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coffeekitaab 's review for:
Broken Country
by Clare Leslie Hall
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This book made me fall back in love with reading. Captivating from the very first page and consumed me whole - I wanted to pick this book up any spare moment I had (quite literally stretching out minutes before work started to get to the end of chapters to see what was going to happen next!). I was actually really sad to see this one end and it certainly left a void that has been hard to fill. Definitely one of my favourite (top 3) books of this year so far! I would highly recommend it to everyone who has not read it already. You felt every emotion and how; love, passion, heartbreak, loss, grief, devastation, anger, sadness - and at the end of it all, your heart goes out to every single one of the main group of characters - a word of advice: Keep a box of tissues nearby because you will need them.
'This book is set across a dual time-line: 'Before' being the year of 1955 and then the 'Present' day (1968). The writing is genius and we flit back and forth between the timelines to introduce us to the protagonists, the equation between them and how the dynamics change over this period, building up the plot bit by bit, scene by scene. The narrative can often become confusing when authors attempt this but no such issue arises in Broken Country. The story flows seamlessly and there are no questions left unanswered, you really feel like you are watching a movie unfold before your eyes (which is great given the film adaptation has been announced so hope it can do justice to the vision!) The character development was dealt with beautifully; readers will be able to relate and empathise with the characters and I feel this personally helped bring the story to life for me. There's not a single thing I disliked about this book.
The synopsis will be enough to set the scene for this read, I feel if I add anymore it can only be a spoiler and Broken Country is definitely a book that gets better with the turn of each page. Worthy of all the stars!
Thank you to Netgalley and John Murray Press for the advanced copy in exchange for an honest, unedited review.
'This book is set across a dual time-line: 'Before' being the year of 1955 and then the 'Present' day (1968). The writing is genius and we flit back and forth between the timelines to introduce us to the protagonists, the equation between them and how the dynamics change over this period, building up the plot bit by bit, scene by scene. The narrative can often become confusing when authors attempt this but no such issue arises in Broken Country. The story flows seamlessly and there are no questions left unanswered, you really feel like you are watching a movie unfold before your eyes (which is great given the film adaptation has been announced so hope it can do justice to the vision!) The character development was dealt with beautifully; readers will be able to relate and empathise with the characters and I feel this personally helped bring the story to life for me. There's not a single thing I disliked about this book.
The synopsis will be enough to set the scene for this read, I feel if I add anymore it can only be a spoiler and Broken Country is definitely a book that gets better with the turn of each page. Worthy of all the stars!
Thank you to Netgalley and John Murray Press for the advanced copy in exchange for an honest, unedited review.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Child death, Death, Vomit, Pregnancy