The story starts off strong with an excellent premise and beginning chapters, but falls apart along the way and ends terribly. Magical realism-like aspects were thrown in out of nowhere. I was upset that many story lines were never solved in favor of an unrealistic ending. Overall, I was hoping that the things that I previously didn't like about this author's storytelling would be redeemed; however, I've decided to part ways with her.

Mira and Francesca had lived very protected lives. They still rode bikes because they could not ride in a car with most people. Ben, though, had touched Mira; he had touched her on seven parts of her body. The girls are dead, drowned in the quarry, and Ben has received a letter from Mira to go to each place where he had touched her and retrieve a note she has left. As he finds each note, Ben uncovers a little more about what was happening in Mira and Francesca’s life. Was it suicide or was it an accident? What other secrets about his small town will Ben discover?

Beautiful Broken Girls is a stand-alone story that is borderline with many genres. Savage has interspersed the girl’s story with Ben’s by spiraling timelines and narrators. There is a mystery to be solved, a myriad of relationships to uncover and a series of letters to be found. Readers who enjoyed unraveling the truth with Thirteen Reasons Why may see a similarity between the stories, yet the differences allow this to be its own unique read. Beautiful Broken Girls is a good escape for those needing a break from series fiction.

This one fell flat. What did I just read? I'm not entirely sure. Lovely premise, but I think this author would find some talents with poetry over pose.

I'm still confused about Francesca and her role in the world. She has a strange relationship with a teacher and a strange relationship with her father, and just a strange overall personality. I'm not sure if she made the book fall into a fantastical world or if it was real world with religion, but I was just confused.

I never grew emotionally attached to Ben. He doesn't seem very emotional himself, so I never really deemed him worthy of becoming emotionally attached to. His background is unique, but is mentioned as a trope and I'm not really sure how it exactly contributes to this book. I don't really see why he's so obsessed with Mira; their relationship isn't really developed, although she does remember him after death.

At the beginning, I tried hard to pay attention because I feel like all the extraneous minor details probably have some purpose and were all connected to a bigger theme or symbol, but I got pretty bored relatively quickly and it took me a long time to get through.

Perhaps I simply missed the deeper message of this book, but I found it a chore to get through. Unfortunately, Savage's writing is not for me.

I am conflicted about this book. It started off strong, with a really interesting premise. Then it went all over the place. Was it a mystery about what happened to the girls? A YA romance? A magical realism story about a tortured saint? It was all of these and none of these. Two of the main characters, Mira and Francesca, were completely unlikeable. They were self-obsessed and did awful things. Their actions also didn't make a lot of sense. By the end of the book, I still wasn't sure if Francesca's gifts were real or imagined. Their deaths were highly romanticized, which made me really uncomfortable. This is YA book, and I don't think suicide and delusions of glory and a higher purpose should be romanticized for a young audience. I can't recommend this book to my students. 2.5 stars.

(2.5 stars)

I received a copy via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This was definitely an odd read that should of had more wtf moments.

It started off really strong in the first three parts. After that I found myself skimming a lot.

As far as the characters, Ben had some growth that I enjoyed. I thought Falso was creepy. Mira wasn't that interesting despite everything that was going on. And Francesca, at first I felt bad for her then as the story progressed I thought she was a real bitch. I had no sympathy towards her at all.

The ending was decent but not memorable.

I would check out more by Kim Savage.

Unfortunately, this book just missed the mark for me. I got about 70% of the way through it and found myself unable to continue. I couldn't connect to any of the characters, found myself constantly forgetting who was who, and realized that I honestly just did not care what happened to the two sisters. I may try to give this another shot somewhere down the line, but I just couldn't push through to the end at this time.

*I was given an E-book for free, Via Netgalley, in exchange of an honest review*

Where do I start? I loved the first few chapters, and than I didn't. It had such potential.

Here's the thing, I felt like I had no idea how old these characters were. Were they high-school kids? Where they college Kids? Were they young adults? Most of them speak as adults, but then horribly juvenile phrases are hidden among the pages. (i.e. "That's Whack", "A true bro would...") To me, that took away from the story, the phrases just seemed so out of place.

The story itself is so odd, and everything, and I do mean everything is left up to interpretation, there really isn't any resolution to the story. It's kind of just words on paper, that just ends, and you think, "What the hell? what was the point? This is how it ends??"

There was so much potential, and so many ways she could have built these characters, but I think the mark was missed. I really did want to love this book.

Beautiful Broken Girls

Kim Savage

★☆☆☆☆

Pros:
~ A gorgeous cover
~ An interesting premise that incorporates religion
~ Aspects of magical realism, if that appeals to you
~ The twist is surprising and unexpected

Cons:
~ The magical realism came the FUCK out of nowhere
~ Everything is frustratingly underdeveloped and under-explored
~ Like, honestly, there is so much shit in here I can’t even list it all
~ I had no sympathy for any of the characters
~ STOP ROMANTICIZING AWFUL THINGS PLEASE
~ AND SHAMING THOSE THAT AREN’T AWFUL, LIKE BEING FAT OR POOR

"It was all anyone needed to know, that the girls weren’t crazy, just good. Too good for this world."

No… I’m pretty sure they were just crazy.


This has got to be the strangest book I’ve ever read. Last year I gave Savage’s debut After the Woods a go and finished feeling underwhelmed and irritated with the ending (not to mention some disgusting stereotyping). I thought I’d give this one a chance—people change, writing improves, it was a debut after all—especially as that gorgeous cover would’ve looked great on my bookshelf. But where After the Woods was very much YA fare, enjoyable enough with its usage of YA trope building blocks, Beautiful Broken Girls was just plain weird.

The main story is that these two beautiful, broken girls (har, har), sisters Mina and Francesca, have accidentally fallen off the local quarry pool cliff and drowned. Ben, Mina’s kind-of boyfriend, has been left posthumous notes from Mina, to be found at various places where he’d been allowed to touch her. Not only did I find it kind of bizarre that Ben remembers in EXACT detail where and when and how and why he touched her, but it also made me not really believe he loved her? It was more, er, well, erotic obsession than love. He himself calls his feelings for her an obsession and fixation, even before her death. So his big scavenger hunt for his dead girlfriend’s poetry notes feels cheapened by the fact that it’s pretty much dick-powered.

On one hand, I wasn’t buying their romance-from-the-dead, and on another, it was all weird. What I think went wrong was the fact that the book itself deviated so much from, well, standard YA fare. The writing tried very, very hard to be literary but it was straight up purple (including alliteration!). We are inundated with lines like:

"The toast popped exuberantly, it seemed, and she placed it on a plate, dragging the knife across the rough surface, the butter melting fast into sharply defined crevices."

"His last thought before sleep was of violet gas rising from the pickle water and himself, flat on the ledge, a stick man, the lines of his body drawn in pencil, clear and colorless, waiting for the gas to meet him. He let himself be heavy as the gas swirled around his head, trunk, and legs, growing a vibrant shade of eggplant as the color filled him."

"A thin stream bled from identical holes in her palms and crested the creases of her cocked wrists."

"He was a beautiful boy, broken, angular, and sharp as a blade, with long muscles in the bones of his hands, curving around his scapula, cording his neck."

"Every so often, a gust moved the wings of his hair, or he shifted, vertebral nubs snaking up and down his back."

I mean really. Who uses “scapula” in conversational description? What is a “vertebral nub”?


And there’s so much focus on little details. Overstressed symbolism. Everybody is fixated on these meaningless little things so the authorial hand can build an unhinged sort of atmosphere. But guess what??? I didn’t have jack squat sense of atmosphere. Aside from coloring the whole book violently purple, the only thing the writing did for the story was draw me out of it.

And the story. Oh boy. Maybe the writing could be forgiven if the story made a lick of sense, but it didn’t. Beautiful Broken Girls tried this weird, floaty sort of magical realism. Holes sprouted in people’s hands out of nowhere, girls were born with “gifts”, they can talk to birds, they want to be canonized, like… just… what…?

I expected a quiet suspense novel about an accident/suicide/murder, not some weirdo catholic saint magic.

Mira was okay at first. Distant, I guess, the way boys liked her. But I never felt sympathy for her, and towards the end I started actively hating her. Her sister Francesca was so supremely horrid, and she thinks she’s Jesus H. Christ. That she’s like catholic saints, who drank putrefied-leper-flesh water and licked spiders off prison cell floors, because she fucking volunteered at the fucking soup kitchen. She thinks that she’s making “restitution for the sins of others” by volunteering???? What the fuck….????? Was she supposed to be awful? Was she supposed to be batshit? Was she supposed to be a martyr? I’ve got no clue. The end of the book is insistent on reinforcing that the sisters were too fucking good for this world, SO????

And you know what I really just can’t get over? There is cruelty in the voice. It’s not there to be addressed, or to be overcome. It’s just there.

It’s there in the way the single fat character is named Piggy, how he’s a loser with girls but also sleazy as fuck, how the narrative makes sure you know of his thick hips, jowls, soft belly and “reptilian eyes”. It’s there in his family, whose only description is:

"[Piggy’s] mother would be sacked out with the rest of his overweight family in front of the TV, except Mr. Pignataro, who rarely left his Gentlemen’s Club, not even to sleep sometimes, according to his son."

It’s there in the way the people at the soup kitchen are described by Francesca as strung-out junkies and overweight men there for a free handout. For being saintly, Francesca is completely awful, and Mira is not much better. Bitch killed a kitten.

I noticed this in After the Woods as well. (Remember those asides about how Russian women were whores and their babies were born addicted to crack? Yeah. Remember how fucked up that adopted Russian kid was, how in his introductory description his eyes are feral and blue like a husky, how he was an addict and probably violent—not because of anything he’d done, but just because? That wasn’t awful to read or anything.) I just don’t get why. Not only does it make me dislike the narrating character, it also makes me distrust the author. Perhaps it shouldn’t—death of the author, and all. But I can’t help how I feel, whereas the author can help how certain things are described. Which leads me to my biggest issue:

Ben was sexually molested in childhood by his baseball coach. It is a major part of the red herring of the mystery and if that might be upsetting or discomforting to you, please be advised. I’m not going to tag with spoilers, as we learn this quite early in the book.

Personally, I was confused by the way this was presented. A lot of Ben’s trauma, anger, and fear shine through in the way he thinks and the decisions he makes. I felt his anger, his pain. Even the people who support him don’t believe him when he says it’s happening to other people. So on that hand, I feel his living as a survivor was portrayed well... but for the most part, it’s maddeningly underdeveloped. While I appreciate the reality that you can’t just “overcome” trauma and it’s not to be used as a narrative device, I also... didn’t get why it was there? Ben doesn’t grow at all. He doesn’t really have to deal with his problems, and the end of the book just illustrates that he literally only runs away. Not to mention, the novel constantly finds a way to couple his feelings for Mira with his abuse.

"As he told his parents, and the police, and everyone who would listen, he didn’t even remember the old coach messing with him, and it was better that way. Mira, on the other hand. Mira was real to him, maybe more so in death."

"Mira loved him more for the damage inflicted on him, the kind of damage that her touch might heal. Mira imagined that the bad coach had hollowed out parts of Ben for Mira to fill."

"[...] she still loved him, for his beauty, and his wounds."

(emphasis mine) This is a really gross way to treat sexual abuse survivors. And you know, I take offense to the constant romanticization of trauma, abuse, and “brokenness”. I didn’t come here looking for an excellent portrayal of assault survivors and self-love, it’s a murder mystery for goodness’s sake, but I sure as fuck didn’t sign up for this shit!

In the end, Beautiful Broken Girls never manages to say anything, or to use valuable page time for anything worthwhile. I didn’t feel impacted by a boy’s post-sexual abuse struggle, nor the sufferings of two sheltered girls, nor the mystery plot. If this book had anything to say, it went the fuck over my head, and all I was left with was a half-baked Virgin Suicides with some weird Catholic overtones.

I think it’s time Kim Savage and I part ways.


A free ARC of Beautiful Broken Girls was provided by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux via Netgalley in exchange for honest review. All opinions are uninfluenced and my own. Thank you!

Great story. Great characters. I really enjoyed reading this book. I will recommend this book to patrons of the library.

I found this to be a strange novel. I felt I never quite understood the world the characters were in and couldn't put myself in their shoes at all. They were second generation Italian? I thought it was too much going on with Ben's past experiences of abuse and Mira's own suicidal thoughts, both of which weren't explored fully enough in my opinion. I also found it unclear why the girls decided to jump, did they believe Francesca would bring them back to life? Overall I thought it had some examples of very strong and visceral writing but the author had attempted to fit too much into too little.

I originally requested this novel because the premise sounded fascinating- two girls die in an eerie way, and one of the their boyfriends has to solve the mystery? Right up my alley! The more I read, the more anxious I got for the characters, and the more my heart ached for them and what they went through.. I'm not entirely sure how you would categorize this novel, because it is described like a contemporary but has slight elements of magical realism. Although Francesca was said to have "gifts," I couldn't tell for sure whether she really was gifted or if she was mentally ill (schizophrenia?) which makes for an interesting book for discussion, since it could possibly be interpreted two different ways.

There were several spelling, grammatical, and formatting errors in this arc. Since the novel is broken into sections, essentially :before" and :after," I found it hard to follow due to the flashbacks being dated. It was difficult to keep track of what happened when in the timeline. Indicating that something happened at present or in the past would make it easier to follow, chronologically. .

Ben loves the girl next door, but their story is a tragic one. Princesses in their tower to be hidden from the rest of the world is what Ben imagines life is like for Mira and Francesca Cillo, daughters of the an overprotective father who also happens to be the most influential man in their small town. The girls have always been put on a pedestal by everyone they know because of their beauty and their father's authority, though people also whispered how strange it was they were so untouchable. Ben and Mira are at the beginning stages of their secret relationship when tragedy strikes and the girls' cousin, Connie, dies unexpectedly causing them to completely withdrawal from the outside world. Now that Connie, their sangue-- their blood, is gone and they have secluded themselves, all anyone can talk about it their strange demeanor. It's still a shock when the girls turn up dead at the bottom of the quarry, a popular swimming hole for teenagers. Ben was left in the dark after Mira went completely cold to him, and now that she is gone, he is plagued by her memory. When a letter addressed to Ben comes a week after the girls' bodies turn up, he receives the shock of his life to learn Mira wrote sent the letter before her death and has planted seven notes around town in significant places for him to find so he can learn what really happened. As Ben slowly uncovers the truth, he learns that what everyone thought was a tragic accident is a cover for dark secrets Francesca and Mira were hiding causing Ben venture down a dangerous path of suspecting people he has known his whole life.

When I saw the cover for this book, I instantly wanted to read it, though I will admit I thought the girl on the cover was pregnant and holding her belly. I figured out I was completely wrong pretty early on, and the cover just shows the hand of a girl or both girls grasping onto a watery dress that becomes significant in the story. I also knew I wanted to read the book because I really enjoyed Kim Savage's other suspense novel, After the Woods. Pretty much any book that is dark and suspenseful, sign me up. beautiful-broken-girls
The book opens with the bodies of Mira and Francesca being dredged from the bottom of the quarry, so I was captivated from the beginning. Excluding the prologue, the book is broken up into seven parts to represent the seven places Ben touched Mira and also where she left his notes. Each part is told in present day from Ben's POV and then flips back in time to Mira's POV to better explain what is happening and to give more backstory. I don't think I've read a book written this specific way before, so it was very unique and refreshing to experience.

The story takes place in a small town outside of Boston with a large Catholic Italian-American influence. The people there value their blood family above everything else in a very Sopranos sort of way. All of the character names are Italianesque, and there are even Italian phrases occasionally used. The author is very descriptive, so it was very easy for me to close my eyes and picture the town where this takes place.

It isn't obvious exactly where the story will lead from the get go. As more and more gets revealed and Ben gets more suspicious, you think get thrown for a few loops. I had a general idea of what the twist was, but there ended up being more to it than I originally thought. While there is a mystery aspect, it isn't so much a "who-done-it" versus a hauntingly sad story of two sisters who are very troubled. If you enjoyed The Virgin Suicides, you will most certainly enjoy Beautiful Broken Girls.

4 stars

-Leah

*Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for providing me an advanced copy of this book.

This book began with the discovery of the Cillo sisters' bodies tangled together at the bottom of the quarry lake, and Ben in a state of denial about their death. Before the sisters excommunicated themselves from society, Ben had had a relationship with Mira Cillo, and now she was reaching out to him from beyond the grave with a series of letters. There were seven letters hidden in locations associated with the seven places Ben touched Mira - Palm, Hair, Chest, Cheek, Lips, Throat, Heart. With the discovery of each letter, Ben came closer to uncovering what drove the sisters to their fate, but he also began to unravel as he worked through his grief of losing Mira (twice) and came to terms with his own painful past.

This is my first Kim Savage book, and I found her writing quite beautiful. She perfectly captured the somber tone. This town was plagued by pain and loss. It was clearly conveyed with the backstory provided, as well as through each character's own story. It seemed like everyone in this town was in need of healing. And, YES! I will admit, when I started reading it, Virgin Suicides slipped right into my head. It had a similar aura with the strange, mysterious, tragic, beautiful sisters and their secret lives. It wasn't a bad thing. It was a different tempo for me, but I thought Savage pulled it off quite well. I was invested in this story, which I found more character driven than plot driven. I found myself reading on and on, because I wanted to know what led this girls to end their lives and I wanted to know if Ben was able to find any closure.

The story alternates between Ben's present as he is collecting the letters and trying to make sense of this tragedy, and the Cillo sisters' past, as we learn about the events that lead up to their deaths. I thought this construct was quite suited to the story. I enjoyed flipping back and forth with the story slowly unfolding. Savage led me on several different paths, but at one point, I was able to deduce what really happened before it was unveiled. I will admit, I like to work the puzzle pieces in the story, and was not disappointed in figuring it out prematurely. (In fact, I patted myself on the back)

If you pressed me for one word to describe this story, I would say heartbreaking. As I previously mentioned, everyone seemed so broken, and the calamities just appeared to be piling up as we moved through this book. Then there was the entire concept of touch explored by Savage. There were physical touches (good and bad), there were mental touches, and then there was this spiritual touch. I found it compelling that the idea kept popping up, and enjoyed her examination of the concept.

Overall: A heartbreaking and emotional journey in discovering the truth about oneself and those they cared for.

Thanks to NetGalley for providing me a complimentary ARC e-copy of BEAUTIFUL BROKEN GIRLS in exchange for my honest review.

The intertwined, tragic lives of beautiful, enigmatic sisters Francesca and Mira Cillo were as mysterious as they death. Pulled from a quarry, clutching one another. Suicide? Accident? Something else? Ben loved Mira in secret. He touched her in seven places. He receives a letter from her following the sisters' deaths sending him in a quest to find seven letters, clues to their demise.

Kim Savage's AFTER THE WOODS was one of my favorite 2016 reads, so naturally BEAUTIFUL BROKEN GIRLS was one of my most anticipated 2017 new releases. Her gorgeous writing drips with emotion and voice, so much that I often reread sentences, just to savor them again. She's become a must-preorder writer.

BEAUTIFUL BROKEN GIRLS is a much a character study as it is mystery. Most of the major and minor characters have unique characteristics "touched" physically, emotionally and metaphorically. The word "touch" has triple entendre meaning with different characters throughout the novel. Saints or sinners, literally and figuratively the sisters, their father, cousins and Ben are multidimensional, complex individuals.

I usually prefer one or more first person narrative stories, but BEAUTIFUL BROKEN GIRLS works in third person. Savage had me wondering about the reliability of the Ben's third person POV.

I felt frustrated by the length of the seven chapters, for each place Mira touched Ben. I prefer shorter chapters for concentration and pacing. I start and stop reading frequently, preferably at the end of a chapter.

While I loved and recommend BEAUTIFUL BROKEN GIRLS for the writing, characters and plot, I wish the storytelling had been more plot oriented with a faster pace and more tension surrounding the mystery of the lives and deaths of the Cillo sisters.

ust like Thirteen Reasons Why, we start with a death followed by "notes" from beyond sent to the "hero" of the story in order for him to try to piece together what. exactly. happened.

Beautiful Broken Girls is about Mira and Francesca Cillo, two HS who are - yup, beautiful, and intriguing, and who everyone wants to know. Their tragic story starts when their mother dies while they are still young and they have to be raised by an overprotective father who doesn't even allow the girls to learn how to drive. Does this sound vaguely familiar? Cause it definitely gave me Virgin Suicide vibes.
The Cillo girls are dead, enter Ben Lanzatti. Our "hero," who was also in love with Mira and having a top-secret relationship with her. Ben is the one who receives Mira's first letter and is trying to fit all of the puzzle pieces together of her and her sister's death. Was it an accident? A suicide? It's up to Ben to find out.

So far so good.

Then. Things get sort of weird.

CONTINUE AT YOUR OWN RISK CAUSE SPOILER ALERT!

Things go from Virgin Suicides/Thirteen Reasons Why to....STIGMATA? Yea. That movie about the woman who is somehow "touched by god" or whatever the fuck? Holes in hands, visions, healing, yea, that's the one!

I was surprised and quite frankly a bit confused cause what in the ever loving fuck. If this had started out as a "possession" story than that's all good, but to kind of all of sudden stick that into the story, you kind of just get two stories for the price of one.

So yea, it was weird. I think that if the author had gone in one direction or the other, this would have been way more solid for me, but there was just too many things going on. Ben has in own backstory, and then you have Francesca who thinks she's going to be a Saint, and then Mira is fighting her own kind of demons, I just felt that there wasn't a real cohesive story here.

It was an interesting read to say the least.

2.5 stars, maybe 3? I'm undecided as I am also a bit confused as to what I just read as well.

This book started off great. I loved the writing and I was certainly intrigued. However, it quickly went in a strange direction. I kept waiting for them to be like "oh, Francesca is actually crazy and not a vessel of God." But, no. She apparently really was experiencing stigmata and healing abilities. THEN WHY DID CONNIE DIE?? Also, there were just weird things that were never explained. Like why did Mira have sudden urges to horrible things? What was that all about? And there were also plot inconsistencies. Also, since when does Zoloft make you feel high? It takes a few weeks to feel the effects of Zoloft. So much was wrong with this book, but I finished it because despite all its problems, I still wanted to find out what was going on. I wish I hadn't.

To describe Beautiful Broken Girls in one sentence, imagine The Virgin Suicides meets Emma Donoghue's The Wonder. It was intriguing, compelling, and occasionally quite tense. I was a little surprised that it ended the way it did though and for that reason it lost a star in my estimation.

Beautiful Broken Girls leads readers through a maze of emotions driven by clues left behind by sisters. Was it a miracle, incest, rape or illusion?

This book was a little "Virgin Suicides" in nature, but seemed to diverge in varying directions without ever completely satisfying my curiosity. There were elements of poetic language that I adored, characters that I cared about, but as I turned the last page I simply felt lost.