Astute, complex and brilliantly written, Emma Robinson’s My Stepmother’s Secret is a book that readers will struggle to put down.

Gabbie’s life changes completely when her husband’s lies end up wrecking their marriage and ruining their family. Her husband has disappeared and Gabbie has been left with no money, no prospects and no future. With her two girls to look after, Gabbie doesn’t know which way to turn. Desperate to keep a roof over her family’s heads and needing to stay strong for her daughters who need her like never before, Gabbie realises that she might need to do the unthinkable and return to the one place she swore never to go back to and ask for help from the one woman whom she blames for ruining her life: her stepmother.

Gabbie holds her stepmother responsible for destroying her childhood. Her stepmother had torn the fabric of her childhood apart and made her life a living hell. Returning back to the family home is the very last thing she wants to do, but her girls need her and she must swallow her pride and ask the woman she despises for help in her hour of need. Living together forces these two women in very close proximity and the secrets that had them kept them apart for decades begin to reveal themselves.

The time has come for Gabbie to face old ghosts and past demons, but will the tenuous bond with her stepmother break completely? Or will it end up being the one thing that saves Gabbie and her daughters?

Emma Robinson hits the jackpot with an emotionally satisfying, intelligent and immensely gripping family drama that is unpredictable, nuanced and heart-wrenching. Full of layered characters that come vividly to life the second they appear on the page, My Stepmother’s Secret grips like a thriller and will tug at the heartstrings as readers will find themselves unable to put this book down.

A superb page-turner, Emma Robinson dazzles with her latest novel, My Stepmother’s Secret.

Amazing read! A real page turner than you don’t want to miss out on.
First time reading this author. Won’t be my last. I highly recommend reading it!

Oh those Stepmothers, I have one myself. They can be tricky. A great story of having to go backwards to move forwards, there's no limit to what a mother will do to put a roof over her kids heads.

An exceptional drama about family dynamics. I loved the characters, even the flawed ones. I loved the different relationships they all had. This book was an emotional rollecoaster and I loved every second!

Although overall the storyline for this one wasn't what I was expecting, I did enjoy it.

For some reason I was expecting a thriller, it definitely wasn't that, it was a straightforward general fiction based around family dynamics.

The book starts off with Gabbie fleeing her home and her husband in the middle of the night, heading to her Stepmother's house who she has had a very fractured relationship with her entire life. Even though it soon becomes obvious something is wrong within Gabbie and Liam's marriage that's led her to disappear so quickly, I had to put that out of my mind because it was obvious it was nothing sinister.

A lot of the storyline is done via flashbacks and letters Gabbie's mother wrote to her as a child. As a young girl Gabbie was sent to boarding school by her father. It's obvious it has emotionally scarred her, she lost her mother during those years, something she has never gotten over, she was constantly bullied by the mean girls at school and then she was forced to endure a step-mum when her dad remarried.

It's all taken a toll on Gabbie over the years, made her extra protective of her own 2 daughters and severely damaged her relationship with both her father and her stepmother.

It's really well written and a really easy page-turner, I just wish it hadn't been flagged as a thriller, because it absolutely wasn't and it left me all through the story waiting for something dark and twisted to happen which never came.

A good read
Quite thought provoking
A good storyline and well written
Great characters
Thanks NetGalley

I was lucky to receive My Stepmother's Secret by Emma Robinson from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for my honest review and opinion. I loved this book and couldn't put it down once I started. I found this book to be a good mix of mixture of misunderstandings. I was on the edge of my seat waiting to see how this was going to end. I highly recommend that you read this book ASAP.

Fast paced, gripping and absolutely riveting. I couldn't put it down and when I had to put it down, I couldn't stop thinking about it

Lots of secrets and lies in this one. Very well written. I couldnt stop turning the pages and I cant wait to read more of her books.

This is another brilliant book from Emma Robinson. Gabbie is desperate, she has found out that her husband has been gambling and is thousands of pounds in debt and their home could be repossessed. She has only one place to flee. So with her two daughters, Alice the younger one and Olivia who is a typical teenager, she travels to stay with her stepmother Jill who she hasn’t seen for several years. Gabbie had idolised her mum and when she was thirteen years old her world was shattered when she was killed in a car accident. She blamed her father for sending her to boarding school where she was bullied and never forgave him for swiftly moving on and marrying Jill, who has been her mum’s friend. Gabbie is hoping Jill will help them out with money but as she reassesses her life Gabbie realises that her version of the past is not necessarily correct and all the secrets of the past are slowly revealed. This was a very emotional read and a book I highly recommend.
Thanks to Netgalley and Bookouture for giving me the opportunity to read and review this book,

I really enjoyed this book, but I felt like it ended really abruptly. I also kept waiting for the Jill to have some big plot twist secret at the end since it was titled “The Stepmother’s Secret” but there really wasn’t one.

Thanks to Netgalley, the author and the publisher for allowing me to read this ARC.
This is my first title by this author and will read more in the future.
Will recommend this to anyone looking for a new title.
I requested this book as i was drawn in by the cover and thought it looked interesting.
This book is full of drama and suspense and worth well the read.
Thanks again for allowing me to read this ARC in exchange for an honest review.
5/5 stars

I received an arc copy of this book from Net Galley in exchange for my honest opinion of it. From looking at the cover, I assumed that this would be more of a psychological thriller so I started reading and was waiting for something to happen. It was okay but the main character, Gabbie, was really annoying. The first part of the book, we know that she left her husband and it remains a secret until about halfway through the book. I just felt like she played the "poor me" victim with no faith in herself but she did finally change for the better

Another exceptional read from one of my favourite authors. A family drama full of lies, intrigue and heartbreaking in parts.
Thank you to Netgalley and Bookouture for an ARC which I have no hesitation in recommending.

Gabbie is in turmoil after discovering her husband Liam is keeping secrets from her and it could change their family forever. She has nowhere else to turn but to her step mother Jill, who lives in the house Gabbie grew up in. She packs up her life and goes with her two daughters to the only place she knows. It’s safe to say the relationship between Gabbie and Jill is not a good one and there’s a lot of resentment there. While there, Jill begins to share secrets of Gabbie’s childhood and she soon realises that her childhood and her loving mother, who passed away when Gabbie was 13, wasn’t exactly as Gabbie remembers.

This book is a bit different than the usual thrillers I go for, but was a really nice change. There was still a bit of mystery involved in this which I really liked. There was a lot of different storylines going on aside from the main one of Gabbie and Jill, like why Gabbie has left her home and husband, things going on with Gabbie’s two daughter, and there’s even a dive into Gabbie’s time at boarding school and how that experience shaped her as a person. I enjoyed reading about everything I just named and there was even more so there was always something going on, which is great!

I throughly enjoyed reading this and it was a nice change from the dark thrillers I usually read. The ending was really heart warming and it was exactly what I was hoping would happen. Overall I loved this, and can’t fault it at all. I can’t wait to read more by this author!
Thank you so much to Netgalley and Bookouture for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

TRIGGER WARNING: addiction
Gabbie packs her bags and heads off in the car with her two daughters. There is only one place she can go: her childhood home where her stepmother lives. The women have a strained relationship but Gabbie is desperate. As Gabbie reassesses her life, she begins to realise that Jill is not an enemy...
My Stepmother's Secret is an emotional novel about family secrets and lies.
Gabbie has always resented her stepmother due to her loyalty to her mother. Now she is forced to confront her version of the past in order to face her present dilemma. Her husband has betrayed her and now she needs to beg for money from her stepmother. Meanwhile she is also trying to protect her daughters from the truth of the family's situation.
The book is written in the third person throughout but in the past and present. Gabbie discovers a box of letters and some chapters use the letters followed by the detail of her childhood boarding school experience to contrast with her present day situation. I felt deperately sad for Gabbie and also complete empathy for her hideous experience of bullying. She has always felt lacking in some way and this has made her strive to please people so they don't reject her.
I enjoyed a range of emotions as I read this book. There was intense anger and irritation at Gabbie's husband, frustration with Gabbie's elder daughter for being so unsupportive, sadness for the lost years caused by secrets. I also felt a sense of relief by the end of the book that the truth had been exposed and the layers of generational pain might finally be broken.
My Stepmother's Secret is a powerful emotional novel.

This was a fabulous book. I devoured it so quickly. Omg I can’t stop thinking about it as it made such an impression on me. Highly recommend this one. My thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for giving me the opportunity to read this book in return for an honest review.

Emma once again has done a brilliant job of pulling the reader In capturing their interest with the drama surrounding the characters! Very well written!

Oh I absolutely loved this book. It had me gripped from the start. It was such an easy read and flowed nicely.

Emma Robinson always know who to grab every emotion you have in you.

This was no thriller (my mistake in not paying attention to the blurb). What it was was an amazing look at lies, secrets, long-held beliefs based on those lies and secrets, and a woman coming to grips when learning the truth. It is a story of a mother finally understanding her life and reframing the past and the future. It is a glimpse at the lengths we go to for our children's happiness with good intentions, but at a detriment to ourselves. I took a lot of away from this one and very much enjoyed it.