Book Review: The Secrets Mothers Keep by Jacquie Underdown

I have read Jacquie’s Brothers of the Vine series, a rural romance series that I thoroughly enjoyed. When I heard she was branching out into something different, I preordered it straight away.

Each chapter is focused on one of the 5 main female characters, all family members, all drawn together to renovate the family Manor in Tasmania and turn it into a B&B. Each returns to undertake this endeavour for their own reasons, and each has secrets, some more life changing than others.

These characters were all so different, Mary the matriarch of the family has a closed off manner. June, Mary and Grace’s sister has to be my favourite of the sisters. When we meet her, she’s a little bit magical and has a hippie like way about her that completely resonated with me, I hope I’m just like her when I’m older. Grace has recently lost her husband and has discovered a secret he’d been keeping, when we first meet her, she’s a little lost and feels like her life has been a lie. Lily-Rose, Mary’s daughter is an actress and has split from her husband due to an affair and also feels completely lost. Pia, Lily-Rose’s daughter finds out her boyfriend is an asshole and leaves the US to be back with her family.

As you can imagine, once these family members converge on the manor and begin living with each other, secrets are bound to become a little less secret. I did figure out one of the secrets, but there were a couple that completely blindsighted me and one left my jaw hanging open in disbelief.

You get little snippets of Mary and June’s past now and again as chapters throughout the book, and this is how a couple of the secrets are slowly revealed.

Luca, ahhh lovely Luca, what I wouldn’t give for a Luca hmmm. OK, enough of that, you get the idea, he’s gorgeous, both to look at according to Pia and June especially, and as a person. Luca is the builder employed to renovate the manor and turn it into a B&B. The chemistry between Luca and Pia is immediate, though Pia is keeping a secret of her own that may or may not ruin her chances with Luca. Luca provides another plot twist I didn’t see coming.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book of Secrets which was full of turbulent relationships and interesting characters and dilemmas.

4.5⭐⭐⭐⭐

About the book: One Family. Three generations. A common goal to unite them. A lifetime of secrets to divide them. But could uncovering the truth be the only way that this family can finally heal?

Three generations of women find their way back home to Tasmania. They embark on a project together to renovate the family manor and convert it into a bed and breakfast.

After a tumultuous life of pain and betrayal, Mary swore she’d never let anyone hurt her or her family again. But in order to keep her word, she has to guard a secret she swore to keep fifty years earlier.

But with the family now under the one roof, and the past tampered with, the foundations of this secret are shaken.

Mary always believed that hiding the truth was protecting the family, but when all is exposed, she finds that by keeping her secret, she was the one hurting them all.