Review: Truths I Never Told You by Kelly Rimmer

“Fans of Jodi Picoult and Kristin Hannah now have a new go-to author.” —Sally Hepworth, bestselling author of The Secrets of Midwives

From the bestselling author of The Things We Cannot Say comes a poignant novel about the fault in memories and the lies that can bond a family together—or tear it apart.

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.

Paperback, 352 pages

Expected publication: April 14th, 2020

by Graydon House

4.5/5

Sometimes starting a new book by an author that is also new (to me) can be daunting, especially when you hear great things about said author. It puts pressure not just on myself but on the book itself, which is precisely what happened here. Kelly Rimmer has written numerous books and this is my first with Truths I Never Told You.

There were many things that I enjoyed here:
1. The dual time period, it’s a favorite of mine.
2. Multiple points of view, it’s great to get different sides to a story.
3. The historical aspect, yes the 1950s is historical and getting a look at that time period makes me happy to be born when I was.

There are many layers that revolve around this group of 4 siblings with Beth playing center stage. Dementia and postpartum depression are some serious subjects to tackle and Kelly Rimmer did a great job. Whether she experienced them first hand herself or not I don’t know but she sure knew how to write with feeling and be authentic at the same time. It’s not that often that a book sprouts tears but this one did. Usually, I find myself favoring one time period over the other, but such wasn't the case here, I genuinely cared for all the characters and the various situations.

Truths I Never Told You is a story of love, heartache, and family.  There was mystery to keep me on my toes and an ending that was very satisfying (for this reader).

My thanks to Harper Collins Canada for an advanced copy of this book, which releases April 14th, in exchange for an honest review.