Truths I Never Told You - Fiction Review

Goodreads:  Truths I Never Told You by Kelly Rimmer

Rating: Not For Me
Source: Publisher

Description:  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.

Genre: Fiction

Why I Picked This Book:  I love books about family secrets and the cover really jumped out at me.

My Impression:  Let me start out with the positive.  I really enjoyed Rimmer's writing style.  The flow and pacing was excellent,  the characters came alive on the page, and it was never a book I wanted to put down because I was bored.  The emotions and reactions felt authentic and genuine and it made the characters easy to connect to even when I didn't necessarily like them.

I do feel like this was a bit of a case of wrong book wrong time in a lot of ways.  The beginning where Beth and her brother are moving their father into assisted living and debating on what to do with the house hit too close to home for comfort for me at this time though I do feel like it was realistically done.  It did make the first part of the book incredibly difficult for me to get through and I think anyone who had dealt with a similar situation with a loved one recently would struggle as well.

As Beth discovered more about her mother I did find that it became more repetitive.  The issues brought to light were very serious and very real but don't have real solutions so it mostly became a lot of grimness and hand twisting.  There were a couple of points towards the end that set my teeth on edge a bit (there was a mention of taking a pill and fixing PPD almost instantly.  While I'm all for medication I don't see it as instant fix) and felt a little forced.  It ended up feeling like a grim read that I was marching through just to get to the end.

I feel like this was a well written book but one that just isn't for me.  If you enjoy issue driven books and books that really delve into grim facts of life I think you'll really enjoy this but I do recommend caution if you have recently had to tackle either postpartum depression or moving a loved one into a nursing facility. 

Would I Read More of this Series/Author?  I would because I did like the writing style but only if I was really sold on the topic of the book.

Would I Recommend this Book?  With reservations.  I do think the book was well done so if you're okay with the subject matter then I think you'd enjoy the book.

* I received this book in exchange for an honest review.  As always my opinions and impressions are completely my own. *