Blue Heaven - C.J. Box - 4 stars

I read this book with a friend for a buddy read. This is a new author for me as well. I really enjoyed this book a lot especially with no idea what the book was going to be about. I have to say that I am glad that I read it and found a new author to enjoy. This is not a mystery but a thriller as there is not a "whodunit' to the story, well not to the reader anyway.

In this book we have two kids, Annie and William, bother and sister, who witnesses a murder. They were spotted by the murderers and are now running for their life until they run into Jess Rawlins. Jess helps the kids by hiding them, and then the story goes on from there.

I loved both the premise of this story and the characters. Both very well developed and wrote. I loved the action and the excitement. My favorite character, hands down, is Jess. Such a strong, well developed protagonist. He is definitely someone I would want on my side of things. For some reason as I read the book, I kept picturing Sam Elliot playing this role of Jess if it were ever a movie. There were several heroes born in this book, Jess being one of them. One of my favorite things about this story was how the relationship between Jess and kids grew. How these kids had to trust someone and how they discovered that they could trust this man simply by him being who he was.

The antagonists were also written very well. I definitely hated each one of them for many, many reasons that I can't get into since this is a spoiler free review. There were the 'bad cops' of the worse kind, a big mouth reporter, of course we have to have one of those. The kind that grate on your nerves and you want to either put them in their place or shoot them. I think the author developed all of them very well.

I have to say that I was a little surprised by the ending of this book. I feel as though the Author left it open for the reader's interpretation. So I feel like there was not any really closure to the end of the story. It can be interpreted in so many ways, one of which I hate to even explore. I recommend this book to anyone that loves a little mystery or thriller in their dose of daily reading.