Book Title: The Long Way Home
Author: Karen McQuestion
3.75 out of 5 stars
Plot Background:
This is a novel about four women that embark on a road trip that will forever change who they are. Marnie is a woman who has lost everything, her live-in boyfriend Brian has passed away, leaving Brian's son, a boy Marnie has raised, to live with his mother Kimberly in Las Vegas. Laverne is Marnie's landlady and a recluse who lives just below her, waiting for death to come knocking at her door next. Rita is a woman desperate for justice, as her daughter Melinda was murdered 10 years ago and the murderer still remains free. All three women are brought together by a very different young woman, Jazzy. Jazzy has psychic abilities, and upon listening to a spirit telling her to go to a "Good Grief" meeting at a local rec center in their Wisconsin town, meets these women. Jazzy soon proposes the idea that the four women take a road trip to Las Vegas to retrieve Marnie's "stepson", and along the way they encounter things that make each woman face their individual fears, and make them all come to realize the importance of love.
My Thoughts:
This book really did take me by surprise. When I first started the novel, I was worried that it would feel too much like reading about my mom and her friends going on a road trip (lots of bathroom breaks and stories about cooking...). What I found however, was a book about a vibrant young person, a thirty-something woman feeling lost, a middle aged woman dealing with a never ending heartache, and a feisty older woman.
I am sure you all are starting to notice a trend, but I am a real sucker for good character development. To me, it is what makes or breaks a story. At the last page, nobody should be the same person they were on page one, in other words, if your main characters are flat, the book falls flat. This book however did a fantastic job developing each individual character, and it did so fairly evenly, which is a challenge when there are so many main characters. For example, when the book began I thought that Jazzy would be the least developed, I thought that she had things together for someone so young, and I really generally just liked her, but at the last page, she has found love and a job opportunity (I promise I wont spoil anything more), and she changes into what a young person should be, full of endless possibilities.
I also loved the character Laverne. She is so feisty and hilarious, she brings a lot of comic relief to a story otherwise heavily laden with sorrow. She really surprised me, I wont give away what she does, but at a crucial moment she truly made my jaw drop.
Marnie and Rita, to me, were less likable characters, but to the authors credit they were still very well developed. Rita starts out so desperate to know what Jazzy is seeing of her daughter, that she doesn't really see the obvious messages her daughter is sending her, but in the end she has confronted things and is able to see the signs being sent to her. Marnie was a strange and dynamic character to me. While she was less likable to me, she is also so much like women I know. She is very pessimistic and she has trouble seeing past right now. She is so focused on getting to Las Vegas that she hardly stops to enjoy the scenery. However, because of some of the things that she goes through in the course of the book, it also makes you feel like you can understand why she is so pessimistic. Her body becomes almost a literal punching bag, in some ways its a little comical that everything seems to happen to her, but then you also feel sorry for her. I have such mixed feelings about her. Perhaps this is what the author wanted? If so, KUDOS!!!
Another thing that was done extremely well was the point of view. It was third person the entire book, but the author seamlessly changes who the "focus character" is, making each chapter like being in the mind of a character without actually being in their mind. It almost felt like I was watching a movie in my head, like as the point of view shifts, the camera would pan to the person in focus (hint hint any big movie producers out there reading this...).
One thing in this book that I felt took away from the novel was the pacing. Like any road trip, there are natural lulls, but for a little while it felt like the lull stretched on a long time (before the bikers- dont want to give away any more!). There were some parts that really and truly took me by surprise, in the middle of a lull there is a scene at a rest stop where Laverne shocked me, and there were other sporadic moments as well where the pace would speed up considerably, but almost immediately it would slow to a near stop again. Having said this, the climactic parts were certainly ones that kept you on the edge of your seat. Overall though, the story felt a little bit slow, I didn't want to stay up til three am reading because I just couldn't put it down.
This book was a good read overall, it is definatly a book I would only recommend to female readers, but I certainly enjoyed it! (Also loved that in the Acknowledgement the author mentioned her gratitude to bloggers, earned some bonus points!)
As always here is a link to the Kindle edition of the book, or you can use the Amazon search box on the side of the screen to locate a paper copy:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Long-Way-Home-ebook/dp/B0073HQ85O/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1343794155&sr=8-2&keywords=the+long+way+home
Happy Reading!!!
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