IT WAS A SECRET AFFAIR. UNTIL IT WAS A PUBLIC SCANDAL.'Lyrical, brutal and passionate. I devoured it'
MIRANDA COWLEY HELLER, author of The Paper Palace'Evocative, sensitive and compelling . . . Fires directly at the heart and hits the mark' DELIA OWENS, author of Where the Crawdads Sing'Broke my heart then mended it again. An epic, tortured love story. Bring tissues'JENNIE GODFREY, author of The List of Suspicious Things'A love story like no other' CHRIS WHITAKER, author of All the Colours of the DarkEveryone in the village said nothing good would come of Gabriel's return. And as Beth looks at the man she loves on trial for murder, she can't help thinking they were right. Beth was seventeen when she first met Gabriel. Over that heady, intense summer, he made her think and feel and see differently. She thought it was the start of her great love story. When Gabriel left to become the person his mother expected him to be, she was broken.
It was Frank who picked up the pieces and together they built a home very different from the one she'd imagined with Gabriel. Watching her husband and son, she remembered feeling so sure that, after everything, this was the life she was supposed to be leading.
But when Gabriel comes back, all Beth's certainty about who she is and what she wants crumbles. Even after ten years, their connection is instant. She knows it's wrong and she knows people could get hurt. But how can she resist a second chance at first love?
A love story with the pulse of a thriller, Broken Country is a heart-pounding novel of impossible choices and devastating consequences.READERS LOVE BROKEN COUNTRY ?????
'This book is everything. Love, heartbreak and hope'
'Will break you into pieces and then put you back together again'
'I was absolutely gripped and didn't want it to end'
'If I could give more than five stars, I would. Perfect'
Industry Reviews
Stirring, poetic and mysterious, 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
Combines the intoxicating passion of
Normal People with the hard-won wisdom of
On Chesil Beach. It is also as romantic about the British countryside as Elena Ferrante is about Naples. This is one exceptionally clever and deceptively simple novel . . .
you could wait a lifetime for a novel as good as thisA beautiful love story which interrogates the complexities of love, loss and regret with lyrical prose and a well-paced plot.
I will be thinking about Frank, Beth, Gabriel and Leo for a long time yet . . . A heart-rending read that avoids cliche. I
inhaled this in a day. Broken Country is mesmerising: delicate and forceful, lyrical, brutal and passionateBroken Country destroyed me . . . it is set to be the love story of 2025 and I cannot recommend it highly enough. Clare Leslie Hall's writing is beautiful, her characters raw and real. The plot is perfectly crafted and the story really is a masterpiece. Sublime.
A stone-cold masterpiece - heartbreaking, life-affirming, it's a celebration of love in all its forms. I loved every line - Hall is an astonishing writer 
