The Long Way Back: A Novel

This novel started with an intriguing premise – Charlie, the single mother of Eva, a young adolescent girl who's being bullied at school, decides to take her daughter on an extended road trip that turns into a way of life for several years. A random photo becomes a media post that goes viral and the two of them inadvertently become social influencers, representing brand names and achieving a kind of internet fame. But once Eva is a senior in high school, she begs for a more normal life and the two of them settle down in one place and start putting down roots.

The first part of the novel kept my attention. I was invested in how this mother and daughter were going to adjust to normal everyday life. But then the story takes a turn. Charlie and Eva are out sailing, Charlie takes a nap below deck, and when she comes back up, Eva has disappeared into thin air. This is when, for me, the story, went off the rails. Charlie is suspected of knowing more than she lets on about where Eva is and readers ae also clueless. I won't say more since it's a plot twist that gets more and more convoluted, only that the second half of the novel for me was too over-the-top and unrealistic to really fit with the story I'd been reading.

For me, the most interesting aspect was the mother-daughter relationship, so caring yet fragile, and how the two of them coped with both their new-found fame and then trying to re-build a normal life. I would have liked to see more of that.

Thanks to NetGalley and Atria for providing an ARC to me in exchange for an honest review.