**Features:**
- A dinner party conversation that slowly unravels the mystery of a girl who disappeared 25 years prior
- An exploration of abuse and its ripple effects
- Examines friendships, queer relationships/identity, and dealing with grief and guilt
- Told from multiple perspectives and bounces from past memories to the present day

Willa has lived with grief and guilt over the loss of her sister since she disappeared 25 years ago. However, Willa has never truly given up trying to find her. As a casual dinner party with friends makes them all reflect on the past, it becomes clear that someone has information they haven’t shared that could unravel the mystery that has haunted Willa for most of her life. This story takes a little bit to get going, but I was hooked once it did! It is told from three different perspectives and delving into each character’s memories is an intriguing way to discover how everyone at the table was connected and how each of these connections are perceived from different points of view. However, the dinner scenes themselves are a little stilted and boring compared to the memory sections. Because these scenes are repeated in more or less the same fashion for each perspective, it makes the pace drag a little in these sections. This is a great book that I would recommend to anyone who likes interesting characters and a little mystery, but I think people looking for a true thriller will probably be a little disappointed.

**Clever use of perspective**

In order to discover what happened to Willa’s sister, Laika, and understand exactly what is happening at the dinner party, we must travel through the memories of three characters; Willa, her friend Robyn, and newcomer Claudette. We explore their memories from right after Laika’s disappearance up until the dinner party itself, learning about the roles the other characters play as we go. The more we learn about the past, the more we understand about the dinner party and Laika’s disappearance.

When I first got into this book, I thought that each set of memories was going to be repeated, just from a different point of view. Where there is some overlap, this is not really what happens at all. Instead, we get a different set of memories that are happening around the same time as each other which gives us a much broader picture of each individual’s experience. This also cleverly allows space for each character to develop their unique voice and relationships outside the view of the others. It is up to us as readers to ‘put all the pieces together’ and I found this experience very gratifying. Everything does eventually come together in a satisfying way, though I wouldn’t say there is anything extremely surprising if you are paying attention.

**Oh look, a literary road sign**

When I use the term “literary road sign”, I mean those moments, symbols, dialogue, etc. that an author uses in order to guide the reader’s thinking so they are better able to pick up on a theme or otherwise follow certain story elements the way the author intends. Some authors hide their signs extremely well or incorporate them so seamlessly that we just give them a wink and move on. Others…not so much. This book falls weirdly in between.

This book uses multiple literary road signs that are really obvious. They don’t quite feel unnatural, but they elicit a slight cringe rather than a wink. Despite that, I think that these road signs are actually very helpful and they allowed me to appreciate what the author was trying to convey. For example, the book tells you at the very beginning why it is going to repeat the dinner scenes multiple times and why they won’t be that different from each other in each repetition. Though I personally found those scenes tedious, understanding their purpose helped me focus on the details I was meant to be focusing on and made each repetition feel a little more significant than the last.

Special thanks to NetGalley for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Great debut novel with a compelling narrative and well defined characters. A bit of a sapphic coming of age story woven with a missing sister and family trama that is slowly revealed. This is a great page turner. Thanks to NetGalley and Penguin for this advanced reading copy.

Thank you to Net Galley and Crown Publishing for the chance to read and review this book. All opinions expressed are my own.
I really enjoyed this book. Once I got into it, I couldn't stop reading. It is the story of a very dysfunctional family. Willa is the older sister-the "Golden Girl." Laika is a few years younger and does not really fit into the family. One day Laika leaves for school, and she disappears. Willa really misses her sister, and she spends 25 years looking for her. I liked the ending, but I am not going to describe it (no spoilers.) I like the way the author gradually brought the parts of the story together. There is so much more going on than just a child disappearing. I found the characters to be believable, even though I did not like all of them. I hope the author continues to write more stories. Highly recommend!

This book started out.a little slow, to the point where I almost stopped reading it. By the end, however, I could not put this book down and I read the second half in one day. This story follows a sister mourning the disappearance of her younger sister. It is told from three perspectives and is not chronological. I recommend this book to fans of mystery and/or thrillers, particularly fans of Lucy Foley's The Paris Apartment.

Wow! This exceptionally well-written novel of family drama and friendship took me by surprise.

Willa walked to school alone one morning, thinking her younger sister would follow. She didn't. Twenty-five years later, Willa's life is still defined by her sister's disappearance. Most have accepted that her sister is dead, but Willa is sure that she's alive and continues to search for her until one dinner party changes things forever.

Although labeled as such by the publisher, I found this novel to be much deeper than a thriller. It explores what it means to be family and what we often have to do to survive the family we're born into. While every element of the book is excellent, it is the author's portrayal of friendship between women that is most effective. This is the element that has stayed with me days after finishing.. Sarah Easter Collins holds the magical ability to portray the bond of friendship; the absolute love and devotion that two women can share for decades in a way that will resonate with any woman who has ever had a best friend.

Plot twists (folds?) and depth of characters make this a beautiful debut novel by Sarah Easter Collins--I hope to see more from her in the future! The storyline is compelling and perfectly paced--especially as readers gain insight into the facets of each character's lives, motivations, choices, and POVs through time. While not what I would classify as a true suspense or thriller as some other reviewers have, my brain was constantly trying to make the connections between the threads almost as if I was reading a title from one of those genres. Queer friendly, warmth mixed into the shadows of family...I just really, really enjoyed this one in a way I haven't of a contemporary lit title in a few years. Solid recommend!

A stunning debut.

This is not really a mystery novel, though there is a mystery; it‘s also not really a novel of suspense, though there is plenty of suspense throughout. Instead, „Things Don‘t Break On Their Own“ is a stunning exploration of love, loss, and grief; the impact of trauma; the meaning of family; and the way we mend ourselves after breaking.

The novel starts out at a dinner party hosted by Robyn and her wife Cat. They invited their brothers and their respective partners - Robyn‘s brother Michael with his psychologist girlfriend Liv, and Cat‘s musician brother Nate with his French girlfriend Claudette - as well as Robyn‘s longtime friend (and first love) Willa, who brings along her fiancé. As the guests slowly arrive and gather, we find out that Willa and Robyn met as teens just after Willa‘s younger, thirteen-year old sister Laika disappeared without a trace, never to be found.

The novel then weaves seamlessly between the dinner party and Willa and Robyn‘s past, in particular, Laika‘s disappearance and its effects on her family, and it does so so flawlessly and beautifully, it‘s hard to believe this is a debut novel. I found it to be superb, both heart-wrenching, and brilliantly written, with a stunning ending. What an achievement.

TW for domestic abuse, child abuse.

Thank you to NetGalley and Crown Publishing for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

„Things Don‘t Break On Their Own“ is slated to be released on July 16, 2024.

Things Don't Break on Their Own is a harrowing exploration of grief, trauma and sexuality, told in multiple timelines through multiple perspectives, that closely examines the way we break and how we put ourselves back together.

Twenty-five years ago, Willa's thirteen year old sister Laika went missing without a trace. Her life is profoundly affected by the loss, and she's still convinced she catches glimpses of Laika in passerby. Everyone else is sure she's dead, but Willa hasn't ever given up hope.

Will attends a dinner party thrown by her first love, who's now her close friend, and expects a simple evening. But someone at the party has answers to the questions that have plagued her her whole life.

This story emotionally affected me on many levels. While there is a plot line running at present at the dinner party, we learn almost three decades of back story behind Willa and her friend Robyn, who she met at boarding school right after her sister Laika's disappearance. Sarah Easter Collins masterfully weaves in and out of time to share the most important details of Robyn and Willa's lives leading up to their dinner party. As we switch perspectives, small details differ for certain scenes, and we get a deeper look at the characters' biases as their own sometimes unreliable narrators.

The conclusion is a poignant reminder of the ways we can pull ourselves together after falling apart, perfectly encapsulating the themes of the entire book.

Fans of Rabbit Hole and mysterious family dramas will love this one!

An interesting story about two sisters and a very evil father. Well written. Patrons wil enjoy it. ARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for a fair review.

"A heart-wrenching mystery about sisters, lovers, and a dinner party gone wrong.

Twenty-five years ago, a young girl left home to walk to school. Her younger sister soon followed. But one of them arrived, and one of them didn't.

Her sister's disappearance has defined Willa's life. Everyone thinks her sister is dead, but Willa knows she isn't. Because there are some things that only sisters know about each other - and some bonds only sisters can break.

Willa sees fragments of her sister everywhere - the way that woman on the train turns her head, the gait of that woman in Paris. If there's the slightest resemblance, Willa drops everything, and everyone, and tries to see if it is her.

When Willa is invited to a dinner party thrown by her first love, she has no reason to expect it will be anything other than an ordinary evening. Both of them have moved on, ancient history. But nothing about Willa's life has been ordinary since the day her sister disappeared, and that's not about to change tonight.

Sarah Easter Collins has written an extraordinary novel about memory, lost love, and long-buried secrets that sometimes see the light of day."

I mean, just for Willa's sake we all need to find out what happened to her sister! Yes, I know they're fictional. But still...

A very solid three stars. I, like others, found the characters a bit difficult to keep track of, which I think may have been the result of how the chapters were structured/presented (I think it might have been easier to track if the book was organized into sections with chapters within them). The story was compelling and I thought it did a fair job tackling some heavy topics.

Thrillers always have a few unbelievable elements in their plot lines and endings, including this one, but I didn't find anything to be so outrageously out of pocket that it took me out of the story. My biggest gripe with this book, ironically, is that I actually found the twist to be fairly underwhelming. The Big Reveal unfolds slowly and is stated outright by about 70% of the way through, which was so early in the novel that I was absolutely certain something else, something bigger, was going to happen before the book ended. It's not really that I didn't find the ending satisfying, but 30%-ish of the book is...a lot of time to spend essentially just wrapping the story up with a kind of lukewarm (but not bad) resolution.

Overall not a bad read, just wasn't really the big suspenseful thriller I was expecting in the end.

Thank you NetGalley, Crown and Sarah Easter Collins for the opportunity to read an advanced copy of Things Don't Break on Their Own.
This is a beautifully written mystery/thriller about a young girl who disappears and how her sister deals with the trauma. The author gives you bits and pieces along the way but you need to wait until the end for all the puzzle pieces to fit together. I was overwhelmed with all the characters at the beginning but it is not necessary to keep them all straight.
This is a slow burn but I feel the pacing of the plot needs to be balanced. Many years are missing and I want to know more details. I liked a lot of things about this book and it had great potential. To me, it didn't flow easily and I want more darkness or edge of my seat action.
My favorite quote- "I feel I get it now, just how much that matters. To mend things. To mend yourself. To allow yourself to heal, to move on." This is so true and well said.

This is a heart-breaking story about two sisters, one who disappears. Years later when Willa is an adult, she is still haunted by her sister's disappearance. This book shows how this mystery untangles and is full of grief and dysfunctional family. I highly enjoyed this story and felt an overwhelming sense of dread as events play out. I would definitely recommend this to any thriller lover!

Things don’t break on their own follows the disappearance of 13 year old Laika, and how her sister Willa copes up to 25 years later.

Through POV’s of Willa and her previous love interest/roommate Robyn, pieces are put together unraveling the mysterious disappearance and what has become of Willa since. The characters are compelling to read about and all tied together in a delightful way. I found the backstory of Willa and Laika's childhood both heartbreaking and intriguing. It was no wonder Laika would want to disappear from her life.

This was a wonderful debut novel, such a fascinating and quick read. It was digestible and a great book all around!

Amazing mystery about the different types of families. Fast paced and engaging. I would love to read more books from this author.

Great and satisfying ending. For some reason, I found it difficult to keep track of the characters at the beginning and the very end. The actual unraveling of the missing person case at the center of the story was a little unbelievable but I came around to it by the end. The father character was so detestable as to make me understand why Laika did what she did despite its unbelievably.

This was the perfect blend of literary and thriller. With tight prose, complex relationships and some shocking and thought provoking plot turns I loved it.

3.5 stars
This wasn’t what I was expecting but was very entertaining, and I’m glad I read it. It was compelling, fast-paced and filled with action but more of a literary fiction than a thriller. I think it’s mislabeled as such which might be why some are disappointed.

My thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book.

Willa's sister disappeared when she was 13 years old. There was no body, no culprit, no word. She just vanished. Over twenty years later and Willa still sees Laika's face in strangers on the street. At a dinner party with friends all these years later, a conversation about memory causes all kinds of chaos.

That's the simple premise of the book. That description sets us, the readers, up for a big thriller with twists and turns. And this book is not that. While it is a mystery for about 85% the book exactly WHAT happened to Laika, this is definitely more a story about HOW her family got to her disappearance, and how Willa dealt with this disappearance as a teen and into her adult life.

The story is very heavy on imagery of an abusive family, so if that's triggering for anyone this would be a good novel to skip. While the beginning was a bit slow, I actually was able to find myself hooked enough that once I got into it, I was finished in about a day.

All in all, I wouldn't discourage anyone from giving this book a try, but I would probably warn them that they aren't going to be getting the thriller they're expecting.

This bool was not the thriller I expected it to be but was a good read. Family dysfunction and abuse. Heavy topics.