This is a complicated family story that involves betrayal, art, love, addiction. It took a long time to finally come together but I think was worth the ride. A few characters left me asking a lot of questions that never got resolved. Thank you NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Rachel Joyce has a gift for writing quirky characters and making them seem like ordinary folks. Perhaps our neighbors are more offbeat or peculiar than we think. The Kemp family: three sisters, one brother, one late mother and one larger-than-life artist father... these people can be normal one minute and totally unpredictable the next. The family structure, their father's fame (or infamy), the loss of one parent, and the huge expectations each person seems to inflict on herself or himself, all conspire to bring the reader into a world of great passions and mystery. Throw in a young girlfriend of the 70-year-old artist, an Italian villa on a lake, a few husbands/boyfriends, a sudden death and lots of unanswered questions, and you've got a book that's difficult to put down. No, I never figured out what would happen next, but I especially enjoyed Rachel Joyce's last four chapters, wrapping up loose ends and bringing some peace to a family drama that threatened to break every single heart.

This book essentially chronicles a family navigating the death of their patriarch. I expected there to be a bit more thrill and mystery after reading the summary, but that is not the true focus of the story. The main theme is around the siblings and their relationships to one another, their father, and others. I really enjoyed the writing style. I typically really enjoy family centered novels, but I found myself less engaged than usual. I think this was in part due to the climax occurring, and the book continuing on from a point I felt it should have wrapped up. I also didn't connect to the characters as much as I would have liked Regardless, I did enjoy reading this complicated family story.

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

Mystery, family dynamics and a grand mystery with great relational aspects in the story. I have never read anything Rachel Joyce has written but, I found myself looking at her backlog once I finished The Homemade God.

Didn't enjoy the characters in this one despite an interesting premise.
Not much happened for soooo long and didn't really understand why. Slow pacing and bleh characters. Not for me.

I finished this one a few days ago, but I could not make up my mind about how to review it.
On the one hand, it is beautifully written, on the other hand, it is quite densely written and it took me quite a while to wade through. We spend a lot of time with some of the characters, yet at least one of the pivotal characters remained a cypher. I think this was by design, but with the amount of time spent with the sisters’ interiority, it seemed odd that the focal point of the plot was so enigmatic. The brother was also a tad opaque, though not as much as the second wife.
I also found the deceased father a bit hard to get my head around, he seemed like a total dick. It was therefore hard for me to relate to the adult children-surely at least one of them would have been to therapy and realized this by now? Perhaps I found it all a bit triggering (as the kids say); I am so over hearing about other people’s daddy issues.
My biggest issue, however, was with. the pacing. There is a fairly large middle section where nothing happens, I caught myself thinking “Could we move this along already?”. Then, when something finally does happen, the book wraps up in a somewhat cursory manner, we even skip ahead a few years. Again, this may be by design, but it did not work for me.
In the end, I had to ask myself: “Was this an enjoyable read?”
Unfortunately, despite the author’s evident skill and technique, I have to answer “No”.

This is a 25% plot, 75% character driven read about a wealthy family and how a tragic event shapes the relationship of the four siblings. I loved the backdrop. It felt very sun-soaked and indulgent.

World famous artist Vic has recently told his four children that he will be getting married again, to a fellow artist decades his junior. He has started painting again and what he s working on is the biggest he has ever done. The Kemp siblings are shocked to find out he has died only weeks after the announcement. Thus begins a tumultuous journey through the web of lies and secrets surrounding the family and their father’s new love.

The ways in which his death and the relationship he was in fracture parts of this family , but also bring them together. I found the dynamic to be really entertaining. I didn’t particularly care much for the characters, but I found the overall story to be really enjoyable.

The writing is exquisite. The character development is multilayered and intricate. So many emotions abound, for both the characters as well as the reader. The story offers several viewpoints, solutions and degrees of complexity. The relationship among the siblings and their relationship with their father, is deep seated. I found this book to be extraordinarily good and evoked in me, many heart felt feelings. Thank you NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for granting me this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own. #TheHomemadeGod, # RandomHouse Publishing.

The Homemade God was an emotional and familial story that dove into the inner workings of families and their short comings. I think it depicted a story in the true way members experienced it.

The story itself may be ordinary and commonplace but that is both the beauty and the power that it holds. While each day is a unique set of occurrences they all come together to form the exact reality that this family lives.

While this was not necessarily a plot twist heavy shocking mystery novel it revealed mystery in a more muted and common experience. It allowed the reader to truly experience the life of the characters and the family because it so accurately depicted each individual's thoughts and emotions while switching back to the greater whole every once in a while. I enjoyed getting to see little bits of each of the siblings lives through the lens of their experience with their father.

This was a fun summer inspired novel that felt like you jumped into the inner workings of this dynamic family. It felt like a summer vacation but stayed very realistic and simplistic and avoided over complicating things to merely add to the plot.

Thank you so much to Random House Publishing Group - Random House | The Dial Press for providing me with this advanced copy, I truly enjoyed this read.

I think this will be a great read if you like family dramas, character-centered stories, or generational mysteries.

I have been wanting to spread out of the usual thriller genre and get more into fiction, so applied for this one.

I thought it was very slow and I had a hard time with the pacing. The characters were mid for me.

Rachel Joyce has done it again with The Homemade God, a novel that is as emotionally rich as it is atmospheric. This captivating story weaves together themes of art, family, and the intricate ties that both bind and divide us. Set against the backdrop of a sweltering Italian summer at a lakeside villa, the novel centers on four estranged siblings who reunite after the sudden death of their father—a celebrated yet deeply flawed artist. Together, they must unravel the mysteries he left behind, including his unfinished final masterpiece and his mysterious young widow, Bella-Mae.

What unfolds is a deeply moving and intricately layered exploration of grief, love, and identity. As the siblings grapple with their father’s legacy, long-buried resentments and painful truths rise to the surface. Joyce’s talent for creating complex, fully fleshed-out characters is on full display here. Each sibling is vividly portrayed, carrying their own scars and secrets as they navigate the weight of their shared past. The story unfolds with a slow-burning intensity, revealing its truths with the precision of an artist carefully layering paint on a canvas.

Joyce’s prose is exquisite, capturing the raw, messy emotions of family dynamics with remarkable clarity. The Homemade God is the kind of novel that stays with you long after you’ve turned the last page. It’s not just a story about what we inherit from those who came before us, but also about how we find the strength to move forward when the past refuses to release its grip.

A sincere thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Random House | The Dial Press for providing me with a digital reviewer copy of this resonant women’s fiction novel in exchange for my honest thoughts.

A book full of characters to love and to hate. It was intriguing from the beginning, with a beautiful ending.

I am really grateful for the opportunity to have read an ARC of The Homemade God. Many thanks to NetGalley, Dial Press, and the author. I really loved this novel for its lush original writing, depth of characterization, vividly complete sense of place/setting, and realistic portrayal of human pain and conflict between interdependent family members. I especially appreciated the time and space the author allowed her central characters (four well-individualized siblings) to evolve and to display different aspects of themselves; I experienced them as psychologically multidimensional The point-of view of the narrator often seemed to be third person omniscient, an interesting choice as it would also veer very close in to focus on one character and in so doing resembled third person limited. However, at no point did this bother or confuse me because, for me, it worked. This is an easy book to strongly recommend to those who like family sagas. The closest recent novel I can come up with is Long Island Compromise--which is also about the disintegration of important sibling relationships--although I found this novel a considerably more enjoyable reading experience and one that provided a good deal more hope into which I could buy.

This is the seventh book I've read by this author. Each is so different from the other, which is impressive. This one is about four siblings and their famous artist father. It starts off as kind of a mystery, but ultimately is an exploration of family dynamics. Joyce weaves it together masterfully.

This novel follows Vic Kemp, an eccentric, aging painter, and his four children: Netta, Susan, Goose, and Iris. This is a great read for fans of complicated family sagas and Italian settings, and will surely be a good summer book, with its mix of nostalgia, heat, and suspense. I often have trouble with books that switch back and forth between perspectives, and I found myself wanting a more defined main character. Bella-Mae's character and motivations never really became clear to me, either. Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC!

Thank you to Netgalley for this arc. I enjoyed this book very much. It follows four siblings who gather at their artist fathers lake house and he's dead and there's no sign of his last painting.

I really love when a book humbles me, and "The Homemade God" did just that. I really thought this novel was going in one direction and by the end, it had wrapped up so neatly and in such a despairing way, I felt like I had experienced the loss of God myself.

When the glue and provider of four siblings passes under questionable circumstances, the breakdown of the siblings is so chaotic that you begin to question which of the siblings is right. Through the course of the novel, you realize that life isn't easy and their glue was really just patchwork tape. It's a nicely woven-together novel. It's not going to change your world, but it may take your breath away.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the advanced copy.

The Homemade God is a story which grapples with identity as it is shaped by our family relationships. There is something both heartbreaking and pathetic about each of the characters as we see them navigating loss amidst a family crisis. Mostly, it was easy to dislike these people, entitled, privileged, children whose lives have allowed them to never quite become fully functioning adults. Only Goose elicited any sympathy, and I was left feeling cheated out of knowing Bella-Mae better - I wanted more of her presence, more of her quirky ability to get to the heart of who the others were beneath the carefully constructed selves they showed the world. The story unfolds slowly, but the writing is beautiful, the setting perfectly rendered, and overall, it is a heartfelt portrait of love and grief, and a wrenching look at how we let others define us, how family can both hold us together and tear us apart.

Another book about a group of adult siblings that is slowly falling apart. While not as depressing as Long Island Compromise, it is just as funny, and has an atmospheric European island setting that is necessary for the artistic direction. Fans of Blue Sisters and Like Mother, Like Mother will love another world of complicated family relationships.

Netta, Susan, Goose and Iris all have wonderful character development in this novel, their father announcing he is setting aside his lothario ways and getting married to Bella-Mae, a 27 year old who is CERTAINLY not marrying him for his fame and money. A famous artist, Vic suspiciously drowns in the lake shortly after marrying Bella Mae with no will. And what is more, Vic's last piece of artwork is missing.

This is an easily readable book and the blurb is perfect, it gives away just enough about the plot to engage the reader without giving away too much. The premise, to many, may overshadow the outcome. The reveals throughout the book don't come as a big splash, but very human and subtle. It ends not with a bang, but with a music box tinkling. Each character is developed and tweaked, just when you think you know who they are, they surprise you and break your heart in the best way.

Then comes the time to separate and take the items from the family home. They use stickers to indicate what items they want, with a number from 1-4 based on how important it is to them. And by then, you know each character so well that they act completely as you'd expect. It is such a good scene and proof of how well developed they are. The character we don't actually know that well is Bella-Mae, but she is really more of a Maguffin to move the story forward rather than being important herself.

Not everyone will like this one, but I found it to be like listening to an opera.... the goal of an opera is not the ending, but the journey of the music drawing you in. The pacing and characterization are brilliant and I also loved the setting and how it built towards the complete arc of each sibling.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for the ARC and for Madison Dettlinger from Random House marketing for recommending this novel. Book to be published June 24, 2025

I came away from this novel, opening my eyes as if awakening from a long dream. The pictures were so clear that I felt as if I had lived an entire lifetime with these people. It begins simply, an artist., father of four adult children, three daughters and a son. Netta, the eldest, a high-powered attorney, Susan, a frustrated housewife who longs to be a Cordon Bleu chef, Goose (Gustav) damaged in his soul, and Iris, the youngest who is adrift. Before long, Vic, (in his 70s), artist and father, announces that he is in love with a very young woman, Bella-Mae

At this point, it appears that this will be a mystery. All four children depart for Italy upon their father's death there. How did Vic die? Was there foul play? The four children arrive at the house on the island of Orta where their father drowned in the lake. But Rachel Joyce is too skilled a writer to make this so simple. Instead learn what makes each person who they are and how they are frozen in time. We learn this by intimate chapters about each of them, and later, also, Bella-Mae.

it was fascinating to consider how bad paintings can sell for huge amounts of money and how personalities can be stunted by family order and roles and by the influence of a selfish parent. Joyce's descriptions are vivid and beautiful, but she is a genius in illuminating the interiors of her characters. The satisfying ending explains the title.

Thank you, Net Galley and Dial Press, for the ARC copy of this book.