Broken Country

by Clare Leslie Hall ★★★★★

A ranking of the Best Books of 2025...So Far wouldn't be complete without a review of Broken Country, one of the buzzier books of the year to-date. Not only was it selected for Reese's Book Club, but it's averaging 4.6 stars on Amazon. So...is it as good as some early readers suggest?

The narrator and protagonist of Broken Country, Beth Johnson, lives a mostly happy life. It's 1968 in England, and she's married to Frank Johnson, a man who has loved her unconditionally since he was thirteen-years-old. Frank owns Blakely Farm, and with the help of his brother Jimmy (and Beth), the Johnsons have carved out a modest existence that is filled with long days and hard work on the farm, but also one filled with consistency. As a farmer's wife, Beth's life isn't exactly everything she imagined, but it's comfortable and predictable.

The consistency of Beth's life is upended when Frank tells her over breakfast that Gabriel Wolfe has returned to town, with his young son in tow. Gabriel, now a famous author, grew up outside of town on a large estate. The Wolfes were the town's richest family—they couldn't be bothered with town gossip or by the goings-on of the locals, and there was certainly no reason for Gabriel, who spent most of his years away at an elite boarding school, to cross paths with Beth. But cross paths they did, in the summer before Beth's last year of high school, leading to an intense and passionate teenage love affair that ultimately left Beth with a broken heart. Frank was there to pick up the pieces, and he's not about to invite old memories back into their stable lives. "We'll have nothing to do with him," Frank says to Beth. "What's here for him any way..." Frank continues, but there's more beneath the surface. "I see it," Beth narrates. "The unsaid thought that flits across his mind. Aside from you."

Fate, it turns out, makes having nothing to do with Gabriel Wolfe impossible. Shortly after the Johnsons' sheep birth several lambs, a young local dog wanders onto Blakely Farm and inexplicably starts killing the newborns. With four lambs dead and no end to the slaughter in sight, Jimmy has no choice but to shoot the dog to save the herd. It turns out that the dog belongs to, of course, Gabriel Wolfe (his ten-year-old son, Leo, to be precise) and this event brings Gabriel and Beth back into each other's orbit.

In the novel's opening lines, we are told that "The farmer is dead. He is dead, and all anyone wants to know is who killed him. Was it an accident or was it murder? It looks like murder, they say, with that gunshot wound to the heart, so precise that it must have been intended." Which farmer is left intentionally ambiguous for much of the novel, as well as who is on trial for the murder. Author Hall needs time to build the context that led to the murder before revealing those details, and the story plays out across multiple timelines, including the days leading up to the murder in 1968, the trial in 1969, and the origins of Beth and Gabriel's love, in 1955.

We also come to learn that Frank and Beth had a son, Bobby, who tragically died a few years prior to 1968 at just nine-years-old. Beth can't help but be reminded of Bobby when she sees Gabriel's son Leo, and she begins interacting with Leo as a way to help heal a wound that can never fully close. When Gabriel asks to hire her to watch Leo after school so that he has time to write his next novel, Beth knows it's a bad idea, but she agrees. Frank cautions her against it as well, but it seems as if there's an old thread that Beth must tug on, even slightly, to make sure she's made the right choices in her life.

It doesn't take a genius to see where this is headed, and the greatest difficulty for me was reading a novel about a central character who is constantly conflicted by her attraction for a past flame while trying to remind herself that she loves her devoted husband. If Frank were more flawed, or more ungenerous with his love and appreciation for his wife, it might have made Beth's conflicted feelings more palatable. But there's little to fault with Frank, and so Beth's continued insistence on spending time with Gabriel while doing little to tamp down the burgeoning flames of her past feelings make her difficult to like, much less someone whose happiness I was hoping for.

Setting aside my distaste for Beth and her selfish choices throughout the novel, there's a ton to like about Broken Country. I was captivated by the direction the story would take, the unveiling of which "farmer" was killed and who was standing trial for the murder, and my hope that some form of justice would prevail in the end. Hall hits her stride in the last quarter of the book, when a number of monumental reveals help partially explain some of Beth's questionable choices, before concluding with a tone-perfect finish.

In one awkward moment, Bobby asks Beth (in a flashback to his 7th birthday party), "Is it normal to love one person your whole life, like you and Daddy? Or can you love other people first?". The question pauses the conversation around the dinner table, leaving Beth to answer. "It's simplest when you do, but the only thing that matters is finding the right person to spend the rest of your life with, however you get there." Beth's path to getting there was a struggle at times to read, and whether Beth ends up with the right person could dominate the entirety of a book club discussion. But despite those difficulties, Beth's journey is one worth experiencing. The buzz is justified, and Broken Country is definitely worth reading.