I Meant to Tell You by Fran Hawthorne is a medium paced contemporary read that will have you peek into our lead's world as it flips on it's head.

Miranda Isaac seems to have the perfect life. She gets along with her family, her fiancé, Russ, is going after his dream job, and she's getting married soon. But all of that unwinds when Russ Steinmann's job requests security clearance of Miranda and her family. Miranda's secret about helping her friend kidnap her young child comes out, which is something she never told Russ. She tries to explain that she was helping her friend Ronit out of good intentions - her husband was abusive and trying to take their child away from them. But does that make everything right? Not so much.

In Miranda's pursuit of fixing her relationship, things go off the rails. Her life begins to spiral and she learns things about herself and her family that she would have never imagined to be true.

This book will pull at your heartstrings! There's heartbreak, there's compassion, and there's so much empathy in a book like this. Fran Hawthorne has crafted a book that reads so smoothly and easily, but also makes you want to shake the characters by their shoulders as if they are a good friend and yell at them. The book battles between what's right and ethics, which is also very interesting. At times, you know what is going on isn't the right path by society's standards but it feels right by the heart. You might even question if you would follow the same actions yourself (even if some of them aren't bright decisions). Would you hide big secrets from your family to protect them? When is the right time to tell them those big secrets? How might it affect your relationship? This book brings those questions up and does its best to show one of many opportunities for how it could go oh so utterly wrong.

We all have secrets, that's for certain. And this book welcomes us into Miranda's. Miranda feels very real and I just want to give her a hug. Fran made her very relatable, almost as if she is my friend or my neighbour. Her Mother Judith is also very relatable when you begin to read more about her as well. The book really shows how relationships can ebb and flow, and change over time. Then throw in Russ and his family (and legacy), and the spider web builds.

Also, the title is spot on. It really highlights quite a few characters in this story and things they probably should have told everyone else at some point.

Overall, this is truly a mesmerizing novel. It's a great contemporary read that is easy to read but will also bring some feels out.

Five out of five stars.

I received this book for free from the author, Fran Hawthorne, in exchange for an honest review. ( )

Fran Hawthorne's new novel, I Meant to Tell You, starts with the disclosure of a little secret and follows the ripple effects of that disclosure back through years and relationships.

Miranda and Russ are engaged to be married and Russ is ready to start a new job in the U.S. Attorney's office. As part of a routine FBI background check, both must disclose any criminal history. Miranda had never told Russ that years earlier, she tried to help a friend and her child leave the US for Israel during her friend's nasty divorce. Although Miranda did not know this trip was illegal, is was, and she and her friend were arrested at the airport. Miranda was sentenced for a misdemeanor, which was later expunged. Because the conviction was not on her record, she didn't mention it to Russ or the FBI. Big mistake.

The story unspools from there. Other family and marital secrets come to light. The characters wrestle with the ethical dilemmas created by balancing secrecy and honesty. Hawthorne narrates the book through the multiple voices of those involved. The story remains upbeat and it is a fairly quick read, but provides food for thought. It would be a terrific book club pick.

I Meant to Tell You launched this month, in time for holiday gift giving. It is Fran Hawthorne's second novel after her 2018 debut, The Heirs. ( )

Sure, we all have secrets. That speeding ticket. (It was one time! I was lost in Detroit!) The doll shoes you stole from your cousin when you were eight and your doll was shoeless. (Sorry, cousin Debbie!) Not to mention that mad woman in the attic who just happens to be your wife. (That didn’t happen to me.)

Those sins of omissions, just not mentioning something you did long ago, don’t usually impact your life. But sometimes, they catch up with you and threaten to derail everything. “I meant to tell you,” but once upon a time I did something that I was too embarrassed to tell you about.

Fran Hawthorne’s characters in I Meant to Tell You become ensnared by the legacy of their own past actions, choices they have kept secret. Miranda and Russ are planning their wedding. Russ has applied for his dream job as an assistant U. S. attorney in the District of Columbia. Background checks bring to light Miranda’s arrest years previous when she tried to help a friend leave her abusive husband. But the secrets don’t end there. Miranda’s mother, and Russ himself, are revealed to have withheld vital information, threatening their relationships.

Miranda’s family legacy of political activism takes the story into the 1960s antiwar movement, her mother fabricating an idealist father who fought for justice. Miranda’s Israeli college friend married a man who becomes abusive, and Miranda agreed to drive her and her child to the airport, only to discover the husband had alerted police, accusing them of kidnapping of his child. And Russ’s estrangement from his father has its own dark legacy.

With relatable, well-drawn characters and it’s exploration into the stories we tell and the stories we hide, I Meant to Tell You is a thoughtful and insightful book. The deepening layers of concealed stories draw you into the story like a mystery. Each character has their flaws and poor decisions, but we feel sympathy and kinship with them. Central is the need for forgiveness, aware that we err but we can grow through mistakes and become whole, healthy people.

I received an ARC through Caitlin Hamilton Marketing in exchange for a fair and unbiased review. ( )

I Meant to Tell You by Fran Hawthorne pulled me in from the very start. Compelling story as well as an excellent look at how well we know our friends and family, and ourselves.

There is a lot to enjoy in this book and I think readers will likely emphasize the part that spoke most to them. While for me it was the idea of secrets, or even just not full disclosure. Yet I was invested in the characters, not just Miranda. I liked watching how friendships connect, disconnect, and sometimes reconnect. And I was absolutely interested in how things would resolve.

Back to my main takeaway: secrets. It is often said that if you tell a lie you're usually compelled to tell more to support the first one. It seems to hold true for having a secret exposed, eventually other secrets, or at least moments of uncertainty from those who felt betrayed, seem to follow. I believe in almost total openness in a relationship but also understand that some so-called secrets are omissions without intent to keep a secret. The interesting part is where that line is drawn. Hawthorne makes, for me, that line hard to locate.

I also found the ways in which the characters interacted made me think about how we all sometimes act. Good intentions don't always give good results. We can make mistakes, sometimes legal mistakes, when we feel our lives spiraling out of control. Unthinkingly we can do something that is out of character and we kick ourselves for it. But understanding and condoning are two different things.

I think this would be an ideal book group read because there is plenty of things to talk about and maybe reconsider. I would enjoy hearing from those who took a different path into the book, or who viewed the idea of secrets in a way unlike mine.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley. ( )