This Beating Heart cover art

This Beating Heart

 Preview

Audible Standard 30-day free trial

Try Standard free
Select 1 audiobook a month from our entire collection.
Listen to your selected audiobooks as long as you're a member.
Get unlimited access to bingeable podcasts.
Standard auto renews for £5.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

This Beating Heart

By: Laura Barnett
Narrated by: Helen Barford
Try Standard free

£5.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for £15.79

Buy Now for £15.79

About this listen

At 43, Christina Lennox thought her future was settled: marriage to Ed, children, a house of their own.

But this is not that future: her marriage has ended, fractured by the stress of five rounds of IVF and two miscarriages. Overwhelmed by grief and disappointment, Ed has relocated to San Francisco and Christina's dream of becoming a mother rests on persuading him to let her go ahead with one final round of IVF, using the last frozen embryo they have stored at the clinic.

But when Ed drops a bombshell that threatens to undo everything Christina has strived for, she is forced, once again, to realign her plans: is this the end of her dream, or an opportunity to consider a different—perhaps happier—version of her future?

©2022 Laura Barnett (P)2022 Weidenfeld & Nicolson Family Life Fiction Friendship Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Women's Fiction Marriage

Critic reviews

"Barnett's well-crafted backlist is big on emotional acuity and this novel is no different, forging from Christina's grief an insistence that we think more creatively when it comes to happiness, and especially to the shapes that our families might take." (Observer)
All stars
Most relevant
This book was heartbreakingly beautiful and uniquely insightful. The author has captured the complexities of human relationships with a brilliant lense. I wholeheartedly recommend this novel.

Utterly beautiful

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.