Chosen Family

‘Madeleine Gray writes so acutely about the mess of desire and the human condition.’ Nigella Lawson

A sexy, romantic, queer, epic literary novel for all readers by the award-winning author of the internationally acclaimed bestseller Green Dot.  
Books about friendship are not often described as love stories, but this is one.

Nell Argall and Eve Bowman are both brilliant, odd and friendless. Traumatised in their first year of high school, their lives are changed forever when they meet.  
Set in Sydney over eighteen years, Chosen Family follows Nell and Eve as they grow into themselves, as they both love and destroy each other. From school, to university, to careers, to motherhood, Nell’s and Eve’s is a relationship that is a life-raft that is also a poison apple that is also a Medusan stare, frozen in time.

Together, Nell and Eve are a double helix. Love, guilt, shame, joy – these emotions twist and turn between them. Can the wounds of adolescent betrayal ever really heal? Can we ever really understand what is going on in someone else’s head? And what’s love got to do, got to do with it? 

‘Warning: Clear your schedule for the all-consuming read.’ Books+Publishing  

‘I inhaled this book, holding my breath at passages that felt ripped straight from my high school diary in 2007.’ LUCINDA PRICE (@Froomes), author of All I Ever Wanted Was to Be Hot

‘Hilarious and devastating … This book is everything to me.’ SIANG LU, Miles Franklin-winning author of Ghost Cities

Author Biography

Madeleine Gray is a writer and critic from Sydney. Her first novel, Green Dot, was an acclaimed bestseller in Australia and the UK. In 2024, Madeleine won the ABIA for Matt Richell New Writer of the Year Award and the 2025 Russell Prize for Humour Writing. Madeleine-gray.com @madeleine_gray_