Narrator: Hattie Morahan
ISBN: 9781668078181
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Publication Date: 03/04/2025
Format: Other
My Rating: 5 Stars +++ (ARC)
TOP BOOKS OF 2025
“Stirring and mysterious…fires directly at the human heart and hits the mark.” —Delia Owens, New York Times bestselling author of Where the Crawdads Sing
A love triangle unearths dangerous, deadly secrets from the past in this thrilling tale perfect for fans of The Paper Palace and Where the Crawdads Sing.
“The farmer is dead. He is dead, and all anyone wants to know is who killed him.”
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.
My Review
“Top Books of 2025! Lyrical. Mesmerizing. Stunning.”
In Clare Leslie Hall's US debut, BROKEN COUNTRY, we are introduced to a beautifully written lyrical and emotional love story triangle. But it is so much more. The author's eloquence captures the brutality and beauty of the rural English countryside setting, its animals, and the well-developed characters.
At its core is a woman's emotional odyssey, her love, her losses, her choices, and their profound consequences. The characters, Beth, Frank, and Gabriel, are not just names on a page but living, breathing individuals whose emotional turmoil will resonate with you long after you've turned the last page.
About...
Beth and Frank are married, reside in Hemston, North Dorset, in the countryside, and lead a beautiful life surrounded by farm animals.
Beth did not think she would be married to a farmer, swapping a bookish education for life among nature. The two are happy but have experienced loss, grief, and tragedy. They also have a past secret.
Things change when Beth's brother-in-law, Jimmy, shoots a dog while protecting their sheep. This gunshot will change the trajectory of their life.
The dog belongs to Gabriel Wolfe, who has moved back to the village with his son Leo. A man she loved as a teen and one who broke her heart. The boy reminds her of the son she lost, who died in a tragic accident. What happened between them?
Beth emotionally gets pulled back into Gabriel's life. There are secrets from the past. From jealousies, dark secrets, passion, first loves, choices, responsibilities, and this time with deadly consequences.
The entire village gets pulled into this devastating tragedy. Beth faces an impossible choice, torn between the life she expected to have with Gabriel and young love or the constant, steady life with a good man, Frank, who has sacrificed so much for her.
When the past meets the present, it is explosive, and lives will change. How will this love triangle end?
My thoughts...
I loved Broken Country! I devoured it. Breathtaking! Top books of 2025. This book will rip your heart apart and put it back together. Be sure to have some Kleenex handy. Hauntingly beautiful, layered, and lyrical, it is a novel of loss, love, grief, complex emotions, secrets, choices, and consequences.
All consuming, heart-stirring, and mysterious, it is captivating, spellbinding, suspenseful, and intense.
Two men, each unique, and one woman caught between them. The loss of a child. It blends suspense, thriller, domestic, family drama, and a love story. Set in 1968 and the past, 1955. When the past and present collide, the secrets are unveiled with unexpected and shocking twists that will keep you on the edge of your seat.
This is a masterpiece, movie, TV series worthy (please)!
BROKEN COUNTRY is unputdownable, powerful, passionate, spellbinding, and sure to top all the charts for months and years. It's already Reese's Book Club Pick and NYT bestseller. This book is full of heart, soul, forgiveness, human insight, and, at times, heartbreaking; however, the author brilliantly contrasts the good (beauty/love) with the bad (brutality/tragedy).
I was utterly captivated by this unforgettable story, and once you read it, these characters and the satisfying ending will linger in your thoughts. I eagerly anticipate more from this gifted storyteller.
Recs...
BROKEN COUNTRY is for fans of well-written, character-driven family dramas and love stories. Fans of Catherine Ryan White, Nicholas Sparks, Fredrik Backman, Rochelle Weinstein, Kristy Woodson Harvey, Elizabeth Berg, Ethan Joella, Richard Paul Evans, and Sally Hepworth will devour this one.
Thanks to Simon & Schuster and Netgalley for introducing this author and this engrossing advanced reading copy in exchange for my honest thoughts.
I loved it so much that I also purchased the hardcover and the audiobook narrated by Hattie Morahan for a superb, compelling, engaging performance and listening experience while making the characters come alive surrounded by this vivid setting and lyrical descriptions.
Move this gem to the top of your list. This may be one of my favorites thus far this year.
@JudithDCollins | #JDCMustReadBooks
Pub Date: March 4, 2025
My Rating: 5 Stars +++
Praise
A REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
“Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall is an unforgettable story of love, loss, and the choices that shape our lives…but it’s also a masterfully crafted mystery that will keep you guessing until the very last page. Seriously, that ending?! I did not see it coming.”
—Reese Witherspoon
"Layered and lyrical, this stunning novel expertly builds suspense while revealing its secrets, and it conveys deep truths about love and loss."
—People
"Broken Country is at its heart a novel about love and loss, about selfishness and selflessness, and about the consequences of decisions made for these reasons. Each decision is driven by the one before it, and Beth, especially, is stretched to her breaking point. Both aching and thrilling, Broken Country is a masterful book by an accomplished author."
—Booklist
"[Hall's] prose is so transportive that it’s impossible not to hang on...an elegantly written historical novel with a compelling love triangle and a couple of clever twists."
—Kirkus
"Hall serves up twist after twist in her canny U.S. debut, a story of grief, love, and murder set in the Dorset countryside. This sharp morality tale will stay with readers."
—Publishers Weekly
“A love story like no other. By turns a searing mystery, and a brilliant and beautiful look at the price of a second chance, and the complex notion of fate and forgiveness. Stunning."
—Chris Whitaker, New York Times bestselling author of All the Colors of the Dark
“Stirring, poetic and mysterious, Clare Leslie Hall’s novel, Broken Country, reveals how tender and innocent love between a boy and a girl can alter the lives of families for generations. Even on a quaint and quiet sheep farm of rural England, misguided passion brings murder and criminal charges against the most innocent of players because human nature is far from tame. Yet, even as love destroys, it can return to heal on the same sacred meadow where it was first conceived. This evocative, sensitive and compelling novel fires directly at the human heart and hits the mark.”
—Delia Owens, New York Times bestselling author of Where the Crawdads Sing
“Broken Country is a beautifully observed and brilliantly constructed page-turner of novel. It has everything – love, loss, fury, forgiveness – and I was absolutely immersed from page one.”
—Mary Beth Keane, New York Times bestselling author of Ask Again, Yes and The Half Moon
“Broken Country is mesmerizing: delicate and forceful, lyrical, brutal, and passionate. I devoured it.”
—Miranda Cowley Heller, New York Times bestselling author of The Paper Palace
“Broken Country combines the intoxicating passion of Sally Rooney's Normal People with the hard-won wisdom of Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach. It is also as romantic about the British countryside as Elena Ferrante is about Naples. Both a love story and a pulsing suspense, you could wait a lifetime for a novel as good as this.”
—Jo Furniss, author of The Last to Know
"It’s a story that could have been told by one of the Brontës or Charles Dickens, and author Clare Leslie Hall does right by it, creating compellingly flawed, three-dimensional characters and placing them in an artfully rendered time and place. In fact, the setting is so distinct, it’s almost as if the English countryside becomes a character in itself."
—Apple Books
About the Author
Photograph by Oli Green
Clare Leslie Hall is a novelist and journalist who lives in the wilds of Dorset, England, with her family. Under the name Clare Empson, she published two domestic noir thrillers, Him and Mine, that were published in the UK and Germany. She has always loved The Go Between by LP Hartley and Broken Country is a nod to it, featuring a forbidden love affair with catastrophic repercussions. Broken Country is her US debut. READ MORE
