June's Reads: Thriller

 II have definitely read far more books this year than I did last year, and I’m very much enjoying it. Halfway through the year, I’ve read about 23 books, which is a huge improvement on last year. I had really missed reading. So this reading challenge has been a good thing for me. And it’s making me think at least a little bit outside of the box.

June’s genre was thriller, and, I’ll be honest, I don’t really own any thrillers. Since the other purpose of this challenge was for me to read through my bookshelves, that did present a bit of a problem. So I had to think a little beyond the “thriller” concept.

I chose to read a book I’ve owned for quite a while but had never made the time to read, Fire in the Night by Linda Byler. It’s billed as a “suspenseful romance,” which I would say is fitting.

(From publisher website)

The Amish community of Lancaster is being terrorized by barn fires. David and Malinda Beiler's barn was the first to go… Sarah, David and Malinda's daughter, observes her parents' agony. Not only is she afraid, and wishing she could protect her parents, she's entranced by the flirtatious Matthew Stoltzfus. He's dating her friend, Rose, but when he tenderly bandages Sarah's hand after she burned it at the barn raising, she wonders who he's really interested in.

When a second Amish barn burns for suspicious reasons, the Amish grow more restless…Seriously considering police protection, the increasingly tense community questions their traditional nonresistant approach to violence. Sarah now finds herself at odds with her mother over her choice of boyfriends and uncertain about how to respond to the attention of Lee, a newcomer to Lancaster. Not only that, she wonders if her dad is a wise enough leader as her community reels from within and without.

I enjoyed this book, the first in Byler’s Lancaster Burning series, enough to read the second one. And I’m currently trying to get ahold of the third and final book. It’s a pretty slow burn (pardon the pun), with much of the book focused on Sarah’s daily life and her fixation with her neighbor, Matthew. But ever-present under the surface is the mystery of the barn fires and who is setting them.

The writing style takes a little getting used to – Byler uses a lot of Pennsylvania Dutch, which is a German dialect typically used amongst the Amish, and translates in parentheses. It's really jarring, and I’m still not 100% sure that I like it, but it does theoretically help ground you in the setting. Some of her word and sentence choices are a little awkward for me, too – that may be just a writer sensitivity, though. Overall, the story and characters are interesting - even if I do want to scream at Sarah from time to time - and I am invested in seeing how this series finishes up.

I also finished John Grisham’s middle grade Theodore Boone legal thriller series. His Theodore Boone: Kid Lawyer is followed by The Abduction, The Accused, The Activist, The Fugitive, and The Scandal. He must have run out of “A” names halfway through or something.

Overall, I enjoyed each book separately. They each follow the setup of the first book – a smart, generally good kid who knows more about the law than anyone else his age and dreams of being a great lawyer gets himself in the middle of trouble that he doesn’t cause but nonetheless helps solve. Each story is interesting on its own, but you definitely feel the targeted age group when you read them all quickly – they’re very repetitive with the details of Theo’s life, and they run together after a while. That being said, the highlight of most of the books is Theo’s stop in Animal Court on behalf of one friend or another, where, thanks to lax rules, he gets to truly act like a lawyer. It’s a fun series; they were all quick reads and something out of the norm for me.

I also read Thief of Corinth by Tessa Afshar, which is not at all a thriller, though it has some suspense elements to it. It’s biblical fiction that I highly enjoyed and definitely recommend.

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So, overall, I’d say I didn’t dive too deep into true thrillers this month. But I did read, and I read things that are little different than I usually do. So I consider that a success. What have you been reading lately?