I Promise It Won't Always Hurt Like This: 18 Assurances on Grief

Written by Clare Mackintosh

Narrated by Clare Mackintosh

"Grief has run through my life like thread through fabric; at times gossamer-thin and barely there, other times weaving thick, clumsy darns across the rips. In my grief I am a mother, a child, a sister, a wife, a woman, a friend. I am also a writer."

When Clare Mackintosh lost her five-week-old son, she soon discovered there are no neat, labeled stages of grief like so many books insist. The shape of each loss is different; when a parent, relative, or friend passes, we grieve the person in all their beauty, their humanity, their imperfections. For Clare, there was no preparing for the anger and excruciating ache of knowing her child's life would remain unlived. This is the book she needed then.

Inspired by a viral Twitter thread Clare wrote on the anniversary of her son's death, this deeply honest, compassionate memoir will bring solace and encouragement to anyone who finds themselves walking with grief, whether for a season or for several years. It is for those who need a little voice saying: I Promise It Won't Always Hurt Like This, for the people who love them, and those who understand that great loss can be a window through which we see how powerful, and unending, love can be.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tantor Media, Inc
• Release date: Mar 19, 2024
• ISBN: 9798350836349

Clare Mackintosh

With over 2 million copies of her books sold worldwide, number one bestseller Clare Mackintosh is the multi-award-winning author of I Let You Go, which was a Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller and the fastest-selling title by a new crime writer in 2015. It also won the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year in 2016. Both Clare's second and third novels, I See You and Let Me Lie, were number one Sunday Times bestsellers. Her first three thrillers were selected for the Richard & Judy Book Club, and together have been translated into forty languages. After the End was published in 2019 and became an instant Sunday Times bestseller, and in 2021 Hostage flew straight into the top ten. Her new crime series, featuring Welsh detective DC Ffion Morgan, has been critically acclaimed, with both The Last Party and A Game of Lies hitting the Sunday Times top ten. Together, her books have spent more than sixty-five weeks in The Sunday Times bestseller lists. Clare is patron of the Silver Star Society, a charity based at the John Radcliffe hospital in Oxford, which supports parents experiencing high-risk or difficult pregnancies. She lives in North Wales with her husband and their three children.