Blog Tour Stop with Guest Post - If Only They Knew by Joanne Sefton

Welcome to my stop on the Blog Tour for If They Knew by Joanne Sefton! I have an exclusive piece for you, written by the author of this fab sounding book about Mother and Daughter relationships.

What They Say:

I know who you are.
I’ve come to pay you back.

Nobody in Barbara Marsden’s family knows about her past, least of all her daughter Helen. When she is diagnosed with cancer, her secrets are no longer safe. Someone wants the truth to come out.

Desperate to keep her mother safe Helen will stop at nothing to uncover the truth of her past, but the consequences might hurt her own fractured family and put Barbara at risk…

What really happened all those years ago? And who is going to end up paying the price?

A gripping family drama where love and betrayal go hand in hand, perfect for fans of Lisa Jewell, Kerry Fisher and Adele Parks.

Mothers and Daughters by Joanne Sefton

Blame Pride & Prejudice’s Mrs Bennett, but there’s little I love more in fiction than seeing a dramatic mother-daughter relationship played out over the course of a novel. The stormier the better. But there are fewer than you might imagine.

It’s a truism of children’s literature that you have to get the grown-ups out of the way to enable the main characters to get involved in situations that interesting enough to be worth reading about. Why else do we have so many orphans and boarding schools? But I’ve actually noticed a similar trend in adult fiction too, particularly in the sort of domestic noir and psychological thriller genres that provide so many contemporary bestsellers. In a way it makes sense, with an engaged and functioning mother at their side, perhaps our dysfunctional antagonists would finder it harder to go off the rails, and our plucky heroines would see through them rather more quickly.

But what if the mother-figure is not the fountain of sense and rationalism that we typically imagine? Not all women with children can fit the mould of Little Women’s Marmee, tucking in her grown girls with tireless good cheer and uplifting moral platitudes.

I was interested in exploring the darker ‘what ifs’ around the mother-daughter relationship. The fact that we love someone doesn’t mean we won’t hurt them – quite the opposite, in fact. But what form might that hurt take? And why? It’s well documented that children growing up in quite extreme situations will normalise the circumstances and relationships in their lives. I was interested in how a character with a ‘good enough’ upbringing could slowly come to realise that there had been much more going on for her parents – and particularly her mother – than she could possibly have understood at the time. Out of those ponderings and explorations grew the story of Helen, a daughter trying to be the best mum she can, and Barbara, a mum and grandmother keeping the mother of all secrets.

Anyway, I can’t say much more without giving away too much, I really hope you’ll want to discover the full story of Helen and Barbara for yourself. But I can’t end without answering the final (inevitable) question – I’m afraid my own mum is entirely stable, lovely and a very positive influence! So nothing at all like Barbara (although they do both wear Chanel No 5).