Broken Country
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Broken Country is a romantic whodunnit that tugs at your heartstrings with its dramatic tone. I was immediately invested in the narrator's love triangle; it felt a bit like The Notebook where you’re rooting for both parties for different reasons. Despite the cheating and wrongdoing, there’s irresistible passion and a pitting of reason and emotion.
It’s also written quite cleverly. We know from the opening line that someone dies, but we don’t know who and we also don’t know who did it. The suspense of the murder pulses in the background of the story without overwhelming it. This lurking unknowing puts your guard up– who should you be wary of? When are you willing to look the other way?
Turns out, I’m willing to look the other way on a lot of things lol. I really appreciate when authors manage to create flawed narrators that we still root for. Beth, the main character, did some pretty unlikeable things, but I admired her commitment to both navigating her loyalties and staying true to her heart. She knew that the road she was going down was doomed, but she also didn’t shy away from the consequences. Her heart also wanted multiple things at once– a nice, nebulous gray area that the novel nailed.
My only complaint: sometimes it felt a little cliche (the villainous potential mother-in-law, the farmer faithful to a fault, the miscommunication of lovers). Zooming out, I didn’t find the story as profoundly heart-wrenching as it seems many readers did. It didn’t emotionally wreck me, but it did move me and I was sucked into the story. It’s a very quick read (if anything, I wish it had been longer to flesh out the love triangle a bit more). Broken Country gets 4 out of 5 flames.
