Home Truths | Susan Lewis

By Karen Byrom

REVIEWED BY KAREN BYROM

Just as One Minute Later, Susan Lewis’s emotive story of a young woman facing up to heart disease shoots up the paperback bestseller lists, along comes her next book Home Truths.

Equally emotive, with a strong plot and true-to-life characters you really come to care about, this is another great page-turner.

What do you do when your husband has been murdered by a drugs gang? When your son, in thrall to that same gang, disappears? And you yourself are left to carry on, bringing up your two remaining children with very little money and a ruthless landlord breathing down your neck.

That’s the problem facing Angie in Home Truths, Susan Lewis’s hard-hitting tale of one woman’s struggle to overcome tragedy, debt and family conflict.

Angie’s life spirals out of control

Angie had the perfect life, until her elder son, Liam fell in with a drug-taking gang who murdered her husband Steve. Now Liam has disappeared and Angie is struggling to keep a roof over the heads of herself and her two younger children. Her only support is her sister, fiercely loyal, but in almost as dire financial straits.

Daughter Grace is desperate to help her mum, but her attempts at money-making take her, too, down a dangerous path.

Fortunately, there are good people around – including some familiar faces from Susan Lewis’s previous books – but as things spiral out of control, will their support be enough to save Angie?

This hard-hitting story lays bare the problems of drug-taking, internet grooming and homelessness but is saved from bleakness by the strength and warmth of the characters, not least Angie who never loses her spirit despite adversity that would bring most of us to our knees.