Early Review – The Pearl Thief by Elizabeth Wein (3/5 stars)

Reading Level: Young Adult
Genre: Historical Fiction
Length: 336 pages
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Release Date: May 2, 2017
ISBN-13: 978-1484717165
Stand Alone or Series: Stand Alone
Source: eGalley from NetGalley.com
Rating: 3/5 stars

“When fifteen-year-old Julia Beaufort-Stuart wakes up in the hospital, she knows the lazy summer break she’d imagined won’t be exactly what she anticipated. And once she returns to her grandfather’s estate, a bit banged up but alive, she begins to realize that her injury might not have been an accident. One of her family’s employees is missing, and he disappeared on the very same day she landed in the hospital.

Desperate to figure out what happened, she befriends Euan McEwen, the Scottish Traveller boy who found her when she was injured, and his standoffish sister, Ellen. As Julie grows closer to this family, she witnesses firsthand some of the prejudices they’ve grown used to-a stark contrast to her own upbringing-and finds herself exploring thrilling new experiences that have nothing to do with a missing-person investigation.

Her memory of that day returns to her in pieces, and when a body is discovered, her new friends are caught in the crosshairs of long-held biases about Travellers. Julie must get to the bottom of the mystery in order to keep them from being framed for the crime.”

I got this from NetGalley to review. I was incredibly excited to see a new book by Wein. This is supposed to be the prequel to Code Name Verity. The book ended up being okay but not great. The story itself was fairly boring and was kind of a drag to get through.

In general I don’t have a ton to say about this book. It was mostly just kind of blah. The writing flows well enough and I did enjoy some of the historical elements to the story. However, the whole mystery behind who attacks Julia at the beginning and the mystery behind the pearls just never really felt all that urgent or engaging.

I think my favorite part about this book was Wein’s afterward about the history behind the story at the end.

Overall this was a pretty boring story compared to Wein’s other books. I would definitely recommend reading Code Name Verity and Rose Under Fire over this book. If you are a huge Julia fan you might want to check this out to get Julia’s background. I honestly think this would have been better done as a novella than a full length novel.

This book goes towards the following reading challenges:
– You Read How Many Books? Reading Challenge
– New Release Reading Challenge
– YA Reading Challenge