Name: Broken Country (Reese's Book Club)
ISBN: 9781668078181

Clare Leslie Hall

"Beth and her gentle, kind husband Frank are happily married, but their relationship relies on the past staying buried. ... When Beth's brother-in-law shoots a dog going after their sheep, Beth doesn't realize that the gunshot will alter the course of their lives, for the dog belonged to none other than Gabriel Wolfe, the man Beth loved as a teenager--the man who broke her heart years ago. Gabriel has returned to the village with his young son Leo, a boy who reminds Beth very much of her own son, who died in a tragic accident. As Beth is pulled back into Gabriel's life, tensions around the village rise and dangerous secrets and jealousies from the past resurface, this time with deadly consequences"--

Broken Country (Reese's Book Club)

Yulez

my heart is heavy after this one, all the stars for this book. 

Michelle Dsouza

Broken Country is one of those books I can understand why others might like more than I fully loved. It has the kind of emotional intensity that makes it memorable, and even when I was frustrated by certain choices in the story, I could not deny its impact. This is a novel built on heartbreak, damage, and the lingering consequences of desire, and when it hits, it hits hard. At the centre of the book is Beth, a protagonist whose life is shaped by love, betrayal, grief, and the complicated emotional loyalties that develop over time. The novel is less interested in subtlety than in emotional force, and that becomes clear quite quickly. It leans into painful choices, fractured relationships, and the way one decision can ripple outward and alter the course of several lives. That gives the story real weight, even when some of its methods are more dramatic than nuanced. ⚠️ Spoilers below Beth was easily the biggest obstacle for me. I struggle with the idea of cheating in fiction and in general, and that absolutely shaped my reading of her. She is the kind of character the reader is clearly meant to see as flawed rather than purely admirable, but for me she often crossed from compellingly messy into simply aggravating. I did not trust her judgment, and I did not particularly enjoy being in her head for long stretches. That said, I do think the book benefits from refusing to make her too neat or too sympathetic. Beth’s actions are part of what gives the novel its emotional charge, even if they also make her difficult to like. What kept me engaged was the emotional depth. For all my issues with Beth, the novel understands how to build pain. There is a real sense of longing and damage running through it, and several moments land with genuine force. I found myself overlooking things I would normally be more critical of; especially some fairly melodramatic misunderstandings because the emotional core was strong enough to carry them. The book wants to devastate, and in many places it succeeds. That does not mean all of its dramatic choices worked for me. Beth’s mother, in particular, felt so villainous and exaggerated at times that she seemed to have wandered in from an entirely different kind of novel. She lacked the emotional complexity that the rest of the book at least attempts to give its central characters, and that made her feel more like a device than a person. It was one of the few elements that really broke the spell for me. The melodrama elsewhere I could mostly tolerate; with her, it tipped into caricature. I also disagree completely with the comparison to Where the Crawdads Sing in the blurb. I did not see the similarity, and I do not think it is a particularly useful comp. Beyond a broad sense of rural atmosphere and emotional suffering, the books do not feel especially alike in tone, structure, or effect. I also was not a fan of Crawdads, so this was not a case of preferring one over the other. I simply do not think the comparison fits. In the end, Broken Country worked on me more through feeling than through execution. I did not love all of its choices, I found Beth deeply frustrating, and some of the book’s more over-the-top elements definitely tested my patience. But it still managed to feel heartbreakingly powerful in the places that mattered most. For me, that is what made it a three-star read rather than a forgettable one: flawed, yes, but emotionally strong enough to leave a mark.

Broken Country (Reese's Book Club)

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