Review: The Long and Faraway Gone

The Long and Faraway Gone

by Lou Berney

Publisher: William Morrow

Pages: 464

Format: ARC 

Buy the Book: Amazon

Goodreads:  In the summer of 1986, two tragedies rocked Oklahoma City. Six movie-theater employees were killed in an armed robbery, while one inexplicably survived. Then, a teenage girl vanished from the annual State Fair. Neither crime was ever solved.

Twenty-five years later, the reverberations of those unsolved cases quietly echo through survivors’ lives. A private investigator in Vegas, Wyatt’s latest inquiry takes him back to a past he’s tried to escape—and drags him deeper into the harrowing mystery of the movie house robbery that left six of his friends dead. 

Like Wyatt, Julianna struggles with the past—with the day her beautiful older sister Genevieve disappeared. When Julianna discovers that one of the original suspects has resurfaced, she’ll stop at nothing to find answers.

As fate brings these damaged souls together, their obsessive quests spark sexual currents neither can resist. But will their shared passion and obsession heal them, or push them closer to the edge? Even if they find the truth, will it help them understand what happened, that long and faraway gone summer? Will it set them free—or ultimately destroy them?

Kritters Thoughts:  What a book!!  Four storylines, two in the past and two in the present and they mix and mingle and made for such a great book.

So two of the storylines take place in the summer of 1986 - one is centered around a shooting in a movie theater with one survivor and the other is a younger sister who goes to a fair with her old sister and her sister goes missing and it is never solved.  The two current storylines revolve around one PI who has returned to Oklahoma City to help solve a mystery about a night club who is having some vandalism and such; the other is the younger sister who is still trying to solve the mystery.

With all of that above, you would think it would be an utter mess, but NO the editing and chapter titles helped to keep the stories organized and clear.  I loved having all the storylines all in one book.  The conclusion of each storyline was timed perfectly and I was completely satisfied with who did what, where and how.  And although it was a bit of a chunky book, it read so fluidly that I didn't even realize it!

If you are new to the mystery genre or have read them all, pick this one up.  It is so different from most things that I have read.  

I am officially a Lou Berney fan and will be looking for his previous and future books.  


Rating: absolutely loved it and want a sequel

Disclosure of Material Connection:  I received one copy of this book free of charge from TLC Book Tours.  I was not required to write a positive review in exchange for receipt of the book; rather, the opinions expressed in this review are my own.