Epic Reading Challenge: June

Written by Grace H.

Welcome back to the Epic Reads Challenge 2024, where each month some of the TBG members choose a book that fits a specific prompt. Provided by Epic Reads, these prompts inspire new and unique book choices among readers. We encourage the community to join in this challenge with us and participate each month!

The prompt for June was… a book genre outside your comfort zone.

Most readers have a genre (or maybe a couple) to which they are loyal readers. Maybe your bookshelf is largely disproportional with a ton of books of a single genre (Romantasy, I’m looking at you). But this month the Teen Book Guild encourages you to step outside your comfort zone and try a different genre than you normally read, whether that’s romance, thriller, or even non-fiction!

This month I chose The Lake House by Sarah Beth Durst, which is a YA thriller. I read a small amount of thrillers, but usually it’s not my favorite genre.

This exciting novel follows Claire, an anxious teenager who is spending the summer at a remote camp with people she’s never met before. But when she arrives at the camp, Claire and her new acquaintances discover that the entire facility has been burned. But that’s not all, something or someone in the woods has killed the camp director, and now is hunting the three girls.

This thriller really surprised me. It started off just like any other, with a scary problem for these teenagers to solve, but as the story went on, it took twists and turns that I’m not sure any reader could have predicted. The ending really surprised me, and I think if I was the author, I might’ve taken it a different direction, but all in all, I was happy I picked up this thriller.

I would certainly recommend this one to any readers who are looking to expand their genre horizons into the thriller/mystery category.