As the summary kind of indicates, Beautiful Broken Things explores the dangerous aspects of befriending someone who has had a rough childhood and developed her own mental issues because of it.

While the story is told from Caddy's perspective, the story really revolves around Suzanne and the task of figuring out exactly what happened to her before she came to Brighton and befriended the girls. This is Caddy's main goal of the story: she feels like a boring person and wants to change her life by rescuing someone else. This is not always clear to Caddy herself, but as a reader, this comes through very early in the story. If she saves Suzanne from herself, she'll be more exciting too, right?

Oh YA, just when I started losing faith in you as a genre, there's another beautiful story about female friendship that makes me fall in love with you all over again. Beautiful Broken Things might not be flawless, but just as Tonight The Streets Are Ours and I Was Here, it's another great book that shows the complexity of teenage female friendships

REVIEW
But can Suzanne be saved? I adore the way Suzanne was written in this story. It is so hard to write female teenage characters with mental issues without turning them into a walking cliché (I love you, but I am looking at you, John Green), but Sarah Barnard manages it seemingly effortlessly. Suzanne's issues alternate between being very serious to just barely noticeable, depending on how she is feeling and handling her problems. I loved that she was never just "a problem child," but that, through Caddy's unjudging eyes, we really get a glimpse at the girl Suzanne could have been.

The only thing I didn't like about this story was the role of Rosie. The beginning of the book is completely about how close Caddie and Rosie are and how special their bond is. Suzanne walks in and causes trouble - trouble Rosie can see while Caddie can not. Rosie repeatedly warns Caddie, but for some reason Caddie doesn't even listen to her. I felt like she should have listened to Rosie more and taken her feelings into account if they were such good friends. That part of the plot just didn't ring true to me and seemed like an easy way to get Rosie, the voice of reason, out of the action.

But overall, I loved reading this story. The writing is great and I really felt for Caddie and her mission to save Suzanne. This is one of those cases where YA works really well for an older audience too; as an older reader, I realised that Suzanne would not be able to be saved, but I loved Caddie's dedication and loyalty to her friend anyway. This book is a great read to show the importance of female friendships, while at the same time showing the risks that come with unhealthy friendships.

3.0

It is refreshing reading a young adult novel that doesn't focus on or needs to contain a romantic relationship. This book was a deep exploration of friendships old and new, and not only the difficulties of navigating and maintaining a friendship triad but the insecurities that come along with that. The book is slowly paced, but I think that was necessary in order to develop to flesh out the characters, the frienship. and the dynamic of the characters relationships. For the most part, Barnard does a great job in authoring this exploration.

The complexities of the friendship and friend experience is made that more difficult as one of these friends is struggling with her mental health as a result of some fairly traumatizing experiences. As someone with a Masters Degree in Psych, I will always gravitate towards these types of deep character studies that have a focus on mental illness. Mostly because I like to see how they are handled. While I think the author did a brilliant job fleshing out the main character Caddy there was something done in this book that I am generally not a fan of. That is when the mentally ill character (in this case Suzanne) is characterized so heavily by her mental illness that they become nothing but the illness. I have known and been friends with a Suzanne or two in my lifetime, and while those characters sometimes walk the line between being both exhilarating to be around and exhausting (which Barnard does a great job of showing), they are also more than just the highs and often extremely aggressive lows that the character Suzanne was often reduced to in this novel. For that reason, this book fell a wee bit flat for me.

It was okay. I might have appreciated it more if I read it as a teen.

I received this free from the publishers via NetGalley

DNF at 60%

Beautiful Broken Things is about two best friends – Rosie and Caddy – whose friendship have been interrupted by Suzanne, a new girl in town. Suzanne, in their eyes, is beautiful, mysterious, damaged, and exciting. Suzanne’s past slowly gets revealed, and things get complicated. Caddy loves the new trouble in her life, and she’s finally having fun.

I had a lot of high expectations of Beautiful Broken Things due to the many raving reviews about how this book has many great female relationships and catches that essence of being a teenage girl really well, of that jealousy and conflict. However, I had a lot of problems with Beautiful Broken Things which made this a really hard read for me and I really struggled to finish – hence the DNF.

Firstly, and most importantly, our narrator was extremely annoying and very unlikeable. I’m usually all for unlikeable female characters who are unapologetic, who aren’t nice, and who have flaws. However, Caddy was just downright annoying and immature. She’s a typical rich, privately educated, bratty teenage girl. She’s selfish and she’s insensitive. She feels uninteresting next to people like her best friend Rosie whose sister died, and next to her sister Tarin who is bipolar. She feels as though they are more interesting because they have had their ‘life altering’ event. Her life is boring compared to the people around her who suffer and experienced abuse, death, or mental illness. Not cool, and an incredibly bad message to put across. I can’t be sure whether the ending rectified this and she learnt her lesson because I never got that far.

There were a lot of events which I really didn’t like which showed Caddy to be a really horrible person. Leaving her best friend at a party because she didn’t want to interrupt her? That’s a big no-no. Intentionally bring up something which triggers someone because she was curious about their past? An even bigger no-no.

The pacing was incredibly slow and dull, so paired with an incredibly annoying and petty main character, I had a hard time even getting half way through this book. There were other issues I had with this book, especially when one character tried to persuade and encourage another to go back to someone abusive. I didn’t like it one bit. Like I’ve said before, I don’t know how this book resolved anything as I didn’t finish it.

Overall, not a book I would personally recommend.

Loved it <3

i think i like books about suffering