If Only I Could Tell You - Hannah Beckerman

Description

Audrey's family has fallen apart. Her two grown-up daughters, Jess and Lily, are estranged, and her two teenage granddaughters have never been allowed to meet. A secret that echoes back thirty years has splintered the family in two, but is also the one thing keeping them connected.

As tensions reach breaking point, the irrevocable choice that one of them made all those years ago is about to surface. After years of secrets and silence, how can one broken family find their way back to each other?

Review

This is a beautifully written book with a secret that has been kept for over 30 years, but I found it to be a different secret to different people.

I spent most of the book imagining what the secret could be. We are taken back in time to 30 years ago on several occasions and the day is replayed from a different characters view point. There is also a horrific incident back then which is played down in the book, but I found quite haunting apart from the actual secret.

Not known for my patience, I did think at some points that the secret could just be revealed, and then when it was I was still impatient for the different characters to resolve their issues with one another. There are also some back stories from the other characters that aren't fully explored, maybe they could have been given more time in the book. Audrey herself is fighting her own battle and the fact that her daughters are estranged was so sad to me. However, she finds her own salvation in so many ways and some of the scenes with her grand daughters were so lovely to read.

Near the end of the book the novel is transported to New York and I feared that it was going to be tied up a little too nicely with a character from earlier in the book happening to be there too. Luckily it was not what I imagined and I can see that the author used the character as a bridge to the conclusion she wanted to reach.

I'm giving this book 4 out of 5 stars. My thanks go to Netgalley and Orion Publishing Group for an ARC to review.

Comments

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