The opening pages of this book are narrated from the pov of a ghostly "observer" watching over a house in the middle of the woods in upstate New York. It is the middle of the night and suddenly chaos ensues: a man, woman and small child are grabbing a few things and rushing out the door to their car. They don't make it to the end of the driveway before the man and woman are shot and killed. The child escapes. There passes a period of 12 years as the Observer notes the decay of the house, and its occasional occupation by vagrants and teenage lovers.

Then the house is purchased and renovated and a new family moves in. Karl is a sculptor. His wife Eleanor is a successful writer of "chick-lit"--she "recognizes the essential frivolity of her work, but insists on approaching it with intelligence and a dedication to craft." Their daughter Irina is 12. They have moved to this rural setting from Brooklyn in an attempt to save their marriage which has suffered from Karl's multiple infidelities. Most of the rest of the book is told from the alternating viewpoints of one of these three main characters, with occasional interjections from the Observer, who functions as a kind of Greek chorus.

The focus is on family dynamics, but there is also an underlying crime/thriller element. The double homicide has never been solved. Unbeknownst to her parents, Irina becomes obsessed with the crime and participates in an online forum discussing the crime, Cyber Sleuths. And unknown to Irina, her mother Eleanor is also participating on the forum. Irina is focused on finding out what happened to the child who escaped, and when she meets a teenage girl in town, she convinces herself that this is that child. Through it all the ghostly observer "observes" and comments, and we see things from multiple points of view, and from a bird's eye view.

While it's mostly a quiet novel of a family disintegrating, it is also a psychological thriller, and the last third of the novel, as the crimes from the past begin to invade the present, were as exciting as any thriller I've read recently. It's extremely well-paced and I was compelled to keep turning the pages through-out. Amazon describes it as an "intelligent literary psychological thriller," and one reviewer compared it to a Coen Brothers film. I agree.

3 1/2 stars

First line: "It is a few minutes past one in the morning when the front door slams shut."

Last line: "She chants faster and faster, until she can't take it anymore, and then she laughs until she can barely breathe." ( )

Interesting, but with loose ends and not enough info as to WHY the killings. Nebulous money and drugs, but nothing concrete. Even the ever-present "observer" has nothing to say on this topic. And since there is no police involved we get nothing from there either. We're left with one uber thug (Joe) and his cowed minion (Louis) doing the dirty work then and now, but for such little reward that I don't get it. Especially when Joe breaks from whatever boss was supposed to be in charge and goes after what he thinks is his - presumably a weed growing operation and associated piles of cash. Neither of which seem to exist. Louis gets a bit of his own back in the end and seems to have been punished enough.

It's weird and the best character by far is Irina. She's funny. Too grown up. Observant. Self-contained. Talented. She was painfully aware of her in-between state - not quite a child, but not a teenager either. Sometimes she acted way over her age and sometimes quite appropriately and she knew that, too. She knew how awful her parents were and how they treated her like an adult, not even attempting to shield her from their bullshit. Sometimes she sees through it for what it is, and sometimes she’s still baffled.

I liked her, but her father was a self-deluded asshole who had a case of toxic masculinity worse than I've seen in a while. He's a womanizing jackass who diminishes his wife's far more lucrative talent because he just can't imagine a woman having anything to say that has any bearing on his life and who has time to READ A WHOLE BOOK? OMG I was super happy that he did something right in the end and if the story had gone on, I wouldn't have to deal with him anymore.

Eleanor was less well-drawn than Irina was and even though she ended up finishing her novel, it wasn’t the departure the dust jacket makes it out to be. She and Irina dive into the Cyber Sleuth website and adopt anonymous personas in order to try to find out the details about the people killed in their house before they owned it. Neither comes out to the other as to their participation and I was annoyed because the website was just used as a goad for the bad guys to come after them, something that could have been done another way.

Overall it’s interesting and worth reading although experienced thriller readers will be annoyed that many threads just dangle and it seems like the book’s gimmick - the observer - was a stronger piece of the plot than the actual events even though it had no bearing on those. ( )

Enjoyable psychological thriller. ( )

This book is good book if you like mystery and drama. It talks about how a couple was murdered and were kept a mystery till they found by the river. It is very descriptive. ( )

An unusual literary thriller. As a family flee from their home, the mother and father are murdered in front of their child who manages to escape and survive, disappearing into the mists of time. The house is left vacant for twelve years, going to rack and ruin giving it a cursed reputation, until a new family move in. Unfortunately, instead of being a new start, the past comes back to haunt them.

I usually like literary style mysteries but this one didn’t really do it for me. I didn’t like the way it was written. I struggled with it on the whole, I thought it was quite slow and drawn out. It’s written in the present tense which doesn’t always gel with me, either. Although I don’t normally have to like the characters to enjoy a book, the ones in Broken River were mostly unsympathetic and unappealing. There’s also an abstract sort of character known as ‘The Observer’ which floats around doing just that - observing. I understood its point, like a fly on the wall, but found this a little odd and distracting. The story is described as part gothic horror but I didn’t find it scary or creepy at all.

I think it’s a very cleverly and quirkily written novel. It’s full of philosophical thoughts and psychology, so a little deep! It’s not a bad book, quite original, but just not my cup of tea. ( )