🩹 REVIEW 🩹

Show Me Where it Hurts by Claire Gleeson
Release Date: 10th April 2025

⭐️⭐️⭐️.5/5

📝 - Rachel lives with her husband Tom and their two children: it’s the comfortable family life she always thought she’d have. All of that changes in an instant – when one action by Tom destroys the life they’ve built, leaving Rachel to pore over the wreckage to try and understand what happened, to try and find a way to go on living afterwards. What emerges is a snapshot of what it’s like to live alongside someone who is suffering, how you keep yourself afloat when the person you love is drowning – and how you survive irreparable loss.

💭 - This was a really intriguing title for me, but I found that it didn’t quite turn out as expected. While I found the storyline interesting and thought provoking, I did want a bit more of a deep dive into Rachel, and I felt the writing style didn’t give me that to the extent I wanted. Nonetheless, the story is moving, and one that will likely stick in my mind for a while.

#showmewhereithurts #clairegleeson #bookreview #bookstagram #bookstagrammer #bookreviewers #bookreviewer #literaryfiction #contemporaryfiction

Show Me Where It Hurts is a very raw and powerful story of mental illness, the most tragic loss and subsequent grief. The chapters alternate between ‘Before’ and ‘After’ this devastating event - because as is so clearly reflected in the story, there will always be a ‘Before’ and ‘After’ for Rachel. Her life is irrevocably changed by this event - the most unthinkable, unbearable thing for a mother of young children.

But in the midst of Rachel’s pain, there are glimmers of hope radiating from these pages. Across the ten years ‘After’, Rachel’s journey is one of learning to find some semblance of acceptance - it is okay to love again, it is okay to have moments of happiness - because the world goes on, even though Rachel’s life has been changed forever. Rachel’s character is an example of the strength of the human spirit and what it means to survive.

An emotional, shocking, gripping story, so beautifully crafted. This is a book that will stay with me.

Thank you to the publisher, Hodder & Stoughton, for an advance digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

What a book. This is a staggering story in many ways, told in an understated way, about a horrific event in one woman's life and her struggles to deal with the aftermath of it. But it's also about how mental illness can creep up on people, and the myriad of ways that this affects the lives of those around them too.

The beginning launches us into the life of a family travelling home from visiting relatives in the car - Rachel, Tom and their two young children. The shock as, within the first few pages, Tom veers the car off the road is tangible. The chapters that follow move back and forth in time. Some travel back to when Rachel first met Tom, and detail their developing relationship and marriage together. Others look at Rachel's life after the accident, and how her life unfolds after the devastating loss of both her children.

The writing is absolutely brilliant. Gleeson is describing harrowing things that it sometimes seems just can't be explained, but the understated, down-to-earth nature of the writing keeps it grounded, and stops the novel from flying off into hyperbole. Readers can probably imagine themselves facing similar situations and reacting in similar ways.

Tom's gradual unravelling has its roots in the economic crash and the failure of his business. But Rachel discovers that in fact there may also be deeper things going on, as she learns more about his childhood and adolescence. It's very poignant. We see Rachel almost living with someone who feels like a stranger at times, her husband only making the briefest of appearances in smiles and rare 'normal' conversations. Tom's mental deterioration is very well done.

I liked the fact that there is no clear and simple explanation for it. This can be a frustrating reality in terms of mental health, and we see as Rachel struggles to understand what is happening to her husband.

The parts of the book that deal with her life after the accident, living a life she didn't think she'd be living, beginning a new relationship, are captivating.

If I had one criticism, I thought that there would be more overt and 'loud' trauma from Rachel in terms of losing her children. We hear that she sometimes sees them in other people, and they are on her mind a lot, but this isn't always obvious in the book. But again, this is maybe part of the understated way of writing and is more realistic as it shows how people have to get on with life, regardless of what it throws at them.

This is a very empathetic and moving novel, and I would highly recommend it. Thank you to Netgalley for the preview.

“Rachel lives with her husband Tom and their two children: it's the ordinary family life she always thought she'd have. All of that changes in an instant - when Tom runs the family car off the road, seeking to end his own life, and take his wife and children with him. Rachel is left to pore over the wreckage to try and understand what happened - to find a way to go on living afterwards”

Okay wow this book was so good! I found the story so different and also so emotional! I love when a book makes you properly feel in the pit of your stomach and this is definitely one of those. There was definitely a lot of references to mental health and how everyone can be affected by it - whether directly or indirectly.

I loved that we heard about the lead up to the incident, all the way back to when Rachel and Tom met. I loved that we got snapshots into their lives and how they got to where they ended up. I loved that we got to then see Rachel and her life after the incident and how it has affected her day to day. I feel like this could be such a great movie!

This is definitely not an easy read and is quite heavy but I honestly believe it could be in the running of being my favourite book of the year! I felt like I didn’t want to put it down and was excited to get something time to read.

Firstly, thank you to NetGalley and Hodder & Stoughton for this advance ARC!

If you love contemporary Irish fiction this is definitely a book for you!

Rachel's perfect family life is shattered when her husband Tom drives their car off the road, attempting to end his and his families’ lives, leaving her to grapple with the aftermath. As she tries to understand what led to this moment, Show Me Where It Hurts explores the emotional toll of living with someone in deep pain, the struggle to stay afloat when a loved one is drowning, and the challenge of surviving immense loss. A compelling and heartbreaking journey, the novel ultimately offers a story of recovery, resilience, and the unexpected hope that can arise from even the darkest moments.

The chapters are split between the present and the ten years leading up to the accident, when Tom and Rachel met. I love when any novel does this because I think you learn so much more about the characters and the depth of the story. As you read about the accident in the very first chapters, some of the chapters about Rachel and Tom dating can be pretty hard to read knowing what he does ten years later.

Gleeson writes grief exactly as it is; raw, ugly, terrifying, and tidal. A book that is both gripping and emotional. I really liked the way that Gleeson explores family dynamics in the novel, from Rachel’s relationships with her mother, sister, and of course with her husband Tom.

Show Me Where It Hurts is a powerful novel. Gleeson has written a mindful book full of tenderness, heartbreak, and sorrow. The book evoked so much emotion within me, a truly excellent and haunting debut novel that I won’t forget for a long time.

Five stars.

loss is hard. loss is hard on anyone. for those who suffer with mental illness it effects ripple far and wide for those who love them. because when you are in a family or know someone who suffers you can both feel their pain and witness it. the stigma against mental illness is horrific. the stigma about whether its an "illness" is just plain horrific. and only when you've lived with someone suffering do you know that its one of the worst set of illness a patient could ever suffer from. and to the families the pain you see and feel alongside them is also horrific.
there is also a steel. and a better understanding of people and empathy from the heart that comes with it.
this book looks at that. but also take you before the loss and after the loss of someone who suffers with mental illness and gets to the point where they reach the end of their illness and decide to take their life.
i didnt think id cope with seeing this. it felt all to real. and i also needed it to be done properly. but it was. it really was. it was handled with both the ferocious terror and emotional overwhelm that such a thing needs. but also the tenderness and the tumultuous feelings that comes from such a time and such a moment in peoples lives. we get to see parts of the lead up and after. and how people cope. and how they dont. and what the hell happens next.
this book was done so well.
i dont want to say i enjoyed it because that doesnt seem right. but im soooo glad i got the chance to read it. its a book that will sit with me. and also softened a piece of pain inside of me too.

Imagine the worst thing that could possibly happen, then circle it, from well before to well after, to and fro, exploring the impacts, the early whispers of it, the fallout, to the beginning of healing but never forgetting years later. Using this method enables the reader to gain insight into various layers, a more nuanced and detailed understanding, so that when you move from one time to another you go with an appreciation of who those involved are and how the events came about, how they then echoed into the future. It’s well written and considered. However, I felt it lacked a little in terms of exploring and expressing deeper emotions and the appalling agony the main event would have created, hence giving it 4 rather than 5 stars.

I was fortunate to receive an advanced copy of this heartbreaking yet beautifully written debut novel, ‘Show Me Where It Hurts’ by Claire Gleeson. Once I picked it up, I couldn't put it down and devoured it within two days.

The story follows Rachel and unfolds through two parallel narratives: ‘before’ and ‘after’ a tragic event. In the ‘before’ sections, we see Rachel meet and fall in love with her husband, Tom—a familiar tale of boy meets girl, love blossoms, and they begin to build a life today, settling down and building a family. But as circumstances shift, Tom's struggle with mental health leads to a devastating event that shatters Rachel’s world.

The ‘after’ narrative explores Rachel’s journey through unimaginable grief, devastation, and horror. Yet, it also charts her resilience, recovery, and the complexity of healing from profound loss. The interwoven structure of the book is brilliant, enhancing the emotional impact and giving depth to Rachel’s experience.

Given the subject matter, I hesitated to read it, but I am so glad I did. It’s my best read of 2025 so far. Claire Gleeson has an exquisite writing style, capturing the nuances and complexities of love, grief, loss, and mental health with sensitivity and authenticity.

She skillfully avoids clichés, instead presenting her characters as layered and real, illustrating how messy and multifaceted tragedy and healing can be. Even though the story is sad, it also tells a story about survival and hope.

Claire Gleeson has crafted something extraordinary from a difficult topic, and I am in awe of her talent.

I rarely give five-star reviews, but this book unquestionably deserves it. Incredible storytelling, incredible writing.
The book is out on April 10th and available for pre-order now.

Many thanks to @netgalley and @hodderbooks for the ARC - all opinions are my own.

#ShowMeWhereItHurts #NetGalley #debutbook #irishwriter #debutnovel #irishbookstagram #irishbooklover

@netgalley @hodderbooks @clairegleeson_writer @sceptrebooks

Show Me Where it Hurts is a powerful and heartbreaking book that will linger with me for a long time. The subjects tackled in this book are heavy but the author handles them as sensitively as possible and as someone who has experienced living with someone who struggles with their mental health this book resonated with me in a very personal way. The set up is deceptively simple, the reader is thrown in to the story as the book opens with a car crash, it is only as the book unfolds that we learn that this was no accident, but rather a deliberate attempt by a man to kill himself and his family. The book diverges into two time lines, in one we see how Rachel and Tom meet as students and fall in love, and in the second we follow Rachel in the aftermath of the tragedy that robbed her of her two children as she tries to come to terms with her grief and learn how to navigate her new existence and how to redefine her relationship with her husband in light of what he has done. As the before timeline moves closer and closer to the event that destroyed her life and the after timeline moves further away and closer to healing it is impossible not to feel for Rachel and root for her, but there is also a degree of sympathy for Tom and how dark things must have been for him that his actions seemed like the only possible solutions to the problems he faced. This may be a short book but its impact belies its brevity, it is flawless and though not an easy read it is an incredibly rewarding and memorable one, and one that I will return to and recommend over and over again.
I read and reviewed an ARC courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher, all opinions are my own.

What an incredible book this is, Claire Gleeson tackles a difficult subject with such insight and sensitivity. I was hooked from the opening chapter, and every spare moment I had I picked this book up as I was so engrossed in the story. This book will stay with me for a very long time. I’ll definitely be looking out for Claire Gleeson in the future!

Opening with a devastating traumatic event, Show Me Where It Hurts then splits in to a dual timeline - before and after the event. The ‘before’ timeline gets closer and closer to the incident, while the ‘after’ timeline gets further away. The reader is shown the build up to what happens over a series of years and months and then we experience the immediate aftermath and Rebecca’s recovery from trauma and grief.

I am a firm believer that books sometimes find you at exactly the right time and Show Me Where It Hurts is that book for me this year. After a horrific incident in January I have been desperate to connect with someone who understands and has been through similar. Although fictional, Rebecca is that person. I saw myself in her and so many of her experiences. The writing is incredible and I devoured this book in a matter of hours. At times I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough and at others I just had to sit and absorb what I had read. I constantly had the feeling of “yes, yes, that’s it”. One quote in particular: “I just. I don’t think this is the life I was supposed to have”. I’ve said almost these exact words several times these past few weeks 💔

This is an incredible book; raw, unflinching, devastating and ultimately hopeful. A debut novel of exquisite writing. At only 256 pages, Claire Gleeson has the ability to tear you apart and build you back up again. I was reminded of Claire Keegan as I was reading; the ability to express so much in such a short book.

I was blown away by this book and will cherish it forever. Thank you @netgalley and Sceptre books for allowing me to read an early copy. I need a physical copy to keep on my forever shelf.

This was a hard read.
Covering such a difficult topic.
I felt for the mother. The unimaginable grief she must feel. Her questioning if there were signs. Did she miss something.
But also wanting to carry on.

While I do wish we got maybe a little more of the straight after. I understand why it jumps through the years after.
But also the lead up to what happened. Showing the decline in her husband.

'Show Me Where It Hurts' is an exceptionally well written debut novel. It is by no means an easy read but Claire Gleeson writes about tragedy, grief and mental health issues with such empathy and sensitivity. Written in two time lines, the before and after, this short book and its characters leaves a long lasting impression. Thanking netgalley, the publisher and author for an early e-copy.

Show Me Where It Hurts by Claire Gleeson reads almost like a true crime novel due to its realistic portrayal of every part of the story. The novel follows Rachel, who lives with her husband Tom and their two children, leading what seems to be an ordinary family life. This changes in an instant when Tom deliberately drives the family car off the road, seeking to end his own life and take his wife and children with him. Rachel is left to navigate the wreckage and try to understand what happened, finding a way to go on living afterwards.

Whilst the majority of the book focusses on Rachel and Tom, their children and friends and family also have their parts to play and accurately illustrate the ripple effect of a catastrophic event. The struggle between Rachel and Tom's mental health is depicted through chapters that alternate between 'before' the awful event and the 'after' storyline, providing a stark contrast and a different part of the emotional rollercoaster. This structure is very clever, as anyone who has experienced a massive event in their life knows that there is always a distinct before and after. The book's ability to capture this dichotomy is outstanding. I loved the book and found it to be an exceptional read, deserving of 5 stars. I imagine this story will stay on my mind for a long time to come.

If there was ever a book that came close to perfection for me, Show Me Where it Hurts would be it!

In the first chapter of the book, Rachel’s husband Tom crashes their family car on purpose, killing their two children but Rachel and Tom both survive. What follows is alternating chapters between ‘Before’ and ‘After’ as you learn what caused Tom to do such a horrific thing and how Rachel in particular coped afterwards.

It’s such a brilliantly written book - at just over 250 pages there’s not a lot of it but every sentence has its place in building up a picture of the family. The portrayal of grief was done so well, along with the anxiety over what people ‘expected you’ to be doing (or not doing) and Rachel felt like a person you could really be friends with.

It’s a heart-breaking story and alternating between past and present really built some tension as you knew you were closer to find out what was happening but also getting further away from the last time she saw her children.

This book opens with some heartbreaking first pages. We see a terrible choice made by Rachel’s husband Tom and it later becomes clear that he has been struggling with his mental health for quite some time. Rachel is left to pick up the pieces, return to the family home and soon starts to wonder if she missed the signs.

I really enjoyed the dual timeline of this one and found it to be a quick read in a sense of how quickly I read it lol but after the first few chapters (and the action) it seemed to become a bit of a slow burner, which is fine, I still really enjoyed. I think the book tackled topics really well, it portrayed deteriorating mental health, the loss of a child(ren) and grief. It also tackles the old “plea of insanity” argument - which I always find interesting. We see the journey of Rachel and Tom’s relationship and how this would be so out of character for him. Can you forgive someone for doing something due to their mental health conditions? I was constantly going back and for with my feelings for Tom’s character.

ALSO, can we talk about the title? Very clever I think 👏🏼 you can’t show somewhere where you hurt inside and I’m hoping that’s what the author was trying to portray ❤️‍🩹 just a little TW: there’s lots of talk around death of a child in this book.

The opening pages of this tale seem impossibly sad, but don’t be put off (as I almost was). This is the beautifully recounted story of survival after the unthinkable happens. It is told looking backwards and forwards from the The Day When It Happened.
The rise of love and fall as depression takes over, and the unforgiving anger of the partner who must endure and support. While tragic, it is also full of hope, and illustrates how we humans are resilient survivors beyond all possible expectation.
It is written in beautiful literary style with Irish inflections and all the characters were thoroughly believable. I truly enjoyed this captivating read.

This is a story of love loss and how one can survive - and even thrive- after an unspeakable tragedy and loss. I thought the writing was beautiful and very evocative. The first two pages were so shocking that they took ,my breath away!! How Rachel was able to come back from that and even to function just amazed me.
I felt the timelines worked brilliantly well too - having THE DAY as a focal point and then tracing both backwards and forwards in time from that fateful event. Living with someone with mental health issues must be truly hard especially when combined with busy and stressful work and two very young children so even though I felt she herself wondered if she could have done more to spot the signs I felt that Rachel should not blame herself and also that whilst she had some understandable panics that she was falling into depression herself at times the ultimate takeaway was that whilst naturally her son and daughter would always be with her and form an important thread to the rest of her days she should be able to start to live a life for herself again and the narration in the book covers that excellently - from the bursts of joy to the guilt that follows them for allowing herself that joy this is a book that will stay with me for some time to come.

Exceptional debut but not an easy read.

We meet Rachel as she's sitting in the passenger seat of the family car. Tom, her husband, is driving. Their two young children in the back. They had been at Tom's parents that afternoon. The drive home is just routine. Or it is until her husband apologises and runs the car off the road.

From there, the timeline splits.

We see how Rachel and Tom meet, the proposal, wedding, kids. A sneak peek into family life and the weeks leading up to 'the incident '.

In the second timeline, we witness the horror of the aftermath.

This is a successful dual timeline, in my opinion, I was equally invested in both, and it made sense to format the story this way.

This wasn't an easy read, yet I could have read it in one sitting. The plot is as gripping as it is emotional. The grief and shock represented is very real, raw, and ugly to look at. It's not pretty here.

Nothing is cut and dried in these pages. Life is nuanced and complicated, and we are left with questions in the way we are when all stories end earlier than they should.

I cried a lot reading this. There's sadness everywhere in all kinds of forms, but there is hope too, sneaking in the cracks.

It's wild to call this novel beautiful, but the way it's structured, the carefully handling of tough subjects, and the love that swirls in the darkness, it's the only word that seems appropriate.

Five stars.

Some books don’t just tell a story; they carve out a space inside you, fill it with sorrow and love in equal measure, and leave you a little more broken, a little more aware. Show Me Where It Hurts by Claire Gleeson is one of those books. It’s not just about tragedy—it’s about the fragile, gossamer-thin line between love and devastation, and how, when that line finally snaps, it feels impossible to trace back the moments that led to the breaking point.

I grew up with a severely mentally ill father, and reading this book was like peering into an alternate version of my own life, one where the fault lines cracked just a little differently. It’s a book that makes you wonder, how close have I come to that precipice? How many times have I nodded along, like Rachel, acknowledging others while feeling entirely absent from my own life? “She felt she spent her life nodding at people now. She had become something almost entirely passive.” And how many times have I questioned whether love can outlast the wreckage, whether there’s anything left to hold onto once the person you love has become someone else entirely?

Gleeson structures the novel with a dual timeline, letting us see Rachel’s life both before and after her husband, Tom, makes an unthinkable decision. The ‘before’ is filled with aching tenderness, with a love so intoxicating it makes Rachel feel invincible. “They kiss in the long grass for what feels like hours, and when he pulls back finally his face is flushed and the look in his eyes makes her feel more powerful than she has ever felt before.” But even in these early pages, there’s an undercurrent of something inevitable, a quiet sense that the darkness is gathering at the edges.

And then there’s the ‘after’—a world where grief is not just an emotion but a physical weight, pressing down on Rachel, pinning her to the bed in the mornings. “Some mornings she woke with an inertia that was a blanket of dead air pinning her to the bed, a lumpen weight upon her chest.” It is in these moments that Gleeson’s writing is at its most devastating, stripping Rachel’s pain down to its rawest form. And yet, despite everything, Rachel’s feelings for Tom are not easy to categorize. “She cannot say any more that she loves him; nobody could ask that of her. But she finds that she does not hate him either. There is so little of him left to hate.”

What makes this novel so extraordinary is its refusal to fall into easy answers. It does not offer closure, because real life doesn’t. It does not paint Tom as a monster or Rachel as a saint. Instead, it explores the spaces in between—the moments of love that still exist in the ruins, the guilt that comes from feeling something other than misery, the quiet realization that the world will continue turning no matter how much you want it to stop. “Now she finds there is something almost comforting in the knowledge that the world was here, doing much the same things as always, long before she arrived on it, and will continue to turn on its axis aeons after she has gone.”

I have read many books about mental illness, love, and loss, but few have moved me the way this one has. It is astonishing, thought-provoking, and unbearably human. Claire Gleeson has written something deeply special. A story of love, in all its devastating, complicated, unshakeable forms. And it is one I will never forget.

Huge thanks to NetGalley & Hodder & Stoughton | Sceptre for the ARC. All opinions are my own.