A best-selling crime author from Buckinghamshire is gearing up to release a new book about grief after losing several family members.

Clare Mackintosh is a police officer turned crime writer who grew up in Haddenham and has had a successful writing career, with six Sunday Times best-selling novels, including ‘I Let You Go’, which became the fastest-selling debut thriller in the year of its release.

The 47-year-old now lives in Wales with her husband and three children, but she is planning a trip back to Buckinghamshire this month to visit the final resting place of her son Alex, who passed away in 2006.

After his death, one of Clare’s neighbours brought her a bunch of daffodils and told her that it wouldn’t always hurt as much as it did then. Although she didn’t believe her at the time, Clare came to appreciate the words more as the years passed, and she now grows daffodils each year in memory of her little boy.

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The crime writer plans to plant daffodils at her son’s grave in Haddenham later this month, ahead of her new book, ‘I Promise It Won’t Always Hurt Like This: 18 Promises for Grief’, to be published in March 2024.

Clare, who attended Haddenham Church of England Primary School and Aylesbury High School as a girl and worked as a Thames Valley Police officer before becoming an author, has also lost her grandparents and her father since Alex’s death.

She decided to write the book after sharing her story online and seeing the “incredible” response from others all around the world, many of whom took comfort in her assurances that the pain of grief would slowly ebb.

It is dedicated to “anyone who’s struggled or is struggling with grief, no matter who they’ve lost”.