Book Review: Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall

I’ll admit I was “influenced” by Reese Witherspoon’s official book club to put Clare Leslie Hall’s book Broken Country on my TBR list. I didn’t know much about it other than it was a mystery, but I requested it on my Libby app anyway. I knew it would take a few months to become available, and that was fine with me because I wasn’t lacking for anything to read when I requested it. But gradually, I noticed many of my friends on Goodreads completing the book and rating it favorably.

To be transparent, I’ve read books praised by Reese’s list before that didn’t blow me away, so I added Broken Country with a grain of salt. I’m at a point in my life where if I request something from Libby and it doesn’t grab me after the first few chapters, I’ll return it early. Life is too short to invest time in a book that doesn’t keep you turning the pages.

Spoiler alert: I absolutely could not put Broken Country down and finished it in one weekend.

Here’s the synopsis:

“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.

Review:

From page one, you are immersed into the story, because the reader knows there is more than one farmer in the plot. You don’t know right away who has died, and who the defendant in the courtroom is. Hall keeps that a mystery for the first half of the book.

I think we can all appreciate a good love story, and the one between Beth and Gabriel seems pulled straight out of a Jane Austen novel. But as we all know, class differences will always drive a wedge between young lovers, especially in the time period of 1955, when the two both meet. But you also know that Beth eventually married someone other than Gabriel, a doting farmer named Frank, and their story is told in flashbacks, helping to contribute to the pace of the book. The novel contains three timelines: present day throughout the trial of the mystery defendant, 1955, when Gabriel and Beth first fell in love, and 1968, when Gabriel returned to the village with his young son, Leo.

There are various little mysteries sprinkled throughout the book, which kept my interest piqued. What happened to Frank and Beth’s son, Bobby, who died before Gabriel returned to the village? Why did Gabriel and Beth break up when they were teenagers? Why did Beth give up her dreams of studying at college and marry Frank instead? Who is the farmer that had died at the beginning of the book, and who is on trial? Is Beth still in love with Gabriel, and why is she so drawn to his son, Leo?

Hall architected the book expertly, and I found it a perfect balance of suspense, mystery, romance, and heartbreak. It’s unlike anything I’ve read in a long time, so I recommend it if you are looking for your next read.

A few other notes:

I didn’t realize when I began reading this book that it was set in southwestern England or the time period of the late 1950s and 60s. I couldn’t help but picture a small, quaint village like the one in the film “The Holiday” when reading this book, and the descriptions of the fictional English countryside of Hemston and small pub where the villagers gathered made me swoon. I had not read anything by Leslie Clare Hall before, and in the acknowledgments section I discovered she wrote under a pen name to honor her late parents. She has published two thrillers in the UK under the name Clare Empson.

A year before this book was published, Sony’s 3000 Pictures acquired the film rights to Broken Country with Hello Sunshine set to produce. This is the same team that took another Reese’s book club pick, Where the Crawdads Sing, from book to screen.

And now, since I finished the book so early and got this review completed, I hope to make someone’s day and return it to my library early for someone else to enjoy.