Book Review - The Truth About Ben and June by Alex Kiester

 

 

 

 

**May contain spoilers**

Ben and June always felt that they were destined to meet since, the moment they met in a hospital waiting room on New Year's Eve. They knew that their chance encounter and subsequent relationship was special because of all the unlikely decisions that bought them together. After a few years of marriage, June is struggling as a new mom. She wonders about the her life before the birth of her son and if she didn't give up the lead role in a famous ballet company to become a mother. June feels like she is a bad mom and feels alone when she is betrayed by someone close to her. She decides to write to her deceased mother in hopes that her mother would guide her.

One morning, Ben wakes up to the sound of his son crying. He tries to locate June but, quickly realizes June is gone along with her suitcase. Ben is desperate to find June and tries to piece together why she left. As he talks with her friends, he realizes that there were things June were keeping a secret from him.  As Ben continues to dig into June's daily life, he starts to realize that he might know his wife as well as he thought.

I thought that the book had an interesting premise and was excited to read it. The first third of the book kept me intrigued but, when the cause of her disappearance becomes clearer, I started disconnecting from the book. I thought that the cause would have been something different. Personally, I am not a mother so, I couldn't connect with June on that level and that seemed to the main driver for her wanting to disappear. I even found that the connection between June and her friends a bit trivial at times. For example, when June was so upset that she plucked bananas  from her friend's bag and dropped it on the floor. Then her friend called her a psychopath or something like that. Perhaps, as mentioned maybe I just couldn't relate to any of the characters. I believe readers who have children might be able to connect better with the characters and would find this book more enjoyable than I did.