#BlogTour: IF ONLY I COULD TELL YOU by Hannah Beckerman @hannahbeckerman @orionbooks @PoppyStimpson @Tr4cyF3nt0n #IfOnly

Publication: 21st February 2019 – Orion

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?

What a beautiful and emotional read! This novel captured my heart with its heart-breaking plot and its engaging characters and I know I will be thinking about it for a long time.

IF ONLY I COULD TELL YOU is the story of two sisters and their mother. Lily and Jess haven’t spoken to each other for almost thirty years. They have missed many Christmases, many Sunday lunches, Lily’s wedding, and the births of both their daughters, all for something that happened when they were little. But what happened that made Jess hate Lily so much that she can’t even bear being in the same room as her? That’s what their mother Audrey wants to find out. Audrey knows that what happened twenty-eight years earlier changed their lives forever, but she doesn’t know what caused in Jess so much anger and hate and she wants to resolve it before it’s too late.

IF ONLY I COULD TELL YOU is a story of family, love, grief, loss, and friendship. It will make you laugh, but it will also make you cry, a lot (keep tissue close by!). Through different timelines, the author takes us on a wonderful and poignant journey between the past and the present that slowly reveals a sad past and a shocking revelation at the end that I could barely read because I had tears in my eyes.

The author created some well-crafted, realistic, and likable characters which I loved, which made me shed tears, and which sometimes made me angry (especially Jess). My favourite characters were Phoebe and Mia, Lily and Jess’s sixteen-year-old daughters, who I found very mature and smart for their age.

IF ONLY I COULD TELL YOU is a touching, beautiful, and engrossing novel that it’s impossible not to love and I’d like to thank Tracy for inviting me to take part in the blog tour and Orion for providing me with a copy of the book.

Hannah Beckerman studied English at King’s College, London and for a Master’s degree at Queen Mary and Westfield, London. She spent twelve years working in television, first as a Producer for the BBC and subsequently as a Commissioning Editor for Arts and Documentaries at Channel 4 and the Discovery Channel USA. She lived in Bangladesh for two years, working for the BBC World Service Trust.

Hannah is now a full-time author and journalist. She is a book critic and features writer for the Observer, the FT Weekend Magazine and the Sunday Express and a regular chair at literary festivals and events. She has been a judge for numerous book prizes including the Costa Book Awards. If Only I Could Tell You is Hannah’s second novel. She lives in London with her husband and daughter.