How do you survive the unsurvivable?
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.
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.
Impossible to turn away from, Show Me Where It Hurts is a compelling, heartbreaking and ultimately life-affirming story of recovery and unexpected hope.
Print length: 250 pages. Publisher: Sceptre. Publication Date: 10 April 2025
My Thoughts:
First up: trigger warnings: suicide, attempted suicide, death/murder of young children, child loss/grief, mental health issues and depression.
Show Me Where It Hurts is the debut novel by Claire Gleeson and honestly after finishing this book the answer is for me personally is “EVERYWHERE HURTS NOW”.
Having read some of the blurbs on the book I’m not sure my review can give this story the credit it deserves.
First of all, this is a very brave and courageous topic to cover. It’s every parent’s nightmare and I don’t know how to put into words how much this story affected me emotionally.
The main character Rachel suffers the most tragic event when her husband Tom deliberately runs the family car off the road with the intention of ending his life alongside Rachel and their 2 young children. Sadly both children die, but Rachel and Tom survive and Show Me Where It Hurts starts to examine how Rachel navigates her shattered life having lost her reason to live.
Told through dual timelines, the reader is taken on the sad journey from when Rachel and Tom met to the car crash.
Despite the horrific and unimaginable scenario, the book is beautifully written, the subject of grief, loss and heartbreak are sensitively covered and the reader can feel the pain, confusion and emotion pouring from Rachel throughout.
This story is sad yet hopeful, brutal but beautiful, tragic and thought provoking and I absolutely recommend it.
