The June Boys by Court Stevens

 

I received an ARC of this book thanks to NetGalley and publisher Thomas Nelson and Zondervan in exchange for an honest review.

The June Boys is the story of Thea, a girl whose father is accused of a terrible crime when there are an occurrence of several kidnappings in a town. Every year, three boys are taken on the 1st June and held captive for a month before being released. This so-called Gemini Thief has never been caught and Thea, along with her boyfriend Nick, have become involved in investigating ever since Thea's cousin was taken by the thief. Suspicion falls on her father and she must come to terms with the fact that the Thief might be someone close to home.

I wasn't really sure what to expect from this book and I went in fairly blind. It is definitely a thriller in terms of plot but the style is quite laid-back and at least for me, it didn't have a strong sense of tension the way a traditional thriller usually does. Having said that, I was very intrigued and engaged with the premise of this book. I found Thea to be a very interesting character and I felt I could both sympathise and understand the personal dilemmas she went through. My favourite sections by far though were the 'Elizabeth Letters' written by Aulus while he is in captivity, and these added that much-welcomed sense of danger and tension to the story.

As an audiobook, I found both the narrators were great. I will say that the Elizabeth Letters section does lose a little of the detail in audio format as the physical book has little doodles, asides and other comments with the way the letters are presented. However, this is a very minor thing.

In terms of the mystery, I wasn't necessarily shocked by anything that happened in this book. I think that was down to the more laid-back style. There were also some strong religious undertones to the whole thing which I didn't personally connect to much. Overall though, the June Boys is an intriguing YA thriller with a very unique premise and setting which was a breath of fresh air in the genre. I think it deals with the subject of kidnapping well and has some interesting exploration surrounding that topic. It is definitely worth checking out if you're sick of being disappointed by YA thrillers and want something with a bit more meat to it.

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