Things Don’t Break on Their Own by Sarah Easter Collins

EXCERPT: Over dessert, Liv tells us about her research into memory and now I really start to listen. We all do. It’s riveting stuff – everything depends on it. To my amazement she tells us how fallible our memories can be, how our minds rework things, how key things we remember from our childhoods may not even be true. Wow, I think, that’s a strange thought. No, worse, it’s a horrifying thought. I think back to all the things I remember happening as a child, things about which I’ve always felt so sure. Now I think, ‘but what if those memories are wrong?’ What if there’s another story. buried somehow, underneath the one I think I know?

ABOUT ‘THINGS DON’T BREAK ON THEIR OWN’: Twenty-five years ago, a young girl left home to walk to school. Her younger sister soon followed. But one of them arrived, and one of them didn’t. Her sister’s disappearance has defined Willa’s life. Everyone thinks her sister is dead, but Willa knows she isn’t. Because there are some things only sisters know about each other—and some bonds only sisters can break.

MY THOUGHTS: Simply stunning!

Things Don’t Break on Their Own is a beautifully written character-based story featuring the mystery of a child belonging to an extremely dysfunctional family who simply disappears from the face of the earth.

I quickly became caught up in the lives of the main characters – Willa, sister of the disappeared Laika; Robyn, Willa’s schoolfriend and lover; and later Claudette, Robyn’s wife’s brother’s girlfriend. Don’t worry – that’s as complicated as it gets. The timeline switches between the past and the present as the story of Laika’s disappearance is slowly unraveled.

The truth, when revealed, is both brutal and stunning, yet quite exquisite.

Things Don’t Break on Their Own begins quite slowly and it is not until the character of Claudette is introduced that the tension is ramped up. A quietly written story of grief, family violence, friendship, sexual awakening, and the bonds between sisters, this debut novel is best gone into with no more information than is given here.

I can’t wait to read whatever Sarah Easter Collins writes next.

⭐⭐⭐⭐.5

#ThingsDontBreakOnTheirOwn #NetGalley

THE AUTHOR: Sarah Easter Collins grew up in Kent and studied at Exeter University before moving to Botswana and later Thailand and Malawi. A mother to a wonderful son, she now lives on Exmoor with her husband and two dogs. When not writing, she works as an artist.

DISCLOSURE: Thank you to Penguin General UK for providing a digital ARC of Things Don’t Break On Their Own by Sarah Easter Collins for review. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own personal opinions.