Beautiful Broken Things, Sara Barnard

Pages: 326

Publisher: Macmillan

Release Date: 11^th February 2016

Edition: UK signed proof, review copy

I was brave

She was reckless

We were trouble

Best friends Caddy and Rosie are inseparable. Their differences have brought them closer, but as she turns sixteen Caddy begins to wish she could be a bit more like Rosie – confident, funny and interesting. Then Suzanne comes into their lives: beautiful, damaged, exciting and mysterious, and things get a whole lot more complicated. As Suzanne’s past is revealed and her present begins to unravel, Caddy begins to see how much fun a little trouble can be. But the course of both friendship and recovering is rougher than that either girl realises, and Caddy is about to learn that downward spirals have a momentum of their own.

Sara Barnard’s debut is a bold and emotional novel about the intensity of friendship and what happens when it goes a little wrong.

Beautiful Broken Things is a beautifully written novel that explores so many facets of the friendship between teenage girls. It's a time where everything is at its most intense and friendship isn’t an exception. I can vividly remember the friend break-ups and betrayals I had as a teenager and even the memory of some of them makes me flinch, especially in the case of a newbie sliding in and stealing your BFF as happens when Suzanne arrives and disrupts Caddy and Rosie’s lives.

What followed was a cascade of bad decisions and my heart ached for Rosie, and for Suzanne. Some of the worse decisions made me physically cringe and it was hard to read in places as I really don’t like cringing and the articular sense of foreboding it brings along with it, especially as I recognised my teenage self in Caddy’s innocence and naivety; the number of times I did something I knew wasn’t a good idea purely to seem cool or be a person’s favourite is embarrassing... It was heart-breaking. As for Suzanne, I felt horribly sad for her and everything shed experienced, but I also hated her a lot of the time, even if her actions towards Caddy and Rosie were sometimes unconscious. The general dynamics between the three girls were forever shifting throughout Beautiful Broken Things and it was fascinating to watch it all unfold.

Sara Barnard delivered a wonderful debut and I’m looking forward to seeing what she brings to the table next.

Thanks to Macmillan/MyKindaBook for the review copy.

Sophie