The Long Way Home by Andrew Klavan

I give this book 3 stars

*****

Charlie is a teenager that awakened one day with no memory of an entire year of his life, a year that was very pivotal in his safety and well-being. He woke up to find that he, Charlie West, all American good boy, was convicted of murdering his once best friend, had escaped from prison, somehow joined a terrorist sect in the US and was on the run from both that sect and the police.


In The Long Way Home we join Charlie while he is on his way back to his hometown to clear his name. He runs into "the good guys" (the police) trying to stop him and arrest him, he runs into "the bad guys" (the Homelanders, terrorists) trying to kill him for a reason he doesn't know. He fights his way back home and begins his quest to clear himself before the police can find him and take him back to continue his life sentence, most likely with time added.

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This review is going to be very similar to my review of "The Last Thing I Remember", Book one of the Homelanders series. It took a lot to force myself to make it through the first half of this book. The conversations are juvenile and simplistic, the characters are shallow and Charlie, at age 18, is a little odd to follow with all of his thinking about "good guys" and "bad guys". His thought process makes me think more of an 11 year old than an 18 year old.


That being said, once you make it past the first half of the book the action picks up and makes it a more interesting read. I found that there was quite a bit that could have been editted out. There are a few too many paragraphs of Charlie describing the a fight by explaining that he knows exactly what move the guy is going to make and exactly how he's going to counter that move and so on. It continued for at least a couple of pages like that instead of simply narrating the fight itself Klavan was almost over doing it with trying to prove that Charlie was a black belt and wonderful fighter. We already know that from the fact that he's escaped twice from the police and has managed to stay alive while tons of "bad guys" have gone after him.


So, in the end I read the book and liked it enough to finish the entire thing. Will I read Book 3 in November? Probably. Will I recommend this book to my friends? Probably not. If you really enjoyed the first book in the series then chances are you will also enjoy this one. If you haven't read the first book try that one out if you must and come to your own conclusions.


I received a copy of this book free from Thomas Nelson Publishers as part of their BookSneeze.com book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 <http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/waisidx_03/16cfr255_03.html> : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”