SO GOOD! This was heartbreaking - in every which way - but I absolutely loved it. The writing is beautiful, the characters are real (I obviously don't love what Beth did but man do I understand it). Highly recommend but be warned you will cry!

Couldn't put this down once I started. The storytelling of this book was phenomenal. This book broke my heart in the best way!

Four Stars Broken Country is a beautifully written and emotionally layered novel that held me from the first page. The tension is masterfully sustained, and the central mystery—woven through grief, memory, and long-buried secrets—kept pulling me back in, even when I had to step away.

While I occasionally found the multiple timelines a bit disorienting, causing me to momentarily lose my footing in the narrative, the strength of the characters and the emotional weight of the story always brought me back.

Beautiful writing and a page-turning plot. I can absolutely see why this was such a huge hit this spring and I'm sure the film/TV adaptation is forthcoming. It felt a bit dramatic and like everything that could be thrown at the plot was, but I still really enjoyed it. Tied up nicely with a bow, perhaps too nicely for some of the actions taken by the characters.

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the advanced reader copy of this novel--all opinions are my own.

Gosh, what a heart wrencher of a story this was!! Set in the English countryside in the late 1960s..the protagonist is a woman, loved by two men, grieving the tragic loss of her child. Not sure I've ever read a book that examines love in all its different facets with brilliance such as this one.

As much as I don't love a dual timeline, it absolutely was the best way to tell this story. I was kept in suspense until the end on a few aspects of the plot--well done storytelling!! Highly recommend.

Broken Country was impossible to put down---I read it in less than a day. Clare Leslie Hall does an amazing job of telling the story of Beth and a love triangle that is full of secrets. Beth's former love, Gabriel, has returned to his family home after over a decade, bringing his young son with him and stirring up former emotions and complicated new ones within Beth. Beth, who is now married to Frank, is trying to deal with the death of her son Bobby while processing the traumatic way that he perished.

Overall, Hall manages to go back in forth, telling the story of Beth's youth and her modern day dilemas, slowing revealing to readers how they are connected. This novel was fantastic and will stay with me for quite some time.

Five stars for this beautifully written book! At the beginning, we learn a farmer’s been killed and someone’s on trial. The story moves back and forth between when Beth met and left her first love Gabriel and the present, when as a married woman, she reconnects with Gabriel. In the intervening years, Beth has known the love of her gentle husband Frank and her son who she loses in a tragic accident. The book is part thriller and part romance as secrets are revealed and the aftermath dealt with. I loved how the story played out and the ending was well-crafted. A very satisfying read. Will want to read this author again.

Clare Leslie Hall really knocked the ball out of the park on this one. From the first page that grips you and won't let you go until the end. Filled with mystery, intrigue, restlessness, secrets, heartbreak after heartbreak, and a winding tale that you just keep following until you get answers. It's a fantastic read that I just devoured. Definitely dive in!
*I received a copy of this book from NetGalley. This review is my own opinion*

This was such a fantastic book; a beautiful and haunting telling of a love triangle between a woman and the two men that she loves in different ways, and the consequences of loving these men. I loved how the author introduces the mystery without knowing right away who the victim or the accused are. We really get insight into Beth and Gabriel's relationship over the years. Beth and Frank's relationship is quite so developed but we are still able to get a sense of who Frank is.

I found this book simply riveting and I will be searching books in Ms. Hall's backlist. I can't wait to read what she writes next! Thanks. to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for this copy.

What a wonderful, well-written book! I enjoyed this so much!

The storytelling, tone, and emotion in this book are superb. I couldn't put it down.

Beth is a woman with a past, once happily married but never the same since the loss of her young son to a tragic accident. When her first love returns to their village a chance meeting changes her life, her marriage and her entire future.

<b>In Hall's <i>Broken Country,</i> characters do their duties, find wondrous love, feel heartbreak, suffer tragedies, sometimes act impulsively, and reel from the consequences of all of the above. A mystery surrounds a deadly moment, and the book ends with a hopeful, imperfect, heartbreaking way forward.</b>

Beth and her kind husband Frank live and farm outside the small English village where they grew up. They love each other, but they are able to stay married only because they push down the memories of tragedies that could haunt them, and because secrets from the past stay buried.

But when Frank's brother shoots a dog going after the family's sheep, the gunshot sets into motion events that will change everything.

The dog belonged to Gabriel Wolfe, Beth's childhood love, and his return to town brings back long-suppressed complications around jealousies, love, choices, and the weighty consequences of the past.

I love a farm-life novel, and in <i>Broken Country,</i> Hall creates a background of relentless care, feeding, planting, harvesting, repair, routines, life, and death. Against the straightforward, duty-driven work, Hall sets a complex, twisted set of past affections, heartbreak, vulnerability, and hurt, then offers up faulted, broken, hopeful, impulsive characters who are at times wondrously stoic, and at other times act against their best interests, complicating everything and potentially destroying everything in their wake.

<i>Broken Country</i> is a study of an extreme, life-and-death-stakes fallout after heartbreaking tragedy, but it's also a story of young love blossoming, then shriveling under the first pressures of the outside world; it's a mystery in which duty overpowers the difficult truth; and it's a hopeful view of how an imperfect set of characters can find their clumsy, sometimes beautiful, way forward.

I read this immersive story in a flash.

I received a prepublication edition of <i>Broken Country</i> courtesy of Simon & Schuster and NetGalley.

This was one of my favorite books of the month when I read it AND it was one of my <a href="https://www.bossybookworm.com/post/ten-bossy-spring-favorites"><b>Ten Bossy Spring Favorites.</a></b> Check out the others on that list!

<b>To see my full review on Bossy Bookworm, or to find out about Bossy reviews and Greedy Reading Lists as soon as they're posted, please see <a href="https://www.bossybookworm.com/post/review-of-broken-country-by-clare-leslie-hall/"><i>Broken Country.</a></i></b>

A beautiful story with a mystery. Beths brother in law shoots a dog that is chasing their sheep. This dog belonged to Beths old flame Gabriel. Lots of secrets, a tragic situation, and jealousies. Great love story to read.

I loved this book! I picked it up and started reading it, not knowing anything about it other than it was getting a lot of attention.

The story starts with a trial. Someone is on trial for the murder of someone else, but we don't know who. As the story progresses, it goes back (Then) and forth (1968) to reveal to us the relationships between all of the people involved, and how we got to this point.

I loved this book so much, I didn't want it to end!

a win for me. It gave THE FROZEN RIVER with a little bit of mystery and family drama. I’m a sucker for a book with court procedurals and this one delivered!

Easily one of the best books I have read in some time. I devoured this atmospheric, gentle novel with a vicious undertone of jealousy, longing, and deep love. Incredible writing had me immersed and feeling in the bucolic setting and the plot--we KNOW someone is on trial for murder--unfolds beautifully so that even if you suspect what happened, the way it comes together is still a surprise. And the ending was * chef's kiss. *

I’m obsessed with this story. It hit me in all the feels. I cried several times and that’s hard to do. By the time I made it to the end, I couldn’t choose between bingeing or savoring the end. Just so well done.

This book. Holy smokes y'all, this book! I'm so glad I read it before it got hyped up so much - I'd seen some good things but wasn't prepared for its impact. It encompasses so many themes and emotions - love and hate, betrayal, good decisions and bad ones, and the effect they can have on us for the rest of our lives. I was so frustrated by some of the actions of the flawed and all-too-human characters, but it was because I cared about them. It was romantic and heartbreaking and maddening and hopeful. It also didn't hurt that it was set in the mid-20th century - the 50s and 60s. It's a coming of age story, a love story, it's a mystery - and I loved it all.
My thanks to Netgalley and Simon & Schuster for providing a digital copy for an unbiased review.

What a hard-to-put-down novel! I loved the dual timeline, and the development of enjoyable characters. I truly felt immersed in their world, and felt engaged throughout.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for my review copy!

This has been one of my favorite reads of the year so far. In fact, even though I had an ARC, I bought a copy because I love it so much.

I absolutely love the poignant story between Beth and Frank and the look into their life. I felt that setting in this story was as much a character as a person in this book.

Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC copy in return for an honest review.