I’ve honestly heard so much about this book that it’s been on my list for a super long time. A lot of people say it’s one of the best books they’ve ever read. It really was good. The best I’ve ever read, though? No, definitely not. Too many things irked me in this book for it to be the best thing I’ve ever read.

It’s always a dilemma for me on whether to start with the good or the bad, but I think I’ll start with the good for this one because there are quite a few spoilers about things that I just plain didn’t love at all.

So, with that being said, the highlights of this book by far are the characters with their depth and development (which I also have a few things that irked me with the characters), and the beautiful, descriptive writing style. Literally, I could imagine the countryside, the farm, the moments of a quiet life in their small town.

With the characters, their development was so visceral and real that each felt like their own person with so many flaws and strengths. My favorite character was Frank by far (and I feel like some people will disagree with me on this), but there was a lot about him that just made him my favorite. It doesn’t hurt that he’s one of my favorite character types too. 

Now to what I really didn’t like 🙃. What a lot of people tout as the highlight of Broken Country is the fact that it will rip your heart out. While it is absolutely freaking devastating, it reminded me of the kind of devastating that was just… too much. If you’ve read All Your Perfects by Colleen Hoover, then that is exactly how I felt about this novel. It was so unbelievably devastating and our MC, Beth, made SO many stupid decisions. I literally did not like her for almost the entire novel. I get that she was grieving but gosh darn lady, you just made a series of decisions that led to almost every tragedy that happened in this book. 

Spoilers ahead. 

So, our tragedies literally happened throughout almost the entire book. A brief summary of our legitimate tragedy porn is as follows:

• Beth seriously breaks up with Gabe thinking that he was cheating on her with Louisa. What follows is a series of hugely unfortunate events. 
• You learn that Bobby’s death is because he is watching his father, uncle, and grandfather cut down a tree. In a moment of unsupervised childlike joy, Bobby runs to the tree as it’s falling and sadly gets smushed. Yes, you read that right. Poor Beth literally had to wait for them to get a tractor to pull the tree off him. 
• Beth has an affair with Gabe… I understand that she felt disconnected from her husband and wanted to talk about Bobby, but it just hurts me so much when I see this in a book. Especially in a marriage that seems just too good to be true. 
• The affair is what really causes all the drama because Jimmy, Frank’s little brother, finds out and basically goes on a rampage and starts shooting at Gabe’s house while Gabe, Beth, and Leo are inside. 
• THEN, (this, you find out at the end), Leo shoots Jimmy. 
• THEENNNNNN Frank takes the blame for it to protect Leo, which you have no idea why he does. He eventually goes to jail because of it. 
• THEN THEN THEN, you find out that Bobby was actually GABE’S SON and that’s why Frank took the fall because he “couldn’t save your other son”. This all happened because of Gabe’s horrible mother swearing that Gabe wouldn’t even care that Beth was pregnant, then gets Beth kicked out of her very religious school. 
• I consider this a tragedy, but Beth literally tells Frank she’s pregnant with another man’s child and Frank decides to marry her anyway. Beth took advantage of this man SO FREAKING MUCH. 
• Beth decides to stay with Frank despite the fact that we all know she really only has ever loved Gabe. She gets pregnant right before Frank goes to prison and POOR FREAKING FRANK HAS TO STAY IN PRISON WHILE HIS FIRST BIOLOGICAL CHILD GROWS UP WITHOUT HIM. LIKE WTF GUYS. 

Basically, the whole entire tragedy of this novel is that Frank is too good for all of them, Beth is a horrible person, and Gabe is just sitting back letting it all happen as he actively participates in causing the trauma of his poor son. Moral of the story? The cheating caused all of the problems. BUT Gabe’s horrible mother started the problems long before that ever happened. I was just so disappointed in the way that this seemed to be one tragedy after another for the only man who didn’t deserve it. Frank, my dear, you deserved better. 

Overall, I rated this book four stars. I think it truly is a good book. However, the tragedy after tragedy after tragedy was just too much for me. It was overdrawn and caused so much grief for the one person who didn’t deserve it….

Source: Audiobook from Audible

(P.S. You can read tons of books—including ones written by me—by trying a free trial of Kindle Unlimited!)