Toni Maguire

The first time her father made an improper advance on Toni Maguire, she was six years old. When she finally built up the courage to tell her mother what had happened, her mother told her never to speak of the matter again. This memoir tells the story of an idyllic childhood that masked a terrible truth.

A True Story of the Ultimate Betrayal

Don't Tell Mummy

Nada Ghazi

So much mental abusing. Quite boring too.

Jessica Healy

3.5/5 stars

Wow. This book is alot to take in. It touches on all sorts of things like domestic abuse, rape, incest, child abuse, pedophilia ect… and the worst part is,that its real. Dont Tell Mommy is a Book about Antoinette's journey through her traumatizing childhood where she experienced all of the things I have mentioned above. When people found out what had happened to her they blamed, shamed and banished her from their homes. Only to quickly invite the person who had done this to her right back in. Can Antoinette recover from her past trauma? And what happened to this girl that almost led her to her death?

I found this book an enjoyable read though my main problem was that the author was extremely descriptive. This extreme level of descriptiveness was great in some areas of the book, for example, while I was reading I felt like I could hear her dad shouting at her, smell the cakes her mom was baking and feel the fear she felt every time her father was mentioned. I got goosebumps and almost started to tear up when something tragic occured to Antoinette. The bad side about this is that sometimes I felt like the author was talking about the colour of the trees for a whole page which made certain chapters go by slowly, with me wishing they would end. 

I learned alot from this book. It made me realise how truly lucky I am to be where I am today. Not just because I have a home, family,friends and love present in my life but also because this book was set back around in the 1980s. Time was different then. More cruel and less developed so I'm glad and more grateful that nowadays things are different and people are more informed on certain topics like this. 

The way people saw Antoinette after they had found out what happened to her is disgusting and I think it's definitely worth the read to find out how people like her used to be treated.

The character relationships in this story were amazing and heartbreaking. The love Antoinette shows for her mother even after everything she has done to her is crazy and makes me feel pain for the girl who just wanted her mom to hug her and give her a smile.Antoinette/Toni is such a strong and beautiful character with such visible development seen through the story. It pains me that she went through this but makes me happy she has recovered and been able to face her past demons. The dad was just a dick.

I gave this book a 3.5 rating because I felt like it could have been written better. The way the Author went back from her past to present self in the hospice was a really clever way for us, the readers, to see how she, the victim, felt about the situation years later when she has grown up and been able to reflect. Though that does not excuse the endless chapters I was reading wondering how any of it was relevant. The book got the most interesting for me towards the end so having to read almost 200 pages to get to the good part isn't the best.
I find it hard to critique this book in any other way as it is real. It happened, and you can't change anything about it. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who is looking for a truly heartbreaking REAL story to read.

Don't Tell Mummy A True Story of the Ultimate Betrayal

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