boysteals

My Rating ~ Five stars

5-gold-stars

RELEASE DATE: 4 April 2019

Publisher: Orchard Books

Format: Paperback

Pages: 300

Blurb

Can two broken boys find their perfect home?

Sam is only fifteen but he and his autistic older brother, Avery, have been abandoned by every relative he’s ever known. Now Sam’s trying to build a new life for them. He survives by breaking into empty houses when their owners are away, until one day he’s caught out when a family returns home. To his amazement this large, chaotic family takes him under their wing – each teenager assuming Sam is a friend of another sibling. Sam finds himself inextricably caught up in their life, and falling for the beautiful Moxie.

But Sam has a secret, and his past is about to catch up with him.

Review

Thankyou to Hachette Australia for providing me a copy of The Boy Who Steals Houses in exchange for an honest review.

The Boy Who Steals Houses is a gender bent goldilocks retelling and it was one of those books where I didn’t want to stop reading, but I didn’t want to get to the end either, because I was NOT READY to say goodbye to the these characters! They were amazing and flawed and REAL. Sam’s sense of responsibility for his brother, even though it often caused him pain was beautiful and I loved the way both sides of it were shown. He wasn’t a hero, he didn’t pretend it was all roses, it was HARD but he did it anyway because he loved him. 😭 Sam and Moxie (and Mr De Lainey!) are some of my new favourite characters ever. I loved the way no-one was perfect, they all had challenges and had been shaped by their life experiences to react in different ways. They make mistakes, they want, they’re afraid, they feel like people you would actually meet. I became so immersed in this story that I kind of had to remind myself it wasn’t real.

This one had me going through all the emotions – it was sad and anxious but gave me feel good laughs in parts too. I loved the way the De Lainey’s family was so chaotic, and just how I imagine a huge family would be 😂 It also made me eat a lot of food. You’ve been warned. There was a lot of eating and talk about delicious food and I wanted to JOIN IN, so I did. At every opportunity.

The Boy Who Steals Houses will be sitting firmly at the top of my list as one of my favourite contemporary reads of all time!