Beautiful broken girls

Name: Beautiful broken girls
Author: Kim Savage
ISBN: 9780374300593

Age Rating, Reading Level & Content Guide

by Kim Savage

Reading Level 5-6 ME · Moderate · Emotional Ages 13+ Matched

The text is written at a 5th grade reading level, the subject matter is intended for teens (ages 13+), and the content has moderate intensity with some emotionally heavy themes. Its HootRating code, ME, means moderate content, mostly emotional.

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About This Book

I’m going to tell you a secret about Mira and Francesca—two sisters whose story is more tangled than you think. Mira left hidden messages for Ben in the places they touched, but what he finds changes everything. And that’s only the beginning.

Themes

SistersMysteryDeathGriefTraumaFamily

Quick Assessment

After Mira's death, Ben follows a quest of notes she hid in the seven places where he once touched her, searching for why she and her sister drowned themselves in a quarry lake. The story deals directly with suicide, the deaths of two teens, and past abuse by a bad coach, and its mystery is tangled with obsession and lies. It is best suited to readers who can handle heavy, emotionally intense material and want a complex, unsettling mystery.

Why we rated Beautiful broken girls ME (Moderate)

Beautiful broken girls is written at a Level 5-6 reading level across 320 pages. Upper Grades (Ages 13+) is the typical interest range for this book — readers in that age band have the maturity and attention span suited to the story, separate from whether they can decode the words.

We rate Beautiful broken girls as ME (Moderate, mostly emotional) because the content sits in the "Moderate" range — moderate conflict that may involve loss, scary scenes, or interpersonal stakes. The strongest signals come from emotional weight, thematic difficulty — these are the dimensions parents should evaluate against their reader's tolerance.

No specific content flags were raised by community reviewers, which is consistent with the moderate intensity score.

Thematically, Beautiful broken girls explores sisters, mystery, death, grief, and trauma — these threads give the book room to mean different things to different readers.

Good fit for

✓ Children in the Ages 13+ range — the maturity and attention span match the story's pacing.
✓ Kids drawn to stories about sisters, mystery, death.

Maybe not for

! Readers who get easily upset by emotional or moderately dark scenes — the conflict here is real, not just background flavor.

For Parents

Content Intensity

ME · Moderate · Emotional

Emotional

Intense ←

Physical

Mild

Social

Mild

Thematic

Moderate

Reading the HootRating code: the first letter is the content intensity (C = Gentle · L = Mild · M = Moderate · I = Intense · V = Very Intense); the second, when there is one, is the kind of content that drives it (E = Emotional · P = Physical · S = Social · T = Thematic). Reading level and age range are rated separately. How we rate

Real stakes and emotional weight. May include sustained danger, loss, or bullying.

Data confidence: high

Was our "Moderate" content intensity rating accurate for this book?