4.5⭐️

This was so, so, good.
Part love story, part domestic thriller, Broken Country is a story about love, loss, family, and the ways in which particular events can trigger chain reactions and change the course of one's life.

It's set in rural England in the 1960's, and while I wondered about the time period when I begun reading it, as you progress you realise this story wouldn't make sense in a more modern setting.
There's a sense of urgency in the pacing of the writing - the scenes are kept short, pushing you along from one thing to the next, showing you snippets, flipping back and forth in the timeline. It keeps you guessing right to the end.

It may be a short book but it is definitely not short on emotional impact or character development, I felt like I was grieving and yearning right alongside Beth. I was in tears more than once, especially towards the end.
Broken Country is a beautiful story that explores love, heartbreak, and grief in a nostalgic and introspective way, and I truly enjoyed reading it.

I really liked this a lot. Beautiful writing that really made the characters, emotions, and the pastoral setting shine.
This is Beth's story and is set in 1960s rural England. Her and husband Frank have a stable marriage, despite the tragic loss of their son two years ago. Until her first love, the upper class and famous author Gabriel, returns to town. They quickly become close again, but this all leads to another tragic disaster.
This is a literary love story, not a romance. It was a quiet story, but I found myself gripped to the pages.

Hemston, North Dorset. Beth Johnson has no idea when her brother-in-law Jimmy shoots a vicious dog, it will change her and husbands Frank’s relationship and cause tension between the siblings. The dog belongs to Gabriel Wolfe, the man Beth fell in love with thirteen years ago and he broke her heart. A newly divorced Gabriel has returned to his estate Meadowlands with his son Leo, and he reminds Beth of her deceased son Bobby.

Gabriel is a famous author and Leo doesn’t fit in at the village school and Beth feels sorry for him and Gabriel asks Beth to help. Being together the feelings they once had for each other resurface, Beth is torn and she loves both men and she has no idea what’s she’s going to do. Frank is sweet and kind and has loved Beth since he was a teenager, and he feels very guilty about Bobby’s accident and he’s not sure if she’s forgiven him. When rumours begins to circulate after Jimmy and Nina’s wedding day, things spiral out of control, and with deadly consequences.

I received a copy of Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall from NetGalley and Hachette Australia & New Zealand in exchange for an unbiased review. The narrative is both a family saga and a thriller and set in 1955 and 1968 and where the past and the present collide and it has lots of twists, turns and deviations and many I didn’t see coming and are rather shocking.

The characters in the book are interesting and so are their relationships with each other, Beth and Frank, Gabriel and Leo, and Jimmy and the late Bobby whose presence they feel and see on the farm, from his favourite tree, to the sheep and their newborn lambs frolicking in the paddocks. The loss of a child is a tragedy, one you would never get over and it either makes a couple drift apart or brings them closer together.

The novel raises topics such as first love and how it holds special memories and a place in a person’s heart, what happens if they return and how feelings resurface, and the flow on from this and in a nutshell it’s all about choices, good and bad and ones made in the heat of the moment and what happens afterwards. Five stars for this thought provoking and compelling, tender and expressive read and one I highly recommend.