Love Untold: The joyful Sunday Times bestseller and Richard and Judy book club pick 2023

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Love, mess, secrets; this story of four generations of women is shot through with Ruth Jones's warmth and wisdom. The prime and proper headteacher whose daughter fails all but two exams and a husband who runs to play hippie. It is a story that tenderly portrays a broken family, outlining the complexities that define history, with an ending that is both heart-breaking, yet uplifting at the same time.

I fell in love with Grace, Elin, Beca (and Soozi) straight away, but it did take me a long time to warm to Alys. The characters were interesting and well developed and the story was strong enough to keep me reading when I should have been somewhere else! Despite her age Grace swims daily, either in the hideous swimming pool in her garden or wild swimming in the sea, and does yoga several times a week. The plot is mostly set in the present, although there are a few moments where we flash back to different stages in the past 70 years. Ruth Jones, you smashed this book, this was my first book I’ve read by Ruth, I’ll be going back to read the rest.

Ruth Jones’ third novel is another warm, heartfelt story, filled with strong and joyful female characters that captures the challenges and joys of relationships and family. This is a wonderful story about the relationships between different generations of women within the same family. I must be very careful about spoilers in this delicious novel revolving around this family so full of resentment, long-held anger, prodigal daughters, and cold-water swimming. Four generations of Welsh women are locked into this marvellously heartwarming novel from Ruth Jones: Grace, her daughter Alys, granddaughter Elin and great-granddaughter Beca. This review was written voluntarily and my rating was in no way influenced by the fact that I received a complimentary digital copy of this novel from Transworld Publishers, Random House UK, Bantam Press via NetGalley.

Grace doesn’t want a traditional celebration for her birthday, but her granddaughter Elin has other ideas.Grace, in her 90th year, certainly doesn’t act her age and her home by the sea in Dylan’s Quay has been a refuge for her grand-daughter Elin and Elin’s daughter Beca throughout their lives. Ruth Jones is best known for her outstanding and award-winning television writing, most notably BBC One’s Gavin and Stacey, which she co-wrote with James Corden and in which she played the incorrigible Nessa Jenkins. Ruth Jones is, of course, a great storyteller, and she has pulled it off again with this tale of four generations of Welsh women. THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER***'Love, mess, secrets; this story of four generations of women is filled with Ruth Jones's warmth and wisdom. Everyone thinks they know the truth, but they are all keeping secrets, will Grace's party be a joyous reunion or a day of tears and recriminations?

The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. Love, mess, secrets; this story of four generations of women is shot through with Ruth Jones’s warmth and wisdom. Love, mess, secrets; this story of four generations of women is filled with Ruth Jones's warmth and wisdom. I cried and I laughed and now there’s a hole in my life where Grace and her dysfunctional family used to be.Love Untold tells the stories of four generations of women, mothers and daughters set in South Wales. Noticed another reviewer mentioned she disliked the way RJ often leaves the endings off words, ie, "nothin" instead of "nothing and "somethin", not "something". Told from each woman's point of view this novel criss-crosses backwards and forwards in time, stopping on key events in their lives. It got into the depths of mother / daughter / grandmother / great grandmother relationships in such a wonderful and both heartbreaking and endearing way. I loved all the characters and did not see the twist in the story coming, so it was rather emotional for reasons I can’t go into without giving away the ending.