much promise. This execution was mind-numbingly boring. The dialogue meandered nowhere and I wound up skimming. I stuck with it, hoping the conclusion would provide some clarity, but the end just fizzled out.

I love all of Joyce”s books but this book was very slow reading and I had a hard time connecting with the story and the characters. Thank you allowing me to post an honest review.

I finished it and am not sure why since I disliked it from the beginning. I have read and enjoyed most of Rachel Joyce's books especially Harold Fry and Queenie Hennessy so was looking forward to this one. Unfortunately I didn't resonate with either the topic or the characters and had an hard time believing it was written by Joyce. Eccentric Vic Kemp was 84, widowed since the four children were small and a fairly famous and somewhat pornographic painter. His 4 adult children were shocked when he married a 27 yo and moved to his villa in Italy. When work came of his death, the 4 traveled to Italy to determine the cause of death and the location of his last painting and his will.. Each handled things differently and it caused a serious rift in the previously good relationships. I think the story may have been better told had each child had narrated a section. Thank you NetGalley for the ARC copy of this book.

Not at all what I was expecting. This was a slower book for me, but I constantly wanted to know what was next. When Vic, the patriarch of the family suddenly announces his engagement, his adult children are instantly suspicious. When he suddenly dies, they jump to murder and all flock to their family home in Italy to investigate. They find that Vic was all that tied them together.

Absolutely fantastic plot! Could not put the book down once I began reading it. Cannot wait for it to be released. I will recommend it to everyone I know!

**Features:**
- Family drama with a little bit of mystery
- Explores complex family dynamics, love, grief, and identity
- Set predominantly in Italy

**Synopsis:**

Renowned artist Vic Kemp is almost as well known for his drinking and flirting as he is for his actual art. When his wife died young, Vic’s four children all stepped up to try filling the void she left behind. Now adults, Netta, Susan, Goose (Gustav), and Iris all try hard to maintain their close bond and continue looking after their father. That is why all four are left in shock when their now seventy six-year old father announces his betrothal to a twenty seven-year old woman named Bella-Mae whom they have never met. As he leaves for the family’s Italian villa with his new wife to finish what he claims will be his masterpiece, the siblings are left with more questions than answers. When Vic is then discovered dead in the lake with no sign of his masterpiece, the siblings join Bella-Mae both to grieve and find the answers they seek. However, without Vic at their center, the threads that keep them together start to fray.

**Thoughts:**

When I originally picked up this book, I thought it was going to be another murder mystery in an idyllic location with a little family drama on the side. However, I was pleasantly surprised to find this more focused on the complicated relationships between the different siblings. The story is narrated in the third person, but it rotates who it ‘zooms in’ on so that we get to experience everyone’s perspective as the story develops. Joyce really excels at illustrating the complicated dynamics of a family that is tight knit but to a point where certain issues or feelings go unvoiced for fear of weakening that bond. Even before the true drama of the story starts, you can sense the tension that lurks just beneath the surface. In both positive and negative ways, Vic is the foundation for how this family operates. I found the way Vic’s death provided the opportunity and freedom to re-examine things in a more honest light and the resulting fallout really compelling and well handled. If you like a good family drama, this is definitely the book for you.

Though I found the characters complex and interesting, I can’t say that I ever truly liked and/or was rooting for any of them. Where this doesn’t really bother me, I think in this case it is related to my one, slightly bigger issue with the book. To me, it was never clear what the end ‘goal’ was, even for the individual characters. This led to what felt like a natural conclusion to the story before the book itself was finished. While I am ultimately satisfied with its true ending, there just seemed to be some uncertainty on where to land this plane and we got lost in that conundrum a couple of times throughout the story.

The Homemade God is a moving family drama: Vic Kemp, father of four adult children is unexpectedly dead. They hear the news shortly after learning their septuagenarian father has married a 27-year-old. Vic was rich, renowned. So, of course, his children wonder if new wife Bella-Mae had something to do with his untimely death.

Goose, Netta. Iris and Susan descend on their family Italian lake home determined to meet Bella-Mae and get answers. Until now, the siblings have been incredibly close. Also with Vic. They are united by grief and confusion. And then, the mystery of Vic’s death drags on and each sibling’s journey forward is an opportunity to splinter off, further from one another.

We get just enough of each sibling to care about them, enough about Vic to both enjoy and be disgusted by his ego, and very little of Bella-Mae (which I think is intentional: is she a sad widow or someone who killed an old husband for a paycheck?).

The story is heavy and lovely. I enjoyed getting to know each of the characters and watching this, often sad and painful, story unfold. Highly recommended. Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review. 4.5 stars rounded down.

Favorite quotes:
“ this was how he learned a new truth about love. You can be overmastered by the most powerful feelings for a person, and yet they can happily exist without so much as giving you a second thought.”

“Traveling toward the dead, it turned out, was not like traveling at all. Because how could you move toward someone who was not there? It was a no-win kind of journey, where the end point was not a gain but a subtraction.”

“She was beginning to wonder why, when you lost someone you loved, you started missing all the other people you’d loved. As if grief was a hole and, once it was there, any dead person could come along and jump into it too.”

Loved the writing style but the story was a bit too slow moving for me. The characters were multifaceted and quite interesting though!

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

You just know when you pick up an incredible book that's going to be a wonderful read from the first sentence. The homemade God by Rachel Joyce is just that kind of book. It is a wonderful and delicious read. Four children of a very famous painter, all conglomerate on his villa after his death. They are of course in shock as they meet his very young wife Bella-Mae. He was 71 she is 27. Lots of questions here were asked by the children. The children are all older, and they do feel that Bella-Mae had something to do with his death. But did she? He had lost a lot of weight and he was constantly drinking a special tea that had a unique odor, but did she have anything to do with his death? This is an incredible book that had me captured from the first word to the very last. I loved it, and I highly recommend it.

Yet again Rachel Joyce creates such memorable characters that I find myself thinking of them long after I have finished the book. If you love a character driven book, rather than plot driven, then this is a book for you. I found myself immersed in the story of 4 siblings and the relationships between themselves and their father. When their famous artist father marries a woman almost 50 years younger it affects their lives in ways they can not imagine.

I finished it! I’m not sure why but I did. When I first started reading this book, I thought the premise was fairly interesting. The story is about three sisters and a brother. Their mother died when the youngest sister was born and their father has been alone. He’s a rather eccentric artist. The characters are a little strange to me and the story is even stranger. I finished it and I’m glad. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me to read an advance copy for my honest review.