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A review by megsbookishtwins
Beautiful Broken Things by Sara Barnard
1.0
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.
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.