In this way, Barnard reminds us that sometimes life takes us in unexpected directions, if we let it, and often where we end up is never where we imagined we would be. I’m not going to go into spoilery details here, but I just want to point out that the focus of this book is not romance. I think it’s notable that, at the beginning of the book, Caddy resolves to get a proper boyfriend, lose her virginity, and experience a “significant life event”. Instead, Caddy and Suzanne develop this friendship almost separately from Rosie, and it’s really fascinating. The way this book starts, it seems like it’s mostly going to be about Caddy’s jealousy of Suzanne, and Caddy having to adjust to Rosie and Suzanne becoming so close.

Thus, Barnard poses the question: how far can we go, how much can we really do, for beautiful, broken people? Even as Rosie pulls back and her parents advise caution, Caddy throws more and more of herself into helping Suzanne. As Caddy learns more about Suzanne’s past trauma and positions herself as the caring, understanding, shoulder-to-cry-on type of friend, she finds herself drawn deeper into Suzanne’s ongoing struggles. Wary of Suzanne at first, Caddy finds herself warming to Suzanne more so than anyone realized. As they start Year Eleven, a new girl, Suzanne, at Rosie’s school threatens to disrupt this dyad. In Beautiful Broken Things, Caddy and Rosie have been best friends going on a decade, despite attending different schools. Trigger warning in this book for discussions of physical and verbal abuse, anxiety, suicide. But I did, and Sara Barnard once again dazzled me with her ability to write characters steeped in empathy and compassion. I’m not sure I was in the best mood to read it. And that’s not to say that this one is bad, but there are moods for things.

I don’t know-this one was just so good that I was reminded of how much I enjoyed the other, which I think is a much more heartwarming story than this one. Reading Beautiful Broken Things made me really want to re-read A Quiet Kind of Thunder.

A Heart on Hold by Sara Barnard