Book Review - The June Boys

I'm not sure if you have heard of this book - it was quite popular when it came out back in 2020. On Goodreads it holds a rating of 3.48 stars which honestly surprised the HELL out of me after I read this book.

For me to even consider a book I usually want it to be 3.5 stars average and above. If it's less I read the reviews to get why people rated it so low. In this instance, people said it was confusing and hard to read along with.... which it wasn't, at least to me. I've picked this book up a couple times but always chose other books before this one but decided it was free on kindle unlimited and said why the hell not, and I am NOT disappointed!

Quick Summary

This book is based off a kidnapper named The Gemini Thief. What this person does is kidnap 4 boys every June and returns them back a year later unharmed, untouched, etc. The survivors tell stories of them just sitting in a dark room where they got toys and food.

So the main character Thea, (love that name btw) gets involved because her cousin Aulus (very odd name btw pronounced "all-us") is kidnapped. So now Thea believes someone close to her might be responsible for the kidnappings.

Her friends, family, and herself take it upon themselves to do research and try to find out who in her family is hiding secrets...turns out a lot of them are.

Characters

I feel like I need to touch base about the characters because I think that's the reason I loved this book so much. Thea herself is one odd ball of a person but realistically is more representative of a 18 year old girl than other books. Her love life is complicated, she has a great bond with her bff, and she's super close to her family who is very dysfunctional but super loving. In the end of the book Thea talks about the way she is feeling and DAMN did she do a great job at explaining guilt, anger, empathy, pain, etc. Like it's not so simple as being angry... you can love someone but hate them at the same time.... get what I'm saying? sorry I'm rambling haha.

--I will tell you what I hated about this book... and that was there was a pretty big religious idea pushed upon this story and I didn't like that at all. I won't say much so I won't spoil it but the reason the castle is being built is because "God told me to," and why I see they wanted to prove a point of Noah's Arc and how Noah seemed crazy for doing it but once the flood struck he was a savior aspect... it just annoyed me. (but that's probably because I am not very religious myself)

Overall - this book was really enjoyable to read and quite easy to follow along with. Being 347 pages long it took me about 2 in a half days to read and it kept my attention 99% of the time. It could fall under YA novels but I feel like adults could enjoy this because of the meanings the author is trying to put out there.