Love Untold: The joyful Sunday Times bestseller and Richard and Judy book club pick 2023

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It is a joy-filled, life-affirming, sob-inducing novel – with characters you’ll come to know and love – from no.

I was completely captivated by this character-driven story of mother/daughter relationships and really cared about the characters; I was genuinely sad to finish it and leave them all behind. The end of this story is incredibly moving and brought me to tears (and I have never cried over a book before). Ruth Jones’ third novel is another warm, heartfelt story, filled with strong and joyful female characters that captures the challenges and joys of relationships and family.This is a story about mothers and daughters: the love inherent in that bond and the heartache that miscommunication can bring. It is a story that tenderly portrays a broken family, outlining the complexities that define history, with an ending that is both heart-breaking, yet uplifting at the same time. The thread which binds together mothers and daughters throughout their lives is awesomely strong; motherhood forges links of steel across generations, as I’ve seen myself since our own daughter gave birth to her first child - a girl.

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. Four generations of Welsh women are locked into this marvellously heartwarming novel from Ruth Jones: Grace, her daughter Alys, granddaughter Elin and great-granddaughter Beca. Each character was realistic and I have fallen in love with Grace , she is such a strong woman and as a Welsh woman myself , I see a lot of my own grandmothers in her. The depth of emotion between Judy, Chloe and baby Bobo is wonderful to watch, and in Love Untold this intergenerational maternal web is beautifully captured by Ruth Jones. Ruth Jones, you smashed this book, this was my first book I’ve read by Ruth, I’ll be going back to read the rest.She has no idea quite what will happen next and whatever it is, it is sure to cause trouble in the family. Grace is close to Alys’s own daughter, Elin, but the family rift runs deep, affecting Elin’s marriage and her relationship with her teenage daughter Beca. The reader learns the history of this family, and the hurt and pain that has been caused in the past. Ruth Jones is best known for her outstanding and award-winning television writing, most notably BBC One's Gavin and Stacey, which she co-wrote with James Corden and in which she played the incorrigible Nessa Jenkins.

I cried and I laughed and now there’s a hole in my life where Grace and her dysfunctional family used to be. The prime and proper headteacher whose daughter fails all but two exams and a husband who runs to play hippie.

Ruth Jones is best known for her outstanding and award-winning television writing, most notably BBC One’s Gavin and Stacey, which she co-wrote with James Corden and in which she played the incorrigible Nessa Jenkins. What Grace really wants is to find her daughter Alys; mother of Elin and absent from the family for thirty years. The 2019 Christmas Day special of Gavin and Stacey gained national critical acclaim, drawing an audience of over 18 million, winning a BAFTA for TV moment of the year and a National Television Award for Impact. That's Grace, nearly ninety; her wayward daughter Alys; Alys's daughter Elin, a headteacher; and Beca, the younger generation, just 16.

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. She exudes warmth and wisdom, and reading this book makes you feel someone’s draped a warm overcoat across your shoulders. 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. Grace is approaching ninety and a surprise party is planned for her, organised by her granddaughter, Elin, yet all Grace requires is the rift in her family to be healed.Any mother or daughter will identify with many of the situations in this book and be encouraged by the final denouement. 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. Ruth's second novel, Us Three, was an instant Sunday Times bestseller in hardback and paperback and has sold almost a quarter of a million copies.