For Grace time is running out to solve the family rifts that have been going on for the last thirty years. Love Untold tells the stories of four generations of women, mothers and daughters set in South Wales. Sounded too familiar - as I was the great-granddaughter in my family until I lost my great-nan when I was 24, I just had to read this to see how the dynamics worked between the 4!

Widowed in her thirties, left to bring up a teenage daughter, Alys, she ran a boarding house with her friends John, and his sister Cassie for years until Cassie and John's ill-health forced them to move to a home where she visits them every day. Finally, Beca, sixteen years old, artistic and musical but not good at lessons, constantly at odds with perfectionist Elin who sees education as a gateway to the world, she knows she is about to fail all her GCSEs and disappoint her mother, again. Her novels are full of wonderful characters and the stories so well written, much in the same vein as Graham Norton. She just wants a quiet celebration: her daily swim in the sea and a cup of tea with granddaughter Elin and great-granddaughter Beca. It got into the depths of mother / daughter / grandmother / great grandmother relationships in such a wonderful and both heartbreaking and endearing way.

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. Ruth Jones is, of course, a great storyteller, and she has pulled it off again with this tale of four generations of Welsh women. This heart-warming story about Grama Grace and her descendants is eventful and fraught with misunderstanding.

Meanwhile Grace’s great-grand-daughter Beca is oblivious to all these worries, too busy navigating the highs and lows of teenage life and keeping secrets of her own. The book starts with Elin, a headteacher, who is organising a surprise 90th birthday party for her grandmother who brought her up when her mother was unable to, despite her grandmother having said that she didn’t want a party. She exudes warmth and wisdom, and reading this book makes you feel someone’s draped a warm overcoat across your shoulders. 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. Estranged from all of her family, blaming Grace for what has happened to her, it seems ironic that she suddenly reappears in all their lives.What Grace really wants is to find her daughter Alys; mother of Elin and absent from the family for thirty years. She has no idea quite what will happen next and whatever it is, it is sure to cause trouble in the family. This is a story about mothers and daughters: the love inherent in that bond and the heartache that miscommunication can bring. Grace had moved in with John and Cissie Edwards to turn their beautiful home, Syn-yMor, into a guest house.

We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. The characters were interesting and well developed and the story was strong enough to keep me reading when I should have been somewhere else! It's a great read, refreshingly free of stereotypes, as we follow events in the lives of the four women in the run-up to Grace's ninetieth birthday.I often find it hard to keep up with multigenerational novels and each chapter written from someone else’s perspective but the transitions in this were pretty seamless and the humour was just right.

This book has my heart and I plan to keep it to re read when I need reminding of how important our family is. What a wonderful, heart-warming, beautifully emotional story by Ruth Jones of 4 generations, trying to navigate their own lives and their relationships with others and each other.Told from different points of view, this book is measured as it builds on all the past and present frustrations that all the characters have. For Alys, Grace’s daughter, Elin’s mother she has been constantly running from herself and has come close throughout her life to time running out.