Beautiful Broken Girls

They found the two young sisters at the bottom of the quarry. They were clutching each other, bound together for all eternity. Did they stumble during the night and fall to their deaths? Perhaps foul play, although who would want to hurt them? Joint suicide pact? Ben had loved Mira and he grieved so hard. When a letter came to him a few days after the girls were found, written by Mira, he wasn't prepared for what she had to say. Remember the places you touched me. As Ben remembers the seven times he touched Mira, the life she shared with her sister, Francesca, comes front and center. Each place that Ben searches reveals another letter, a note, telling him of their strange existence. I really wanted to like this one much more than I did. The title, the cover, the book blurb all drew me in. It failed to live up to ny expectations ... maybe because it was aimed at a much younger reader. I almost gave up when I started skipping pages, scanning for something that would draw my attention. I really liked the character of Ben. Mira and Francesca didn't elicit much compassion or interest from me other than the thought of needless deaths for two teenagers who had so much life left to live. There's also the hint of paranormal with this story. This one just didn't hold my interest. Many thanks to the author / Macmillan Children's Publishing Group / Netgalley for the digital copy of this book. The opinion(s) expressed here are unbiased and entirely my own.

I'm currently finding it very difficult to review this book because a) It was harrowing, deep and REALLY REALLY pulled you into the small town setting where two girls went into a lake and never came out. And also b) While the writing in this book was deep and disturbing and EVERYTHING, I'm just not sure how I feel about the way the story ended. Mira and Francesca Cillo are sisters. They are girls whose blood runs thicker than anything. What happens to one of them, happens to them both. Boys, Power and even Death. Ben is the boy next door, and for the longest time, he's been in love with the younger Cillo sister. A month after her death, he gets a letter addressed to him, a letter from a girl who jumped off a cliff with her sister and never flew up. It tells him to go to the seven places he touched here, the seven places where they hid what they were from prying eyes if he wants to know why. If he wants to know why two beautiful girls with their whole lives ahead of them took their own lives. Like I said before, what REALLY pulled me into the book was the writing - Kim Savage REALLY upped her game from After The Woods, and her writing KEPT ME HOOKED. It was heart-wrenching, filled with pain and beauty and unfairness and the underlying concept that WE DIDN'T KNOW EVERYTHING. I LOVED every minute of it - and I've never felt this was about writing style before. Ever. Beautiful Broken Girls alternates between Ben's narration in the present and Mira's or Francesca's in the past - explaining how Ben finds the notes that Mira left him and what he thinks while it flashes back to Mira and Francesca, filling in the blanks. For the first five notes, I WAS IN LOVE. It was a definite five star read, but soon after, I pieced together the ending and it all seemed kind of... off to me? I can't explain it, lest it ruin the book for you, but suffice to say that I wish the ending was something else. A HAUNTED, HEART-WRENCHING BOOK WITH BEAUTIFUL WRITING THAT WILL LEAVE YOU THINKING ABOUT IT FOR A LONG TIME AFTER.