ellieb_reads 's review for:

Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall

4.0

emotional sad fast-paced

---

This was really good, but not the “blown away immediately 5 stars hall of fame” for me that reviews led me to expect. I think it got a little overhyped, but it was still pretty great. The writing was excellent and the characters were well-developed and complicated (like seriously, our girl Beth is FLAWED). This kept me hooked and heartbroken, and the level of emotion in the story was pretty incredible. But it was too short! So much of the plot didn’t get the deeper exploration needed to understand the choices the characters were making. Particularly in the “Before” timeline, it seemed like we just got a surface-level summary of what happened, and that made it hard to buy into the love story in the later timeline. There was a lot to like in the plot, but I felt like we sped through it. I also might’ve preferred this one in chronological order instead of the flipping back and forth. But all told, this was a heavy hitter and I’ll happily (despite openly crying at the hair salon finishing this) read this author again.