Thanks to NetGalley and Cristina Arreola of Sourcebooks( Nonfiction) for access to this title. All opinions expressed are my own.

The author wrote that she cried as she wrote this book. Dear Readers, I cried the entire time that I read this book. It's not a book that is for everyone. But for someone who has experienced grief similar to what the author describes- I felt validation. That everything that I had felt- the sadness, the anger, the injustice etc didn't make me some abnormal human being. It just made me a person who has grieved. Who is still grieving.

Thank you, Clare Mackintosh for sharing your own story and for making this reader feel seen.


Expected publication 01/03/24
Goodreads Review published 22/02/24

I Promise It Won't Always Hurt Like This is a book that I will read time and time again.

I too in 2019 lost my husband suddenly, in 2021 my 37 year old son to cancer ( cant forget my dog in 2020).

Clare Mackintosh lost her son at 5 weeks old and her personal experience and her outtake on grief (because you do feel alone) is thought provoking.

She does a remarkable job in this well written book that eases your soul and helps the pain .

Grief is everyone's personal journey and we all grieve differently but I truly believe that is a book that will be gifted , kept at your bedside and read time and time again,

I thank Clare Mackintosh for writting I Promise You It Won't Always Hurt Like This, it would have been so emotional.

Thanks to NetGalley and Sourcebooks (non fiction) Sourcebooks for the privilege of reading and reviewing this wonderful book.

First of all, I want to say I'm extremely grateful tobSourcebooks, NetGalley and, of course, Clare for the opportunity to read this ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

Secondly, I want to remind everyone that you should only read this if you can. If you think you're able to. If you're ready for it. After all, this is a tough book to read and you should put your own mental health first.

Thirdly, and lastly, let's go to what you're really here for: the review.

In this book Clare walks us through her own grief, giving us details of her own personal life and most intimate thoughts so she can shows us we're not alone and also use those as examples as to how it gets better. With time. And it truly does.

When I saw this book on netgalley I knew I wanted/needed to read it. I lost people I loved before. I grieved. I'm still grieving. I'll always be. I'm better now, but like Clare also said, I have some days where I take a step backwards. Where I fall apart a little bit. Where it gets too much. And that's ok!

Every promise Clare made resonated with me. And a lot of her stories did as well. So this book hit close to home. It was heart wrenching at time. I sobbed as well. But it was liberating in a way I can't explain. It's always good to know you're not alone. You're not the only one feeling that way. It's always good to know someone understands you. Losing someone you love so deeply it breaks to lose them isn't something I'd wish on my worst enemy. However it's good to know someone understands it too. Does that thought make me a bad person? I don't think it does but I'm sorry if I'm wrong about it.

All these 18 promises are completely right, you know? If you're going through your own journey and if you're reading this review I hope you fix this one part specifically. Clare is right. It does get better with time. The pain will subside a little bit. It won't hurt that much. You'll breathe more easily. Regular tasks won't take all your energy away. And you'll be able to talk about them without it shattering you. If you're like me, it will actually get to that time where you love to talk about the ones you lost. To tell funny stories you randomly remember about them. You'll see something that reminds you of them and say out loud "oh my god, x would've loved this flower, they were passionate about flowers.". Anything really.

I believe I got sidetracked with this review but that's what a good book that resonates with you and makes you feel seen will do to you.

If you're in your own journey, read this book and get some hope in knowing it gets better. If you know someone grieving but don't know how to help them, then please give them this book.

PS - Thank you so much for opening up about this, Clare.

spot on. Mackintosh writes about grief with honesty, tenderness, and care from afar and it’s both heartbreaking and heartwarming. I want to buy a bunch of copies and hand them out to so many people who are grieving.

The book is divided into 18 chapters- each one a promise relating to grief and grieving. The chapters are full of personal stories and experiences, with some hopeful advice as well.

I loved this!!

I have always been a huge fan of Clare - since first reading ‘I let you go’ with my book club and Clare generously offering to do a virtual Q&A with us I remember lending that book to so many people and even buying it to send to my team in Prague to read. I remember back then learning that she had lost a very young child and back then could not have imagined how that would feel but now many years later with two small people of my own, the grief is not something I would even want to try and fathom. I decided to read this book as a fan of Clare but also as a training psychotherapist. I’m currently working with a group with secondary breast cancer so grief/loss are something I will encounter with greater frequency than the average Joe along the way, so I was hoping this book would help me personally but also to understand and empathise with others.

This book is so beautiful I would recommend it to anyone, grieving or otherwise to have in your armoury. It will make you smile, it will make you hug your children a bit harder, it will make you cry and cry and cry. The part that triggered me was totally unexpected - I burst into fits of sobs that were not quite sadness tears but not quite happy ones either, something in between like grateful tears if they’re even a thing!

A wonderful, wonderful read.

Clare Mackintosh's moving meditation on grief following the death of her son Alex at five weeks old (Alex would be 18 today). Her writing is so wrenching and intimate at times that I had to put the book down and come back to it later. One such moment: when she talks about her son's funeral, and how his coffin was so tiny that her husband carried it in his arms. While this is a book for those dealing with grief (and who isn't), it is also for anyone wanting to help/be there for those suffering through loss.

Heartfelt reflections on the long process of grieving a loss. The "promises" made are helpful to orient someone forward through a time of mourning. Even just looking at the chapter titles can be helpful reminders.

Thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks for a preview copy of I Promise It Won't Always Hurt Like This.

I thank Claire for sharing her son Alex with us, and her grief journey. I am 4.5 years into my grief journey, and I was unsure about reading this book. Would it cause me to wallow? Would it open up wounds when I was feeling like I was doing pretty well with right now? I decided I would take it easy, read it a few pages at a time, and if it got to be too much, I'd take a break. Claire even says at the beginning- read this how you need it. Maybe a little at a time, maybe a chapter here and there, out of order, however it would suit you. But WOW. I wound up devouring this book in just a couple of days (there were times I walked away, but did not wait long to pick it up again). This book is honest, raw, true, and healing. Claire takes us on a journey to show us that we are not alone, but never lectures. When you deal with grief, you learn quickly that each grief journey is unique, and Claire continues to assure us that that is true, there is no one size fits all solution to the overwhelming array of emotions. She tells us how it was for HER- it may or may not be like that for us. But more often that not, it affirmed what I had, and still was experiencing. Practical approaches, but never judgements or solutions. I highlighted many passages in this book. Both because some resonated with me so strongly, some because it was good advice.

I think this book is probably best read a few months after a loss. If read right out of the gate, you'd read it with a perspective of "not me, she doesn't understand". But months, and years after, I find this book extremely reassuring and understanding. It's a comfort. The pain is raw, and you don't "get over it", but one does learn to live with it. Lean on those who have been there before, and Claire assures us there are people out there who do get it- and clearly. I am sorry for her loss. I appreciate her sharing it with us. I read numerous grief books in the year after my loss, and this one will be one of my go-to books to recommend and purchase for others.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC of this book!

I find it weird to say I enjoyed this book but I did find it comforting. As someone who has yet to deal with as big a direct loss as the author, I picked this book to see if it could give me some guidance on how to cope with future losses I might face. There are also some unexpected deaths in my periphery that I’ve been trying not to analyze too much so I was hopeful it might also help with those.

The authors vulnerability and the fact the book steers clear of direct advice and self help definitely makes it one of the more palatable books on grief that I’ve seen. It’s very easy to write a prescriptive book, but much harder to write something meaningful that is raw and messy without just becoming chaos. She does a great job of this.

My only complaint is that occasionally it does feel a bit repetitive but I think that mirrors the cycle of grief (a bit of rumination) so it still didn’t bother me that much.

4.5/5 rounding up on the accordance of thinking this could help people (I think it will help me in the future).

This book felt like a hug from a stranger I didn’t know I needed. I haven’t read Claire’s other books but was immediately interested in this one from the title and cover alone. I knew it would be a gem and wasn’t disappointed. I felt like Clare was describing so much of my own experience — things I thought or felt which I thought were strange but she shared in her own story. We didn’t suffer the same kind of loss but so much rang true. I have a many underlined passages I will keep with me as they so beautifully summarized the sentiment.

This was such a great read for anyone who has experienced loss — whatever the stage. One I will be recommending to others looking for comfort.

I knew going into this that I was going to get emotional, what I didn’t fully expect was to be affected in the way that I was.

I am no stranger to grief.

I have gone through the motions every single time, trying and hoping that the pain will eventually lessen so I can finally feel like I can breathe again. I am no stranger to that pain.

I Promise It Won’t Always Hurt Like This gave me the ability to finally put that pain into words. It helped me understand that I'm not alone in this feeling. I truly found this so healing in so many ways.

It’s not often that I immediately run to preorder books but the minute I read the first chapter of this book, I preordered it. I knew from then that this was going to be a book that I would need.

This helped me understand and rationalise a lot of the feelings that I have been experiencing for years. It allowed me to have the space to sit back and think about all the parts of my grief that I have held for years, the good, the bad and the ugly. This made me feel so seen.

For many years I blamed myself for the loss of my child. The child that I never got to see grow up or see take their first steps or say their first words. I was not in a good place for many years when it came to coming to terms with my loss. This book allowed me to understand that feeling that way is natural. It’s a part of it and I’m not alone in that feeling.

It’s officially been a year since I lost my Nanny and reading this with the pain of losing her still being so raw was overwhelming but the way this was written made me feel like I was processing it with a friend.

I truly appreciate the fact that a list of books that surround grief is included at the end too.

I can’t express how thankful I am for this book and how this is one that I will be carrying with me for the rest of my life.

Thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks for providing me with this ARC. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

I requested an advanced copy of this book a couple of months ago because the anniversary of my friend Kym's death was approaching. She was the first (and only) friend I've lost, and her death hit me hard, with my grief greatly impacting my life for the first two years after her death.

Now six years later, this book comes along and it is one I wish I had read early on as I navigated my grief. The waves of sadness still hit me, but often they're more subdued. Despite my progress, I thought I could gain insight from Clare Mackintosh, a suspense author whose work I have enjoyed, who in this book shares her thoughts, feelings, and experiences after the excruciating loss of one of her children.

This book was inspired by a Twitter post made by Mackintosh on the anniversary of her son's death that went viral. From that post and the outpouring of comments, she has written 18 assurances based on her own experiences with grief. She reminds readers that not all of them will fit all readers' experiences or timelines in their grief journey and I found I related to some assurances more than others (particularly in the first half of the book).

Grief is universal, but it’s also as unique to each of us as the person we’ve lost. It can be overwhelming, exhausting, lonely, unreasonable, there when we least expect it and seemingly never-ending. Wherever you are with your grief and whoever you’re grieving for, I Promise It Won’t Always Hurt Like This is here to support you. To tell you, until you believe it, that things will get easier.”

As I read this book, I felt the ebb and flow of grief hit me. There were moments where I sat with a massive lump in my throat, others when I shed tears and others where I'd smile at the fond memories of Kym that would pop up - living together in college, the shenanigans we'd get into with friends and her amazing family who our gaggle of girls got to know and love.

This is an emotional and no doubt, cathartic endeavour for the author and by sharing her own journey, she hopes it can help readers who are experiencing the loss of a loved one. Thank you, Clare, for this candid and emotional book that is told with compassion, candidness and grace. Heartbreaking but hopeful, I highly recommend this book if you've suffered a loss and strongly believe it would also benefit people who want to know how they can support a loved one who is experiencing grief.

Disclaimer: Thank you to the publisher for the advanced copy of this book which was given in exchange for my honest review.

A beautifully written book about grief that offers eighteen insightful steps on how to manage the emotion. It can be read when one is new to grieving and read when it has been years. The words offer a reminder that grief is painful and ugly-but gives promises of hope that it can be overcome. I admire that this book doesn’t have to be read like a conventional book, read a chapter that resonates at a particular time or read them all at the same time. Also…the introduction is everything.
I appreciate the nod to the daffodils on the cover in reference to the author’s grief story where she is gifted a bouquet of them when she needed a bit of hope.
Publication Date: March 1, 2024

Love, love, loved this.
The tone was perfect - like a friend gently talking to another friend - and the content a great mix of Clare telling the story of her grief, and also holding space for readers and their own kinds of grief. I think I found this book especially poignant as my baby who we lost at 13 weeks we named Alexander/Alex too.
I usually don't re-read books but this one will be an exception. An easy five stars.

This is an honest, open look at grief. As someone who’s also grieving the loss of a loved one, I picked this book up hoping to hear a voice that I could relate to. Part memoir, part self-help, Clare wrote a guidebook of sorts for those of us who are numb, needing comfort, but feeling like we’ve exhausted our usual support. The chapters are short and easy for picking up and reading one, then putting it down. A nice way to spend some alone time, but not really be alone. The empathy Clare has for those in similar positions shines through. Highly recommend.

Thanks to Netgalley, Sourcebooks and Clare Mackintosh for the ARC.

I Promise It Won't Always Hurt Like This, by Clare Mackintosh, should come with an entire case of Kleenex. I am a bog fan of the author's mystery novels, but these essays on grief were so raw and emotional, they absolutely broke me. This book definitely isn't for everyone. But for those of us who needed to grieve with and be comforted by IPIWAHLT, I am grateful.

“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.”

This is the book that was first a Twitter Thread, on the anniversary of her infant son's death.

When you are in the thick of it, grief can seem never ending. And it takes as long as it takes to journey through every stage. When I lost my husband at 32, my neighbor said, “ You never understand death until it knocks at your door.” And she was right..

Claire understands grief, heartbreak and shares her personal journey with grief. And what we can learn about ourselves and love that never ends.

A beautiful book that I will not forget.

NetGalley/ Sourcebooks March 01, 2024

Clare Mackintosh tragically lost a son five weeks after his birth. In this book, a series of what she terms ‘Assurances on Grief’, she makes 18 promises to those dealing with grief. These range from the promise of the title, through to: “I promise you’ll find someone who understands” and “I promise you’ll be able to pay it forward.”
I felt the author’s pain and loss on every page of this book. It is written not to elicit sympathy from the reader, however, but to help others process their grief, to share what she went through, the range of emotions she felt and still feels, and most of all, to assure grieving readers that there is hope and light ahead.
This book should also be compulsory reading for those of us who haven’t had to deal with the awful grief of losing a beloved family member. We all know someone dealing with grief, and this very readable book contains gentle advice on how to interact with those that are grieving. It acts as a guide for those who cannot possibly understand how it feels to be grieving a loved one. Clare shares her feelings about some of the hurtful, wrong platitudes people dole out, as well as those words and actions that do actually help.
It doesn’t attempt to be a one-size-fits-all self-help manual for dealing with grief, however. Instead, this is honest, raw, insightful writing from the heart, and an acknowledgement that everyone processes grief differently.
It’s easy to read, extremely well-written, heart-breaking and yet ultimately hopeful and bursting with love.

Thanks NetGalley for the ARC!

Losing her five-week-old son led to Clare Mackintosh's discovery of how hard dealing with grief and loss is. There's no clear path to follow, no universal guide to help you how to move on, not even sure if it's something anybody would want to move on from.

This memoir explores Clare's experiences through the years as she navigates her way back into life, as normal as it can get, while trying to keep the memories of her son's short-lived life alive. This book may not give us the exact antidote we think we need to magically feel better, but this surely guarantees us that we are not alone in our journey. Someone has been where we are today, and a couple of years from now, another will be where we used to be.

Our losses take on different shapes and forms. Two people losing the same person still grieve differently. But there’s one thing that’s common among all of us: it’s the fact that we lost someone close to us and we’re grieving.

Clare’s experiences may be different from mine, but a lot of what she said in this book really gave me assurance that everything that I felt and had gone through was normal. At times, I found myself still crying while reading the book. While there were other parts that gave me hope and made me believe that I’ve already come a long way, but it doesn’t mean that I love the person I lost less.
Sharing with you some of my key takeaways from this book:

1. We are all different persons; therefore, our grief is as unique as we are, and as unique as our relationship with the person that we lost.
2. No matter how many people we lose, we don’t ever get used to grieving. Grief is different each time, partly because we’re grieving different people.
3. We all have our own triggers that can send us spiraling back to our own deep pit. It’s fine and can’t be avoided. Over the years, we’ll learn how to prepare for them. Our triggers may not entirely disappear, but we’ll learn to control our reactions to them.
4. We can still celebrate life even as we mourn death. One day, we’ll stop feeling guilty for being happy. Because we’ll know that being happy again doesn’t mean that we’re forgetting the people we lost.
5. “Acknowledging an emotion is the first step to understanding it, and recognizing its irrationality removes its power.” It’s okay to feel angry, sad, happy. Don’t let anybody tell you what to feel. They are not you and you are not them.
6. “When we talk about a journey through grief, it’s important to remember that we don’t all travel the same path or move at the same pace.” Again. Don’t let other people tell you how to grieve. Your grief, journey and story are unique to you.

“We can’t bring back the people we loved. We have to let our hearts cry and accept that it hurts.”

“Crying is good. Emotional tears release chemicals that reduce stress and pain.” This is backed up by science. So, cry as long as you feel the need to cry! But as Clare Mackintosh reminds and promises us, it won’t always hurt like this.

What a brave, honest, open, raw, reflective, supportive and emotional book. The words carefully chosen, reflect so much pain, yet show a powerful story of survival. How Clare writes this I have no idea and yet it is written in ‘short, compassionate sections’ which are inspirational and show so clearly powerful, strong love for her son, Alex.

Sadly, one thing we all have to face at some point, is grief, and this is a book which, at the right time, will support you, a book which you can dwell upon, highlighting bits to reflect back on.
So many phrases ring true,
putting into words what many others couldn’t.

Reading how Clare was eventually able to reflect on grief, not only from her own perspective, but also from others, like her mum’s double grief losing a grandson and seeing her own ‘baby’ in so much pain.

Clare wrote with unflattering honesty, totally realistic about the pain and total loss, the bitterness, the catastrophizing this grief led her to, but unequivocally a true reflection of love and survival.

This book is totally outstanding in so many ways, for instance showing people they are not alone in their thoughts and feelings and that you never know what people are hiding under their mask. Clare has laid bare THE most personal of experiences to allow others to benefit. Your grief, your way. I will be buying this to help others! Phenomenal!