Brutal, raw, emotional ride. Amazing book that I just could not put down. I felt for the characters as if I knew them. Read this book!

This thriller tells how sexual assault follows the victim throughout her life and often influences choices, good and bad. This is a realistic telling of how women can spiral into alcohol and drugs, closing up and not trusting anyone or anything. The three main characters are deeply flawed and are just like us as we discover in this raw novel. Emily, the heart of the story, is a kickass ,take no prisoners woman as a result of her personal history which, when asked to help a friends daughter, flares to the present and has to be handled once and for all. It was draining to read, and empowering to finish. Brava!

I received The Long Road Home from NetGalley in exchange for my fair and honest review.

I found this book amazing, it was so well written and the emotions it invoked in me were hard to describe. Being able to pull all my emotions is what a book needs to earn a 5star rating from me. I was hooked from the beginning and all the twists and turns in the book only helped to draw me in more to this storyline. At times the rawness of this story was hard to cope with, yet I couldnt put the book down. I stayed up most of the night reading this book. For those that enjoy thrillers I would certainly recommend.

The Long Road Home was by no means an easy read. Based around the brutal events that happened to Emily Winter as a teenager, this may be triggering for some readers. That being said, it was a book that kept me on the edge of my seat and I did become fully immersed in the storyline that reached a wholly satisfying conclusion. J H Morgan writes suspense brilliantly, and for anyone who isn't of too sensitive a disposition, I highly recommend this book.

I think this could have been a good book. The story line is interesting but it was written poorly. I felt the book was all over the place. The main character was contradicting all through the book. One chapter she was said to be a certain way and the next chapter she was quite the opposite. There were a few chapters where it stated then and now. To me if a book wants to use that type of then and now it should be through the whole book not just a chapter or two. I also didn't like how what happened in the past was explained through the story. It came at the oddest times in the book. This book was also very predictable. When I read a book I like to take guesses on things, but I also like to be fooled and wrong. This book was to easy to guess the out come. I just wanted to get through the book for it to end. It wasn't horrible but I wouldn't recomend it either.

Emily’s past haunts her, but having to really face it while helping Casey deal with a similar situation is tearing her apart.

Terrifying and heart stopping. Hooked from the first line to the last

Thank you NetGalley and J. H. Morgan for this early edition and hearing my honest review. Looking forward to reading more with you
#partner

This was a great read, although a little tough mentally at some parts. A friend of mine reviewed this book and loved it so much, so I immediately came to grab a copy, and I'm happy I did.

The writing was a bit choppy in some parts, but hopefully that was fixed with editing. I definitely want to read more by JH Morgan.

The one thing I really hope is that the publishers have sorted out the terrible editing. In my e-edition there were page breaks

in strange places

and parts of the text were in the wrong place - I would read a part that made no sense where it was in the text, sometimes starting mid-sentence - and then a couple of pages further on would realise that the piece of text should be read here.

The other thing that I found irritating was that the action was set in two times, and this just made it difficult to read, as there was no clear separation between the two timelines. Sometimes the telling of earlier action (Emily's initial trauma) was recounted as a dream, and sometimes it was placed in the here-and-now action, with no real reason why.

While most of the characters were fairly well described, I didn't warm to them; they were a little too black-and-white with little grey. The villains were a bit "too" villainous, and I had guessed the identity of the mystery person well before the reveal. The descriptions of what happened to Emily were brutal, and held no punches. But despite that, I didn't really feel much empathy towards her as a character.

I'm afraid I didn't really warm to this story; it got a bit too leaden in the middle, and I found myself glancing down into the right hand corner of my Kindle to see what percentage of the book I had read. My heart sank a little when I saw the "56% read" notification. If a reader thinks "Oh, Lord, I'm only just halfway through..." it's not a good sign.

This book had potential, but in my opinion, it didn't reach it. However, all the 5 star reviews beg to differ. Horses for courses. I give it 3 stars.

I received a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. Thank you NetGalley!

The Long Road Home was an emotional, raw, tragic story. It's on the longer side, but I feel like i read it quickly.

The blurb doesn't do it justice. wow.

I will rate The Long Road Home by J H Morgan a 5/5 stars. This book was simply amazing. Actually amazing may not be strong enough of a word to describe the magnitude brilliance that demonstrates how impressive this read was. This story had any and everything that a thriller should contain within its pages. It intricately detailed the devastation that a sexual assault leaves upon its victims, even almost after 20 years has passed. Emily Winter, a brutal rape survivor turned entrepreneur, receives a phone call from her former social worker, Paige, which sends her spiraling back down memory lane to a horrific past life that she tries desperately on a daily basis to keep hidden when Paige's daughter is raped on a trip with friends. Paige asks Emily to help her daughter, Casey, to try to come out of a depressive state after her sexual assault since no one else knows how difficult a situation like this is more than Emily does since she experienced a similar abuse years ago. Emily is pretty much reclusive and pushes everyone away from her in fears of becoming too attached to people and doesn't want to return back home to Hawthorne, the place her attacked occurred, but relents due to the fact that Paige was the only person there to help her through her attack years ago. Emily spends her days working with her assistant, Glynis, and her nights binge drinking and doing random bar hops in search for meaningless one night stands. Emily feels obligated to help Paige's daughter and embarks upon a stressful, difficult, scary but rewarding journey that will force Emily to come to terms with her dark past and provide her with hope for a brighter future.

What I enjoyed about this book:

This story was intensely raw, realistic and gripping. It was very detailed and the storyline was one that kept you engaged and intrigued to discover more about Emily's past and how her brutal rape affected her present life. The emotions that each of the characters had were ones that I could feel myself. I sympathized with Emily and Casey as they spoke about being sexually assaulted. The ongoing nightmares that Emily endured were heart pounding and fear inducing. I felt incredibly saddened for her when I read about the abuse that her captors placed upon her.
This book shows the readers how one can find faith in the darkness of a crisis after turning away from God for so long. I believe that this is something the author was trying to get across to their audience.
All of the characters of this book were well thought out and believable. There wasn't a dull moment while reading this.
I enjoyed the fact that the author showed how difficult it was for Emily to let her guard down and try to trust people and find faith in humanity again after being damaged by the brutality of her abusers. Reading about Emily discovering love again with her first love Liam was heart touching and beautiful. I cannot express that enough.
I enjoyed reading about the deeply rooted family issues and seeing how things played out with family members as they all try to heal and forgive one another.
The affects of alcohol and self-medicating was very vivid and realistically told in this story.
This book also focused on religion and how one could twist religion and religious practices to serve their own sick and demented purposes.

What I did not enjoy about this book:
As this was a proof copy, I do understand that it needs to be edited, that is why I did not take off any points for the errors in my review, but please fix the fluidity of the story. Lots of parts are jumbled up and are out of place which made it very difficult to read and follow along in some spots. Also, please address the issues of fluidity within the storyline during the transitioning scenes, especially when Emily is transitioning from dreaming back into her awakened state. Also, the fluidity of transitioning scenes going from Emily's viewpoint to another characters: I.E. moving to Cathy, Liam's mother, speaking.
I also did not like how many times coffee was referenced in this story. Good grief, did these characters not drink anything else? It was so aggravating. "Do you want me to make coffee?" How many times does one drink coffee and need to write about it? I only remember tea being referenced once. And tequila was referenced a lot as well, but not as much as the word coffee.
Also, consistency of references to items should be addressed: I.E. Cotton Candy or Cotton Floss... Stick to one or the other.

Trigger Warning:
Do not read this book if you are sensitive to the following: sexual assault, molestation, murders, family crises, alcoholism, abuse of any form and sexual references used as mental escapes.

Thank you NetGalley and J H Morgan for the opportunity to read and review this book for the exchange of an honest opinion.

The Long Road Home, by Jolien Hitzeroth, is a compelling thriller about three remarkable women. Two of the women are survivors of kidnap and brutal torture. The third women is a friend of one and the mother of the other. Emily, the main protagonist, reminded me of the “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” incredibly courageous and equally closed.

This is a book that pulls you in on the first page and does not let go until the last page. The characters are damaged and flawed and yet, capture your heart. It is not my typical thriller genre, and I admit there were parts that were tough to read. But, it was one of the most satisfying books that I’ve read in a while. Although I am sure some one criticize the neat resolution, I appreciated it.

Thanks to NetGalley and BooksGoSocial for giving me the opportunity to read an electronic ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Great read. The author wrote a story that was interesting and moved at a pace that kept me engaged. The characters were easy to invest in.

I was given a copy from #netgalley for an honest review. The book wasn't what I expected from the description but I was drawn in right from the beginning when I'd been in a book rut. It was a good satisfying read.

This book was not what I expected! It was brutally raw, the characters, the story line and especially the nightmares. It's a long book, so I expected reading it to take a while, but I couldn't put it down. It's the most emotional book I've ever read as well as the most memorable. This book is definitely not for everyone. It's ugly, it's brutal. And yet filled with hope. All the characters are full of mistakes and flaws. And that's what makes this story so special. It's real and gritty. I love that the main character is so openly broken and yet still willing to help someone else through the trauma of assault and how they both need to find healing in their own way. The twists and turns kept me on my toes from beginning to end. I cried more times than I'm willing to admit over their pain, their path, their story. An absolute must read!