“If you liked Big Little Lies, you’ll want to crack open this new novel by Nicole Baart.” –Southern Living “Steeped in menace, Baart’s latest is a race-to-the-finish family drama.” –People An engrossing and suspenseful novel for fans of Liane Moriarty and Amy Hatvany about an affluent suburban family whose carefully constructed facade starts to come apart with the unexpected arrival of an … starts to come apart with the unexpected arrival of an endangered young girl.
I have something for you. When Quinn Cruz receives that cryptic text message from her older sister Nora, she doesn’t think much of it. They haven’t seen each other in nearly a year and thanks to Nora’s fierce aloofness, their relationship consists mostly of infrequent phone calls and an occasional email or text. But when a haunted Nora shows up at the lake near Quinn’s house just hours later, a chain reaction is set into motion that will change both of their lives forever.
Nora’s “something” is more shocking than Quinn could have ever imagined: a little girl, cowering, wide-eyed, and tight-lipped. Nora hands her over to Quinn with instructions to keep her safe, and not to utter a word about the child to anyone, especially not their buttoned-up mother who seems determined to pretend everything is perfect. But before Quinn can ask even one of the million questions swirling around her head, Nora disappears, and Quinn finds herself the unlikely caretaker of a girl introduced simply as Lucy.
While Quinn struggles to honor her sister’s desperate request and care for the lost, scared Lucy, she fears that Nora may have gotten involved in something way over her head–something that will threaten them all. But Quinn’s worries are nothing compared to the firestorm that Nora is facing. It’s a matter of life and death, of family and freedom, and ultimately, about the lengths a woman will go to protect the ones she loves.more
Estranged families make for rich stories; no matter how much we might yearn to be free of our relatives, an undeniable attachment remains. Little Broken Things is a tension-filled story in which family secrets, mistrust, and allegiances threatening to swallow up the loyalty and love that has somehow survived. Baart is a thoughtful, sensitive writer who creates a realistic and complex dilemma surrounding a child in jeopardy. At several points in the novel, it would’ve been easy to veer into melodrama or reach for a trite resolution, but Baart is too seasoned and too honest for that. Instead, she delivers an intriguing mystery wrapped up inside a family’s journey through loss, forgiveness and hope. We are all of us little broken things and rely on stories such as this one to show us something about how to mend ourselves
A well-written story but for me a little slow. I had problems resonating with the characters. I think perhaps there were too many POVs for me.
If the first page doesn’t grab you, nothing will!
Nicole Baart is a new author for me, but Little Broken Things won’t be my last of hers. I love her writing style, character development, and the way she wove the story through the dreaded “middle” with ease.
I won’t go into plot…you can read the blurb to get the gist of the story…but I enjoyed the twists and turns she employs throughout, giving up tidbits of the secrets little by little. I recommend the story on an overall basis, although I didn’t give it five stars–the ending was a bit predictable. I had most of it figured out, so it wasn’t much of a surprise. But that didn’t take away from Baart’s writing. Sometimes it’s the way in which a book is presented that’s more appealing to me, and will keep me returning to an author.
Thank you to the publisher for the ARC copy I voluntarily read and reviewed with pleasure.
I have long been a fan of Nicole Baart’s finely crafted, flawed characters, her deft plotting, her fluid, lovely writing, and all of these gifts are on display in Little Broken Things. I cared about these sisters, feared and hoped for them, and lost my heart to Lucy, the locked-shut little girl living in the center of the book’s secrets. It’s a gripping and suspenseful tale that kept me turning pages late into the night; move it to the top of your stack.
Richly atmospheric and featuring a compelling cast of sharply drawn female characters, Little Broken Things is both a page-turner and a thoughtful examination of what it means to mother and be mothered, in all its most real and varied forms.
Little Broken Things follows the story of four women whose lives intersect around a young child in need of protection: sisters Quinn and Nora, their mother, Liz, and Nora’s high school friend Tiffany.
Nicole Baart beautifully depicts the complications of family dynamics. Quinn and Nora both have reasons to be wary of their mother, Liz–and frankly, at the beginning of the book, so will the reader. Nora and Quinn are vivid, sympathetic characters. Nora doesn’t share why she’s doing what she does, but she clearly knows, which made me as a reader eager to keep turning pages and find out. Quinn, who goes to meet her sister and comes home with a child whose story is shrouded in mystery, and–apparently–danger.
As the layers peel back, Nicole Baart takes the reader on a journey of discovery: of the relationship between past present love; between sisters; between mother and daughter; between a family and a community.
Beautifully layered…gives readers everything they could possible want in a novel – vivid, engaging characters, a town filled with dark secrets, a mind-twisting mystery and the ferocious power of a mother’s love. Original and gripping, Little Broken Things is a stunner that will linger with you long after the final page is turned.
Suspenseful, but some of the characters didn’t quite ring true. Others were well-drawn, however. This is a good book that had the potential to be great.
Suspenseful, heartfelt, and emotionally rich, Little Broken Things explores the complicated bonds of family — those we’re born into and those we choose. Baart’s writing — as always — is a delight.
Little Broken Things made me abandon my life and responsibilities for days. Stunning, beautifully wrought, tenaciously hopeful — move this book to the very top of your book club list.
Nicole Baart weaves exquisite writing with unstoppable drama in this tale of family schisms and secrets on a collision course with life-threatening danger. Putting down Little Broken Things was impossible.
I found this book to be shallow with poor character development. I read it with my book club and we all agreed that it just didn’t measure up. Some reviewer had compared it to Big Little Lies and in my opinion it comes no where close to the same quality.
Favorite Quotes:
Children are not my specialty, but somewhere along the way I learned that they’re just like adults in one regard: they purr when petted just so. It feels wrong to use kindness as a tool, but I’m doing what I have to.
The list of my weaknesses is long and varied, but none so great as my tendency to inertia. At the moments I most need to go, I find myself crippled and terrified.
Damn it, Nora. She could be such a drama queen. A black hole of a woman, the kind of person who drew people to her dark gravity and sucked them in before they realized what was happening.
Liz was a good, God-fearing woman and a regular at the First Reformed Church of Key Lake, but she wasn’t the quintessential parishioner. She was fond of Jesus, not so much his people. And they seemed to love Wal-Mart more than seemed strictly conventional.
Anger and affection made awkward dance partners, and Quinn couldn’t decide whether she loved her sister in that moment or hated her just a little.
My Review:
I was immediately yanked into this intriguing and lushly written tale from the onset. I became an instant fan of this highly skilled and phenomenally talented author and now greedily want to read every word she has ever scribbled. Each character was uniquely quirky, cleverly devised, well fleshed out, and multifaceted. They were flawed, frustrating, endearing, exasperating, enticing and well-drawn, and I wanted to know every little thing about them. I was engrossed, totally engaged, intensely curious, and half-crazed to know all the secrets.
Ms. Baart is a richly gifted wordsmith and kept me on edge, on the hook, deeply entrenched, and riveted to her richly detailed and tantalizing tale. I felt the urgency and was often taut with tension, my skin prickled in anticipation with so much left unsaid and lurking beneath the surface of this maddeningly paced and well-crafted story. The writing was superb, observantly insightful, and a treat. The plot was deviously crafted and densely populated with several cunningly devised subplots running in different directions while bending back at the same time, and all of which were deeply intriguing and lavishly detailed. In short, it was brilliant.
*** ARC provided by the author for an honest review ***
Told from three different points of view, Little Broken Things, by Nicole Baart, is an interesting inner look at how different perspectives of the same story occur. Liz, Nora and Quinn; a mother, and her two daughters, see their lives and their decisions differently from one another.
Liz has three children. Nora, Quinn, and JJ. She is a widow; her husband having passed two years ago. During this time, she has been trying to figure out how she has become separated from her children. Where does her life lead with the strained relationships that she has?
Nora has been estranged from her family for years. When her best friend, Tiffany needed the kind of support that Nora had received her entire life, Nora stepped away from her family to support her. Her family did not accept Tiffany and it caused a rift to form between them.
Quinn is the youngest of the three children. She recently married a man that her mother doesn’t approve of, but she is as happy as she can be, even if she feels that their affections are not equal. She loves her husband more than he seems to love her, but she accepts this as her life now.
Nora contacts Quinn with a cryptic message and they meet up, only to have Nora drop a kid off with her sister. No explanations. She just leaves a kid with Quinn and her husband. Thousands of questions and assumptions follow. Will the truth come out eventually?
This book kept me guessing. I was never quite sure of what was going to happen, and the ending was unexpected. The relationship of the three main characters was constantly developing. The differences between the characters, even though they were related, was awesome to see. The way that the characters interacted with other minor characters was a perfect reflection of the contrast between what you show the world and what you show family. FOUR stars.