This is a book written about the authors son who died aged 2 years old. It is very honest and written so well. It is heartbreaking. Informative.

Broke my heart. A really emotional book but one that is written in such a way that you feel a part of their lives and grief.

Beautiful and poignant book. Delaney does the world a service by sharing his path through love and grief.

What an extraordinary book. Rob Delaney discusses his family's grief over the loss of their beloved Henry but the book is also brimming with life and it was nothing short of a joy to read about wee Henry and the joy that he brought so many. This will stay with me for a very long time to come.

Thank you to Netgalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Absolutely gutted me. I felt the need to listen to Rob tell his story, to sit and hold that space for him.

I think this book is a small gift to others who are grieving. It doesn’t give any answers, but Rob’s beautifully vulnerable journey helps wrap us in a blanket that we are not alone in our feelings. Lots of pain and grief with a dose of humor.

So much love to this family.

An inspirational, heart-breaking memoir of the author's loss of his two year old son, Henry to brain cancer. When the unthinkable happens, what do you do? Henry never should have been struck with such a terrible disease, never should have had to suffer and never should have had his young life cut short. Through a myriad of emotions, we see how Rob Delaney dealt with this tragic blow. His universe turned upside down and yours will, too, when you read this touching memoir. Highly recommend this beautiful book.

Such a beautiful read, I couldnt atually give this a review for such a long time as it moved me so much and I just didnt feel right reviewing it. It is a wonderful story of a very brave unlucky family, with the residing emotion being love.

What a beautiful, hopeful, yet realistic tale of grief and loss. Catastrophe was an incredible show that drew me to this work as the writing on the show is wonderful, but this book is heart wrenching and comedic in a nuanced way.

This is one of those books you know will stick with you for the rest of your life. It's been a few months since I've read it and I still think about it from time to time.
Rob Delaney managed to put into words an indescribable situation and I admire his courage to do so. It was incredibly hard for me to read this but I also finished it in an afternoon, so that tells you all you need to know. It will break your heart in a million pieces but it's impossible to put down.
I was most surprised by the levity Delaney brought to this story. This is one of the hardest things a parent will ever go through and somehow he made me laugh more than a couple of times. He made me smile and wish to be part of his family. I cannot imagine the pain they all went through (though Delaney does a wonderful job of describing it) and still, what I will remember the most about this story is not the river of tears running down my face and how I had to stop reading a couple of times just to cry for a bit, but the love these people have for each other. This is a story full of love and it's impossible not to feel it.
I recommend this book to anyone who feels brave enough to give it a try, because it's definitely worth the read.

A devastatingly intimate memoir, written by American writer and actor Rob Delaney, recounting the sudden and shattering tragic illness of his baby boy, Henry, during the family’s brief hiatus in London, England, where the author taped a TV series (a terrible and horrific pairing of a career-altering incredible opportunity with the worst thing one could possibly imagine, ever). How else could a parent react when his beautiful and previously-healthy baby (seeming so, at least) not yet even a single year old, becomes ill, with what turns out to be an insidious and ultimately deadly form of brain cancer.

So raw and profound a story is this that it was difficult for this reader to proceed in parts, (without bolting to the next room to hug or cuddle a family member, or a pet) - recognizing that this story needed to be read, if for no other reason than to know, to share, to understand, as much as this is possible, how fleeting and fragile is the hold each of us has on our own lives, on the lives of our loved ones, and each of those around us.

I’m forever grateful that there are individuals, such as this wonderful author, who are able, through their trauma, and perhaps as part of their own healing process, to let us in - told with colossal grief, and grace, and humor, and pain, footholds on his journey with little Henry (who lived through too much for even this casual reader to bear), laid out for us to experience through him, and with him, reminding us that we are all connected, all hanging on by this thread of life, wherever (and whenever), it may take us.

A beautiful, searing, gaze into the very best and the absolutely worst places parental love can wtake us to, this book is a rare and illuminating gift.

A great big thank you to the author, the publisher, and Netgalley for an ARC of this book, all thoughts presented are my own.

This was a beautiful, sadly relatable, memoir. The way Mr. Delaney captured his grief will stick with me forever and this book should be used as a tool for families and friends to support loved ones after a loss.

Incredible - funny, heartbreaking, beautiful. I loved it and will definitely read again. I learned a lot, too, about helping families with sick children.

this book destroyed me. for anyone with kids, thinking about kids or has kids in any way tangent to their lives. this book was heartbreaking and uplifting and terribly wonderful. never have I felt so seen in grief. no fake platitudes here, just real raw emotion. and somehow fun. incredible.

I was drawn to this book as a parent and grandparent who has managed to live unscathed--at least so far--by terminal illness and the searing agony of losing a child. Rob Delaney's writing communicates unapologetically his anger, his sense that the universe has not only betrayed him but is also more impoverished than it was before his son's passing. Parents living in the sad space of a child's serious illness will find camaraderie in the Delaney family's experience, particularly that life does not stand still for them. We are not given the gift of "one crisis at a time" even when facing the greatest crisis of our lives.

Delaney is also very candid about his personal failures as a husband and father, his addiction, and his recovery. I had actually never heard of him or his television series, so the book didn't read like a celebrity memoir to me. I was initially very distracted by the author's heavy use of profanity but ultimately began to see that this was his manner of presenting his emotional response and likely his normal speech pattern.

Many thanks to Net Galley for providing a copy of this book to facilitate my review which is, of course, offered freely and with honesty.

I don't even know how to review "A Heart that Works," except by saying thank you to Rob Delaney for sharing his beautiful boy Henry with me and so many other readers. It's a story of unfathomable pain that Delaney could have easily kept to himself and his family--and who could ever blame him--but I feel privileged to have gotten to know Henry, his mother Leah, his brothers Eugene and Oscar (and now Teddy) and Rob Delaney himself in some small way. Henry's story, and this profoundly loving and essential book, will stay with me.

Thank you to NetGalley and to Spiegel & Grau for providing me with an ARC of this title in return for my honest review.

What an amazing and heartbreaking read . Thank you net galley for allowing me to read in return for an honest review

Beautiful beautiful beautiful. This is why we read. Rob Delaney can write - and he describes the pure love and unthinkable loss he experienced in a way that helped me with my own losses and tragedies. This is a must read. Life changing. Seriously. You’ll see the world differently. In a good way. Thanks to Spiegel and Grau for the copy. What a gift.

There’s really not a lot I can say about this beyond what you likely already know. This is the story of Rob and his family as they navigate through Henry’s cancer diagnosis and beyond.

Rob Delaney is and has been vocal about his support in the NHS, and is candid about how the support he and his family received saved them, allowed them to care and come to terms with saying goodbye to Henry.
It’s written as you’d expect - like Rob talks, like Catastrophe’s written.

I don’t know that I would recommend this or not - it’s certainly a tough read, for obvious reasons. There are some amazing, hopeful pieces in there too, about the kindness of strangers and some guidance on how you can help someone who’s grieving, or what helped them. It’s an important story to be told, especially as we stand on the brink of the NHS being privatised and largely inaccessible without health insurance - it’s a rallying cry to do something, anything. Let’s do it.

Thanks to Spiegel & Grau and Netgalley for the DRC. THis is available to buy as book and audiobook now.

Loved this so much. I listened and fekf it helped capture the bluntness of his humor and the pure love Rob has for Henry. Really enjoyed his perspective.

You know what this memoir is about from reading the jacket copy, and it is unflinching and raw and painful. It isn’t filled with platitudes and it doesn’t try to suggest some greater, universal meaning to be understood through personal tragedy. Instead, it is a brutally honest exploration of what love looks like, and how that depthless love creates the potentially for seemingly similar depthless grief. It is told with strength, vulnerability, and humor, never shying away from the reality of what it means to have a child die but instead leaning in, holding anger and fear in one hand and courage and love in the other and refusing to accept it can’t have a stranglehold on both.

The memoir isn’t an instruction manual for how to grieve. It is a personal story, one that had me choking up on almost every page. It is a lot. But there is undoubtedly a beauty here, and a hope. In the stories of the endless love found within this hurting family, and also in the experiences of caring and love they received from friends and others, I constantly found myself not just feeling empathy but feeling personally compelled, feeling like I was being challenged to reckon with others’ human-ness, their often unspoken struggles and tragedy, in a more intimate and profound way. If nothing else this beautiful memoir forces you to recognize the power of love and connection in your life, and even knowing that love may be a double-edged sword it fiercely advocates for following that love to its utter extreme.

I want to thank the author, the publisher Spiegel & Grau, and NetGalley, who provided a complimentary eARC for review. I am leaving this review voluntarily.