Today I’m delighted to share my review of the incredible If Only I Could Tell You by Hannah Beckerman as part of the blog tour. Thank you to Tracy Fenton of Compulsive Readers and Orion Publishing for giving me the opportunity to read and review this devastatingly beautiful book.
About the book:
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?
Moving, thoughtful and surprising, If Only I Could Tell You is impossible to put down – and impossible to forget.
About the author:
Hannah Beckerman is an author, journalist and broadcaster. She is a regular contributor to The Observer, The FT Weekend Magazine, and The Sunday Express, and was the book critic on Sara Cox’s Radio 2 Show. She chairs literary events around the UK and has been a judge on numerous book prizes including the Costa Book Awards.
Prior to becoming a full-time writer, Hannah was a TV Executive who spent fifteen years producing and commissioning documentaries about the Arts, History and Science for the BBC, Channel 4 and Discovery USA before turning her hand to writing.
My Review:
Oh wow, what a beautiful, moving and poignant novel this is! Even after it broke me into a million pieces, it still somehow managed to put me back together again by the time the final page had been turned.
A devastatingly honest read that I will never forget, If Only I Could Tell You is the story of Audrey, her daughters Jess and Lily, and the secret that has torn their family apart for the past thirty years. I had so many different scenarios going round in my head of what this secret could be, all of which were wrong, that the truth when it was finally revealed literally made me gasp out loud.
Audrey is an unforgettable character who I connected with from the outset. The love she feels for her family is palpable, and her wish for the past to be put behind them before it is too late made my heart ache for her.
Jess and Lily, her estranged daughters, broke my heart, the devastating secret from thirty years ago forever standing in the shadows between them. Their two teenage daughters, unfairly caught up in the middle, have never been allowed to meet, with Jess doing everything she can to keep their lives separate.
All Audrey wants is for her family to finally be able to heal the gaping chasm between them, and to somehow piece the fragments of their fractured relationships back together again.
But Jess cannot forget what happened when she was ten years old, and has vowed to never forgive Lily for the events of that terrible day. With Audrey’s health fast deteriorating, can she somehow do the impossible and bring her family back together, or are they already too far gone for that to be a possibility?
This book took me on a journey of love, misunderstandings, secrets, heartbreak and healing. It resonated with me on a personal level and I found myself sobbing at various points throughout the story, feeling the horror and devastation of this broken family right along with them.
If Only I Could Tell You is a brutally honest book that moved me beyond words. I don’t think any review I could write would do this incredible story justice. Hannah Beckerman’s writing is beautiful and the depth of emotion she portrays is astounding.
Books like this don’t come along very often and I feel privileged to have been given the opportunity to read this heartbreaking, yet ultimately uplifting book.
Highly recommended.
If Only I Could Tell You by Hannah Beckerman is available to buy now: Amazon UK
Cal Turner Reviews 
Oooh lovely review… I too soaked my tissues… Emotional read
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