HEART BROKEN 💔😭"This is a day she has been waiting for all her life. Her chance to repay him. The one who loved her. The one who stayed."Set across two time periods, we follow the emotional story of a young wife following her heart, a husband with the law on his side, and their daughter, caught in the middle. This was an incredibly heartbreaking, compulsive, and beautifully written story. I am astonished that this is Claire Lynch’s debut novel as she expertly deals with heavy themes of family ...

Having navigated a divorce and custody battle with someone I love deeply, I know firsthand the emotional depths involved. So, I approached "Family Secrets" by Claire Lynch with a mix of anticipation and trepidation, unsure how it would resonate. Lynch's clear and concise prose illuminates the injustices of the judicial system in the 1980s and its devastating, long-lasting impact on families. The pendulum has swung significantly since then. While my family's situation differs greatly from the one...

I'll be honest, I wasn’t sure how I'd feel about this book when I started, as the first few chapters felt a little clunky. But once the story of *Family Secrets* by Claire Lynch really got going, I couldn’t put it down. I was completely invested in the lives of Heron, Dawn, and their daughter, Maggie. In *Family Secrets*, the story unfolds across two timelines: 1982 and 2022. These two timelines are crucial, highlighting the immense changes that have swept the world during those decades. The sto...

I appreciate that *Family Secrets* portrays the anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination lesbian couples and mothers have historically faced. Claire Lynch did a solid job showing how this homophobic bigotry creates a ripple effect, impacting so many lives beyond just those directly experiencing the discrimination (which is awful enough on its own). Unfortunately, I found the prose in this book pretty dull. Lynch’s writing style was easy to read, but it also bored me, despite the importance of the subject matt...

Gripping, heartbreaking, beautifully written, hard to put down, and thought-provoking! *Family Secrets* by Claire Lynch deals with secrets, family, love, marriage, loss, and injustice, to name a few. This book is told across two timelines, 1982 and 2022, and focuses on Heron, a man who must tell his daughter, Maggie, whom he raised primarily alone, about his diagnosis. They have a close relationship and speak daily, but there is one thing in addition to his diagnosis that he has never told her.....

I could've easily devoured another 200 pages of "Family Secrets" by Claire Lynch. Seriously, I was hooked. This book just has that something special that keeps you utterly captivated.

I'm rounding this one down to 3 stars on Goodreads. I liked it, and it definitely gives you a lot to think about. It's very character-driven and tackles a lot in under 250 pages. However, the execution left me wanting a bit more, mainly because I really craved even more character development to better connect emotionally with the characters (especially Dawn and Maggie). I felt like the ending wrapped up rather quickly!I had no idea the events in *Family Secrets* happened (based on real events), ...

A Family Matter is Complicated and Messy....A wife and mother makes an irresistible connection...The husband and father draws a line in the sand...The young daughter is caught in the silence...Two timelines: 1982 and 2022, with forty years of living in between...Claire Lynch’s writing is lovely, thoughtful, and soft, but mostly, it is quiet, just like all the secrets Heron kept from Maggie, his daughter, through her years of growing up, and afterward. As this story intensifies, and the weight of...

Wow, I absolutely loved this book... beautiful, yet so frustrating at times. From the back of the book, and I think it describes it perfectly: "Family Secrets is a heartbreaking and hopeful exploration of love and loss, intimacy and injustice, custody and care, and whether it is possible to heal from the wounds of the past in the changed world of today." 💛 If you're looking for emotional book reviews, definitely check out Family Secrets by Claire Lynch!

It's always a great sign when my only complaint about a book is that I wish it were longer, and that's exactly how I feel about *Family Secrets* by Claire Lynch.This novel is concise in both its writing style and length, and it completely left me wanting more. I genuinely grew to love—or at least deeply care about—these characters, even as they were hurting one another, making life-altering mistakes, giving up, and appearing unfeeling while actually experiencing so much emotional turmoil.The two...