Mothers and Daughters: From the Sunday Times bestselling author comes the most captivating new family drama of 2022

Product Information

Her books are loved by readers looking for beautifully drawn relationships, emotionally powerful storylines and evocative settings.

Naomi loves her two girls, but when she meets an old friend it upsets the equilibrium and, although they think they know everything about their mother, Naomi, like most of us, has her secrets – and she’s not the only one. How dare she assume her mother has no right to her own life, that she is too old to make her own decisions? Naomi has recently been widowed and is trying to rebuild her life in the little village of Tilsham by the sea.Although the story does not fully take place by the coast, scenes at Naomi’s house always felt shrouded in a calmness that I could never feel with Willow and Martha’ story.

However, the story then gets a little contrived with a rather irritatingly simple solution that feels too easy. I wasn’t too fussed on Martha to start with, but she grew on me – Willow was a delight, although she let herself be walked over. There are things Naomi has kept from her girls, like the fact that her marriage to their father wasn't quite what it seemed. She tries to enlist Willows help who is not so sure and feels her mum should stay in their family home. Martha is in a stable satisfying marriage and Willow is finally with a man that is viewed as perfect boyfriend material by the rest of the family.I was especially impressed by the ways in which the author explored the changes in the relationships between Naomi and her daughters, Martha and Willow, as well as those between the two sisters, as the various crises in the family force them to confront some uncomfortable home truths about the past and to recognise the corrosive, undermining effects of family secrets. If the perpetrator is a popular and successful member of the community, who is going to believe that such horrors are happening behind closed doors? Siblings are often very different to each other and the author does an excellent job of bringing life to her characters. Little by little the women use the insights they gain to begin to let go of well-established but dysfunctional patterns of behaviour, to adjust their perceptions of each other and to let go of guilt, anger and misplaced loyalties. Martha has other ideas and wants her mother to sell her home and move closer to the girls, this causes some major problems with the normal flow of family life with them.