Many thanks to Justine and publisher Harlequin Books for my spot on this Blog Tour.
A difficult book to review, I thought. A slow burner of a book where the topics of mental health and motherhood were tackled head-on. Author Kelly Rimmer’s writing gained its depth into the story as the pages turned.
Beth had to take a difficult decision of placing her father Patrick in a home due to advanced dementia, and while clearing her childhood home, she found paintings and letters where the story of her mother Grace and sister Maryanne soon came to light. Beth was shocked that her mother had not died in a car accident. She read on…
My second book by this author, the first part was slightly slow. But the story soon gained speed as I got pretty involved with the swirls of plots that emerged out. The author dealt with difficult topics like post partum depression sensitively.
Told in two timelines, I found myself empathizing with the women in 1950s and Beth in present time. The reveal of the truth happened one page at a time, and the voices of the three women were pretty strong.
This was a difficult book to read at the present time of world crisis, so I deliberately had to skim read some difficult parts so that I was not affected much. Overall, a poignant book where I realized things had not changed much for the women in my section of the globe.
I received a free ARC from NetGalley and the publisher, and this is my journey into its pages, straight from the heart!! STRICTLY HONEST AND UNBIASED.
All my reviews can be read here
With her father recently moved to a care facility for his worsening dementia, Beth Walsh volunteers to clear out the family home and is surprised to discover the door to her childhood playroom padlocked. She’s even more shocked at what’s behind it—a hoarder’s mess of her father’s paintings, mounds of discarded papers and miscellaneous junk in the otherwise fastidiously tidy house.
As she picks through the clutter, she finds a loose journal entry in what appears to be her late mother’s handwriting. Beth and her siblings grew up believing their mother died in a car accident when they were little more than toddlers, but this note suggests something much darker. Beth soon pieces together a disturbing portrait of a woman suffering from postpartum depression and a husband who bears little resemblance to the loving father Beth and her siblings know. With a newborn of her own and struggling with motherhood, Beth finds there may be more tying her and her mother together than she ever suspected.
Exploring the expectations society places on women of every generation, Kelly Rimmer explores the profound struggles two women unwittingly share across the decades set within an engrossing family mystery that may unravel everything they believed to be true.
Publication Date: April 2020
16 Responses
Glad you enjoyed this one, Shalini. I don’t blame you for having to skim over some parts. Sometimes it’s too emotional to get through.
Exactly and I see women going through these problems in my day to day life. Managing everything with little or no help
😔😤…I hate that!! I hate injustices. Makes me feel like 🤬.
Recently, I have found a number of book have quite a slow start and this seems like one of them. Terrific review, Shalini!
True that. But I think I like her other books more.
How are you doing Marialyce? How are things at your end?
This one is coming up on my calendar. I’ve read her before and know the author can pack an emotional punch.
I liked her other books, this one was good I was thinking between 3 or 4 stars
I will take it on my list, but for the time after the crisis. When i can read with a Martini espresso on the table, and sunshine on my face. Thank you, Shalini! Best wishes, Michael
I got sad just reading your review. I don’t know what that says more about–the empathy you felt for the characters and passed on through your review or the times in which we live. Life should not be this hard, but it is. And yet, as I write that, I know that I am blessed with food on the table, clean water to drink, a roof over my head, and good health. So many things that are considered luxuries in some parts of our world.
Life for women is still very very difficult. Female infanticide is known. Sons are preferred. My father too would have liked sons. Women are still considered as a second class probably last class citizens. There are lots and lots of ways women are humiliated in my country yet. But it is changing at some places. In some minds. Here women are women’s worst enemies especially the mother-in-law. They torture…
What a sad commentary that women are so hateful to other women. That is often depicted in films where a new wife is added to the husband’s household and her mother-in-law makes life miserable for her. Power? Jealousy? I would like to think that is fiction, but it sounds like there is much truth to it.😥
It is true. Brides are burned, tortured, treated like a servant. Taunts are seen in every household. My own grandmother played games with my mother and told such tales to my dad who emotionally abused us all through my life until I asked him to shut up. How I passed through my exams, I have no idea. I give full credit to my mother, she was the one who stood by me.
You are a strong woman! And I credit your mother as well. It must have been hard for her to stand up to your father.
For all of us… Life happens
I felt very much the same way about this book Shalini. The first half was slow and it was hard to not put it down. The second half had me zooming through and I wanted to see what was going to happen. Nice, honest review. I did like the issues dealt with in this book as they are ones that are often hushed up though.
I agree. I found my mind shying away from the hard core topics as I feel the stress of the world was getting to me. So I had to skim through some sections