Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of illness, mental illness, death, death by suicide, and anti-gay bias.

Savannah is a 17-year-old girl from Blossom Grove, Georgia. She is the younger sister of Ida and Poppy, the latter of whom died of cancer four years before the main events of A Thousand Broken Pieces (as shown in the Prologue). Savannah and her family are secondary characters in the prior novel, A Thousand Boy Kisses, which focuses on Poppy and Rune’s relationship. Savannah functions as a foil in that novel, and the author explores her character more fully in A Thousand Broken Pieces, drawing further attention to the differences between her and Poppy. In particular, while Savannah was always the “quiet” sister in the Litchfield family, her grief and anxiety have made her withdraw into herself, necessitating the therapy trip that furnishes the structure of the novel’s plot.

Savannah is one of two protagonists in the novel, sharing the novel’s perspective with Cael Woods, her love interest, just as Poppy and Rune traded chapters in A Thousand Boy Kisses. Savannah’s introverted nature facilitates the novel’s exploration of grief, as she struggles to reach out to others—a hindrance given