Clare is known for her pacy thrillers which have you spinning from twists and reveals but this is something a little different. Part memoir/ part guide on grief, which I'll be the first to admit had me in tears on multiple occasions as I read her words. 18 years ago she lost her son and has wrote a book containing promises to help anyone dealing with grief. There are certain times when we just don't have the words and this book says it for us. In writing this book it took bravery, strength and hugeness of heart but which will undoubtedly bring comfort to many.
My first 5 star (if indeed you can ever really rate a book like this) read of the year.

"Grief is not a disorder, a disease or a sign of weakness. It is an emotional, physical and spiritual necessity, the price you pay for love. The only cure for grief is to grieve." - Earl Grollman

Clare Mackintosh is a gifted author who has brought much enjoyment to readers. I have enjoyed many of her books and found myself glued to the pages fully invested in the plots. I was also fully invested and fully engaged in I Promise It Won't Always Hurt Like This: 18 Assurances on Grief, her moving and heartfelt memoir about loss and hope.

“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.” - Clare mackintosh

She shared with readers her own personal loss of her five-week-old son. She lays bare her loss and relives the pain while writing this memoir. A memoir which was inspired by a twitter thread she wrote on the anniversary of her son's death.

I admired her for sharing her own personal pain and grief. She makes several powerful promises in the beginning of the book which would benefit anyone who has suffered loss. She hopes that this memoir will help others and acknowledges that parts may not be for everyone as everyone grieves in their own way.

I applaud her for her honesty in sharing her experience. Grief is indeed a very lonely experience that we all will experience or have already experienced in our lives. I love how she encourages readers to grieve in whatever way is right for them. This would be a great book to have when anticipating the loss of a loved one or for one to read after suffering a loss.

I found this to be a powerful and moving book. As with her other books, this was well written. She poured her heart, soul, love, grief, and skill into this book. I can't even imagine how difficult this book must have been to write, how many tears she shed, or the number of memories re-lived.

Heartfelt, moving, and powerful.

This book was absolutely beautifully written straight from the heart and I'm so grateful to Netgalley and to Source books for the opportunity of reading an advanced copy.
The book was about baby Alex, Clare's twin baby boy who sadly passed and she discussed grief through 18 chapters.
I too lost a twin, then my husband and my parents within 8 months of each other and my in laws within the same year. I didn't have time to grieve, I had work and 2 children under 2 to bring up. My children are now 30 and 29 and I grieve every now and again especially at Christmas.
This book has really helped me to grieve, to give me that space after all these years, to allow myself to take time out and be selfish.
I wish this book had been around 29 years ago.
Thank you Clare, this will help so many people, who are unable to see how or what next to say or feel.
We are human, we are all different, we all suffer loss at some point in our lives.
This book will be able to help people take small steps towards healing.

This was not as sad as I expected! It was basically a memoir of her losing her son with some ways to extrapolate from her experience how deal with loss in your own life. I think if you thought it was going to be a real solid self help book you’d be disappointed but I like this method better. She’s good at sharing details without it being maudlin or self pitying.

<i>'Sometimes it's too painful to be alive, isn't it?'</i>

'Not my cup of tea.' 'Not for me.' 'Not interested.' When you're vulnerable, reaching out to express your pain, your rage, your grief, is a risk. You risk people's pity, their misunderstanding, their dismissal or disbelief, their ire and their abandonment. I think many people fear being contaminated by grief, so they keep their distance or dampen their empathy. No one wants to welcome the ghost into their home. It's so much easier to look away, or pretend you don't notice, when you're not the one who needs help. Perhaps I'm not the target audience of this book, in that I'm still alive, but even so, I'm grieving for the small child I once was, years ago; the safety I never experienced; the trust of adults who hurt and exploited me when they should have been the ones to protect me; the decades I lost to abuse and addiction; the potential lives I could have brought into the world, if I had a choice, if my body hadn't been raped while it was still only beginning to grow.

Grief is an achingly lonely experience, and Clare Mackintosh captures that endless isolation perfectly in <i>I Promise It Won't Always Hurt Like This</i>. I particularly appreciated her emphasis on the state of permanently simmering anger that ends in eruptions of rage, only to build once more, never satisfied - and how the bitterness of grief can turn you against everyone and everything, including yourself, until you feel yourself rotting away from the inside out. I also related to her descriptions of feeling pressured to silence oneself or minimise your own experience in order to protect the sensibilities of others, or out of a sense of not wanting to hurt them or push them even further away, which is only a deeper betrayal of self. I liked that she took pains to point out that grief is inherently selfish, and must be allowed to be so, until one begins to surface and function as something close to human.

I'm sure this book 'won't be for everyone', and nor should it be. For those who will gain something, however, those gains may well be significant. (The front cover is beautiful, by the way - sea blue with yellow daffodils).

I am grateful to have received an ARC of this book from Sourcebooks via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

Thank you NetGalley and publisher for this ARC.

This book had me hooked from page one! It’s so heartbreaking yet so good. I loved it. Such a good story.

Wow. What a heartbreaking and hopeful story. Clare is a wonderful storyteller and I've read her books before. This was a unique style of work. I appreciated the raw words and how authentic the book was. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC. Five stars.