Hi friends, happy Friday the 13th! I hope you’ve all had a good week! Today I’m posting my review of Nicole Baart’s novel, Little Broken Things.

Little Broken Things by: Nicole Baart: The Sanford family have always been prim and proper, living a façade as the perfect family to the world. But now, as all their children are grown, secrets are starting to slip out. When Nora shows up to town after years of irregular contact with her sister, Quinn, she drops off a little girl, Lucy, and leaves without a word. Now left to take of Lucy, Quinn has more questions than answers. Who is this little girl? Why did Nora leave? Slowly, the web of lies that held their family together for so long is beginning to unravel. This could have been a great novel, but it lacked in areas, so it was just a good novel. It had good moments, but it was hard to find them between the way this felt poorly executed. This could have been a great mystery novel, but it felt like the author kept certain key plots and information a secret for the sake of the element of surprise. Things would happen that would leave the reader guessing and wanting more, but it would take forever to get an answer, then when we finally did get an answer, it just felt like it was blown out of proportion all for shock value. The reader didn’t care for that; they also didn’t care that there were so many things happening at once because it made it confusing and hard to keep track of information. The actual bare bones of the story were good, but all the layers that were added on top, and the way it was told, were not. The reader also didn’t exactly care for the characters. Yes, they were developed, to a point, and they went through a lot, like talk about unpacking trauma and again, used for the shock value, which felt a little icky to the reader, these characters did grow from start to finish. The mother was probably the biggest transformation; the reader couldn’t stand her when she was first introduced, but over the course of the novel we started to realize why she was the way that she was and how she’s slowly unpacking that, so the reader could appreciate that. It was interesting to see that the one character who ruined the majority of these character’s lives, was dead (not a spoiler). But that was helpful to the plot and to the characters because it let them move away and move on and heal. This novel focused too much on being a suspense/thriller and it could have been such a beautiful novel about healing from abusive people and finding the help and resources in the people you love. This novel gets points for effort because it did have quality moments, but it spent too much time being something it wasn’t.