Genre: Historical Fiction/Mystery

Format: Audio/E-book

4.5🌟 - I really liked it!

I absolutely devoured this book in just about a day! I picked this for my IRL book club, and it was such a good pick! I was compelled to continue reading the whole book, and wanted to know what was going to happen next!

I did not anticipate the little twist at the end, but I thought it blended multiple genres really seamlessly! A love triangle, a murder, and a slow-burn suspense! The setting was so immersive! I felt truly swept away and captivated by the story.

Loved the audio version of this one as well!

Can’t wait to see this one adapted one day!

Broken Country blew me away. While many readers focus on the love triangle, what really stood out to me was how powerfully the novel explored guilt—how it lingers, reshapes relationships, and quietly drives people to make impossible choices. The emotional weight carried by each character felt so raw and real, especially as the story slowly unraveled the past and its consequences.

The writing is haunting and beautiful, with moments that stopped me in my tracks. It’s not just about romance—it’s about reckoning, regret, and the complicated ways we try (and sometimes fail) to make things right. This is one of those books that stays with you, long after the final page.

Be still my beating heart - this book was simply perfection to me. It was one that felt like a saga. It stretched over the lifetime for these people, and you felt it. Their lives changed and existed and changed again. But the land stayed the same. Always the land and the farm. But their feelings and pain and loss was a real and tangible thing that you could feel. It was just such an emotional read and beautifully done. I adored it.

The story revolved around Beth. She loved two men - - and they both loved her - - in different ways but both very powerfully. It would eventually be the downfall of all of them. Gah, I sometimes wish I could read it again for the first time. So good. It really got into the heart of the matter with character and personalities and insecurities. We all have a weakness - - some just hide it better than others. There are several characters in this book with weaknesses, and they all play off of one another and have an impact on the overall storyline. It's a very intricately woven plot.

Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC.

Beth and her gentle, kind husband Frank are happily married, but their relationship relies on the past staying buried. But 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. Beth is forced to make a choice between the woman she once was, and the woman she has become.

A sweeping love story with the pace and twists of a thriller, Broken Country is a novel of simmering passion, impossible choices, and explosive consequences that toggles between the past and present to explore the far-reaching legacy of first love.

This book is absolutely beautiful!! Reese and I typically have very different taste, but I would agree with her on this one. I will be honest that I was about to DNF 75 pages in, but I kept going. The ending makes up for any doubts I had in the beginning, but my only critique would be that it starts a little slow. I found Beth annoying and Frank is a saint, but it all comes together in the end and is tragically beautiful.

Thank you to NetGalley, Simon & Schuster, and the author for an ARC of this book. This is the author's US debut book.

⭐️⭐️⭐️ Literary Fiction | This book is SAD. Let’s just start there. If you can’t tolerate dogs dying and child loss (9 year old) then I don’t think this book if for you. I was SO conflicted with this book and had to pause a few times and come back to it. The writing is beautiful and I really had to know the ending, but the beginning is rough. You know the boy is going to die but the scene doesn’t play out until past the 50% mark so there is this building dread knowing it’s coming. Once you get past it the book picks up in pace and I couldn’t stop reading. It really is a beautiful tragic story and I see why so many people love it. In my phase of life, it just wasn’t enjoyable.

This book was SOOOO good! It navigates love in all different forms. Your first. Your rebound. Your true one. The love between a mother and child. The love between a new member of the family (daughter in law). Love on the other side of tragedy. Love that ends in divorce. Newfound love. Enduring love. Just WOW! I was so blown away by these characters and this setting. The way that Clare wove together this tragic love triangle was beautifully done. I loved the dual timelines. I loved the crushing reality of these characters. We had Beth who was a wife, a mother and someone's lover. We had Frank who was her husband and had loved her since he was 13. We had Gabriel who was her first everything but let their class differences and a miscommunication get in between them. I loved the class differences that were also depicted in this. Frank and Beth were HARD workers. They were farmers. Gabriel was a writer and living in his family's estate. The way these three are tied together is heartbreaking.

Beth knows her family is on the lower side of wealth but doesn't really know what that looks like until she meets Gabriel. The boy who lives in the big house on the hill. The boy who steals her heart at 17. The boy who convinces her to apply to college. Who supports her in her poetry. Who makes her feel unlike anyone ever has. The boy who she gives everything to. But then he is the boy who leaves to go to college. The boy who she visits but feels a shift in. The boy who lets her go without a fight.

Now today Beth is married to Frank. The man who has loved her since after Gabriel. The man who is the father to their son who is no longer here. She doesn't know how to navigate their love anymore. Do they talk about it? Or is this just what it is? And now Gabriel is back in town with his son. And Beth finds herself drawn to him like a moth to a flame. She can't help feel that she has to clear the air with him. Why did he leave without a fight? Why is he back? What happened to his marriage? Beth knows this relationship will end badly. But she finds herself not caring. She finds herself forgetting the tragedy that is her life when she is with Gabriel. She finds herself wondering what has happened. And then another tragedy strikes. And Frank steps up like she knew he would. And now she truly realizes how much she loves him and what he represents to her. All that he has sacrificed for her. How much he loves HER. And so she stands by. She does the right thing and walks away from her first love for her TRUE love.

The way that I sobbed at the end of this was just messy. I felt SOO many things while reading this. It's a love triangle gone terribly wrong with some mystery thrown in. Frank had my whole heart this WHOLE book. I wanted to shake Beth to wake up and realize what she had. But recognized that grief can cloud things when you are in it. Watching Beth realize the love she feels for Frank is beyond anything she feels for Gabriel was satisfying and also sad. Watching Beth navigate being on the other side of motherhood was devastating. Watching her wake up to what she was letting slip through her fingers was wonderful. This was just SUCH a well done book. While it was tragic it was beautiful and ended on SUCH a good note!! I can't recommend this one enough yall!!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

A complex family saga wrought with drama, secrets and emotions. With two characters *I think* were written for the reader not to like, and one to feel empathy towards, I was wrapped in the deception of a possible love triangle of a married woman and the hurt and fallout from losing a child (tropes I normally do not care for nor read). The story opens with a trial and continues to fill in the blanks of what happened with a dual timeline. I appreciated the dramatic unraveling of truths and revelation secrets, as well as the character developments and dynamics. 4.25 stars

4 stars-
Broken Country started off with a bang, immediately pulling me into the story. However, as the novel progressed, the pacing slowed way down. The author spent a lot of time exploring Beth's backstory, and while I usually enjoy multiple timelines, this one didn’t work as well for me — the past timeline didn’t feel like it added much to the present-day events.

This book was much more character-driven than I typically enjoy. There were also multiple sex scenes that, in my opinion, didn’t add anything to the story. They weren’t overly explicit, but I personally prefer closed-door romances, so after a while, they just started to annoy me.

Without the ending, I probably would have rated this book around 3 or 3.5 stars. However, the ending truly redeemed the reading experience for me — the twists and how everything played out touched me emotionally. I found myself gasping, crying, and then crying some more.

In the end, despite my frustrations with parts of the book, I’m really glad I read this story. The emotional payoff was powerful!

thanks to netgally and Simon & Schuster for an advance copy in exchange for an honest opinion.

I've had this ARC on my Kindle for many months, and I've tried multiple times to make my way through it, but I finally had to admit I really did not like anything about this story. I hate to DNF a book, it always makes me feel like I failed, and secondly, I don't want to submit a negative review, but after so many attempts to read it, I just had to stop.

I honestly just did not like Beth, at all. Full stop, period, end of. Just nope. She's basically the only one we hear from, so she knows everything, but the author chooses, as Beth the narrator, to withhold lots of information until further along in the book, which made me feel almost like I came into the story in the middle of it and was supposed to just know what was going on. For example, Beth keeps talking about Bobby, but there's no initial explanation of who Bobby is. I understand why an author withholds information and just gives it out piecemeal, but sadly between the time jumps between past and present, and not having some piece of key information, I just struggled too much with this one.

I really am not a fan at all of love triangles or infidelity and this book has both. I felt like Beth only married Frank because she knew he had been in love with her for a long time. He didn't deserve what Beth did with Gabriel. Just nope.

Sadly, this was my first read by Ms. Hall and it was not a winner. It was also a Reese's Book Club pick, which should have been my first clue not to read it. My track record of liking the book club picks has been very dismal. We apparently just have very different taste in books.

What. A. Ride. Another phenomenal debut.

This book is hopeful, heartbreaking, suspenseful, and romantic all at once. It addresses tragedy and love head on & with gusto. It is a challenging yet completely immersive reading experience.

A short list of things I liked:

- Quick chapters make it easy to fly through.
- Complex, messy, flawed, realistic characters.
- Multiple POV & Timelines (done very well - not confusing at all IMO).
- The plot twists actually got me! Predictable things happening in unpredictable ways….literally my definition of a perfect twist.
- Frank. ♥

I also very much appreciated the concept of having more than one meaningful love in your lifetime — it just feels so real. So many books lean into the 'soulmate' and 'one true love' trope, but real life can be more complicated than that. You may love more than one person throughout the course of your life - and that doesn’t lessen your current love/relationship - but it can shape who you are, both individually and as a partner in future relationships. Love may look differently each time, but it is and was still a form of love. I really, really loved that representation.

(That said, there *is* a particular trope/trigger in this book that I strongly disagree with — it was genuinely tough to read and made me dislike the characters - but it’s a big part of the story’s unraveling. Just to be clear, that’s *not* the type of meaningful love I’m referring to above. I’m specifically referencing loving more than one person in the entire duration of your lifetime.)

Please check trigger warnings before reading, as there are several heavy themes.

Thank you Simon & Schuster for the free eARC in exchange for an honest review!

Absolutely riveting. *Broken Country* masterfully weaves together a tender, complicated love story with the taut tension of a thriller. I was immediately drawn into Beth’s world—the slow unraveling of her carefully built life felt both inevitable and heartbreaking. The past and present timelines were blended beautifully, and every revelation had real emotional weight.

The atmosphere of the village, full of old resentments and fragile loyalties, added a rich sense of place that made the story feel so real. I couldn’t put it down—the stakes kept rising in a way that felt both suspenseful and deeply personal. The final choices Beth faces are devastating yet believable, and the ending stayed with me long after I finished.

Highly recommend for readers who love emotionally complex stories with both heart and bite.

This book has received so many excellent reviews that is hard to know what more to say. I was thrilled to be given an early copy and savored this one that did not disappoint.

The story is very well told. The places felt so real to me and I absolutely immersed myself in the settings. The characters were people with complexity, loss, those they loved and more. I cared for these characters and wished the best for them, even as I knew that there were death and a trial, so I knew not all would be well.

The novel is told in two time periods. Readers follow the main characters as their lives evolved. This dual perspective worked well.

All in all, this is a beautiful, wrenching story that I highly recommend to readers.

Many thanks to Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for this title. All opinions are my own.

This is my favorite book of the year! I loved the mystery, the drama. The writing is so wonderfully developed that I think of Beth, Frank, and Gabriel as real people.

I purchased this book, it has received nothing but rave reviews and is the sweetheart book of spring publishing- I’ll add to this later but it is a must read.

The novel primarily takes place in two time periods - the mid 1950s and the late 1960s. We start in the late 1960s and we discover that a farmer is dead and the executioner is not yet known. Our protagonist, Beth, lives on a farm with her husband, Frank, with Frank's brother working on the farm with them.

The three are visiting their fields when a dog runs onto their farm, chasing and endangering their sheep. The brother-in-law shoots the dog and we are introduced to our remaining characters, Gabriel and his young son. We learn Gabriel is the man Beth loved as a young woman. Also, we are introduced to the fact that Frank and Beth lost a son a few years earlier at the age Gabrielle's son is now. It is at this point the story of the love triangle begins.

The story is a first person account narrated by Beth. It jumps back and forth between the two time periods. In the earlier one, the reigniting of the relationship between Beth and Gabrielle is told, resulting in an affair and Beth's bonding with Gabriel's son, reminding her very much of the son she has lost.

The novel is well paced and the reader is drawn into both timelines. The author does a good job of making the main characters well rounded without bogging down the reader in exposition and making them all empathetic.

We come to the inevitable conclusions in each timeline, learning how the original relationship between Beth and Gabriel ended, the circumstances surrounding the death of Beth's son and which of our farmers was killed and the events leading to that.

The book is not without its flaws. A minor character that breaks up Beth and Gabriel's relationships is written in stereotypical fashion and is one dimensional. While empathy is generated for all three main characters, it is largely focused in one. However, these flaws are considered minor and do not take away the reader's enjoyment of the story.

The story concludes with a time jump to the 1970s where each surviving character's fate is satisfactorily concluded.

Overall, a solid 4 stars. There are some minor flaws but nothing that detracts from an overall enjoyable story.

Loooooved this book! Was unsure about it because of the time period and setting but ended up being absolutely great. I truly enjoyed every character

Thank you BookSparks #partner, for the finished copy of Broken Country in exchange for my honest review.

There’s a reason everyone has picked this one for its book club – it’s this month’s @reesesbookclub pick, it’s a @barnesandnoble book club pick, I’ve seen other online book clubs pick it – this one begs for discussion once you read it. There is just so much to unpack. ⁣
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I love books like this – they are hard to pinpoint what genre they fall into, really crossing over into many and feeling like they belong in them all. It’s not an easy read by any means, but boy does it grab your attention and hold it all the way through. A family saga with mystery elements and a romance unlike anything other, this is one book that will definitely be staying with me. There’s a reason this book is everywhere and I can say the hype is real for this one! I don’t want to say much about the plot itself because I think you need to go into this one as blind as possible. Just know that the story is heartbreaking, the writing is gorgeous and the characters are written in such a way that you will be desperate to know all their secrets.

My favorite books are those with characters who make decisions that I question - it adds intrigue and always takes the story into a place more interesting. This story made me emotional in its young love storyline and also again in the adult marriage and how much the husband was willing to sacrifice for his love. It was heartbreaking and emotional and real. Despite not being English, I could relate to making decisions based on where you come from, the ability to settle in ones life and be ok with it, and the deep bond of first love.

This was such an amazing book! The story telling, the plot, all of it was such a heartbreakingly powerful masterpiece.

There are books that you finish reading and you have to sit there for a while to process it. Books that will stick with you for a long time. I know Broken Country will stick with me for a while.

Beautifully written. Heart wrenching. Filled with so much love and sadness.

The story of 2 young people from different sides of the track, head over heels in love with each other. Gabriel and Beth believe that they will be together forever. Life, and his mother, have other plans for them. When they see each other years later, those feelings are still very strong. Gabriel, divorced. Beth, married to a man that has worshipped the ground she walks on since they were 13 years old. But it’s so much more than a love story.

Thank you Simon and Schuster and Netgalley for an ARC of Broken Country in exchange for my honest opinion.