Hello beautiful people! Welcome back to a new review! For this review, I get into Long Time Gone by Charlie Donlea, the second book of his that I have had the pleasure of checking out. A super interesting story diving into the topics of family history, generational lies, and how that makes us into who we are today. With a twisty mystery in the past and lots of questions in the future, it’s a super interesting book to dive into.
Main Characters:
Sloan Hastings: Her entire world has turned upside down when, for her medical training, she puts her DNA into a site to find her birth family, and finds not only family but years of hidden secrets. Finding out that she has been missing/presumed dead as a baby, Sloan dives into her past and her parents’ past to find out what happened to them and herself.
The Margolis Family (Sloan’s birth family): Messy, complicated, and full of secrets. As Sloane digs deeper into her role as baby Charlotte, you realize pretty quickly that this isn’t just a simple “find your roots” situation. There’s history here, and not the good kind.
Sheriff Stamos: His father was the sheriff when Sloan and her parents went missing many years ago. When his father died in suspicious circumstances, and now the case is reawakened by the return of Charlotte, he works with Sloan to unravel the long-awaited truth.
My Review
This is the second Charlie Donlea book I have checked out, and I have to say he writes some really interesting and dynamic mysteries. I am looking forward to checking out more in the future. That being said, given that I enjoyed the last book of his I read, I went into this with higher expectations, and I feel like they were met for sure. There were a few aspects of the book that I didn’t enjoy as much, like the parts from the past, but despite those, it was a really good mystery and read. I didn’t find the ending to be the greatest, but it wasn’t terrible either. I landed on a 7.5/10 rating for Long Time Gone overall.
Sloane’s life is turned upside down when she discovers she wasn’t given up for adoption; she was kidnapped and illegally placed with another family. Determined to find the truth, she sets out to uncover her real identity, only to stumble into a much larger and darker story. A historical disappearance tied to her biological family brings multiple people, timelines, and buried secrets into play. As Sloane digs deeper, the lines between past and present blur, and what she uncovers forces her to question everything she thought she knew about where she came from.
The premise is so intriguing. Finding out you were kidnapped as a baby and your entire identity isn’t real? Immediate hook. And I liked how the story didn’t just stop there; it builds into something bigger with the historical disappearance and all the connections that come with it. There are a lot of moving parts, but it never felt overwhelming. The characters were easy to follow, and the way everything was structured made the story feel pretty smooth overall.
That said, while I enjoyed the plot, it didn’t feel super unique. It’s definitely engaging, but it leans into familiar thriller territory at times. Not a bad thing, just not something that completely stood out compared to others in the genre.
The pacing was solid, though. Some things really dragged, but not all, which I always appreciate. It kept things moving without feeling rushed, and I stayed interested the whole way through. It did feel like the parts from the past dragged on a bit, but at the end, it is shown that those parts are important to the story; it’s just early on, you question if it’s a filler because it does feel like it a bit at first.
The ending is a bit of a mix. Some parts felt predictable, like I could see them coming from a mile away, but there were still moments that surprised me, which kept it from feeling too flat. The ending wasn’t super satisfying and was for sure surprising, but mostly because it didn’t make total sense.
Overall, this is a strong, enjoyable thriller. It might not reinvent the wheel, but it’s well done, easy to get into, and keeps you engaged from start to finish. Definitely worth the read if you like character-driven mysteries with a bit of history woven in.
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