Reposting my 2012 because the Kindle Edition Box set (complete four books nearly 1200 pages) is on sale for $3.99.
Takeaway: Tight young adult thriller set in a post 9/11 world.
Andrew Klavan’s thrillers are tightly written and full of suspense. I read Identity Man (an thriller oriented toward adults) a couple weeks ago and picked up The Last Thing I Remember a couple days ago when Amazon price matched Barnes and Nobles’ deal of the day.
The Last Thing I Remember is the first in a series of four books (all have been released.)
They follow Charlie West, who is 17 at the start of this book. He is a good kid, from a good family. He likes school, goes to church, and is a black belt in Karate. He has a secret dream of someday becoming an Air Force Fighter pilot.
But at the beginning of the book, he wakes up tied to a chair after having been tortured. He has no idea how he got there, but he knows he has to get out. Over the course of the book, he regains some, but by no means all of his memory.
He escapes from the compound where he is being held and tries to find his family and his life. But things turn out to be not as easy as he had hoped. He decides the best means to getting back to his life is to prevent a terrorist attack. But that leads him to more things he does not understand, about himself and others around him.
This is hard book to talk about because it is hard to describe the plot without giving it all away. I enjoyed the book and it read quickly. I finished it in a day. The ending was a cliff hanger and the first book moves directly into the second. I will probably read it very soon. (Links to reviews of the rest of the series below.)
The publisher is Thomas Nelson, which is a Christian publishing company, but other than a few sections this does not have a strong Christian element to it. It has clean language, no sex, but some violence. I would gauge it appropriate for teens 14 and up. It deals with terrorists and political matters. The author is well known for his conservative political leanings, but at least in this book that is not the main focus of the book.
Purchase Links: Paperback, Hardcover, Kindle Edition
The complete series as a single ebook, The Homelanders, is now available.
Other Andrew Klavan Books Reviewed by Bookwi.se
- The Last Thing I Remember (Homelanders #1) by Andrew Klavan
- The Long Way Home (Homelanders #2) by Andrew Klavan
- The Truth of the Matter (Homelanders #3) by Andrew Klavan
- The Final Hour (Homelanders #4) by Andrew Klavan
- Identity Man by Andrew Klavan
- Crazy Dangerous by Andrew Klavan (stand alone young adult)
I finished the series recently. The first book was okay and the best of the series. I did not enjoy the other books much. Compared to some other young adult books I have read, this felt dumbed down. I found the teenage perspective annoying. Perhaps it was too accurate in that regard. Also, there were too many chases, captures and escapes. The memory loss as plot device did not work as well here as it did in Once a Spy.