This beating heart

'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' OBSERVERAt forty-three, 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?