The Last Thing I Remember

by Andrew Klavan

Overview

High schooler Charlie West just woke up in a nightmare.

He’s strapped to a chair. He’s covered in blood and bruises. He hurts all over. And a strange voice outside the door just ordered his death.

Charlie West is a good kid. The last thing he can remember, he was a normal high-school student doing normal things—working on his homework, practicing karate, daydreaming of becoming an air force pilot, writing a pretty girl’s number on his hand. How long ago was that? And more to the point . . . How is he going to get out of this room alive?

By calling on his deepest reserves of strength and focus, Charlie manages a desperate escape . . . only to find out that this nightmare isn't ending. There's a whole year of his life that he can't remember—a year in which he was convicted of murdering his best friend and working with terrorists.

Now, with the police hunting him and a band of killers on his trail, he's got to find the answers to some of the deepest questions there are: Who am I? What do I stand for? And how am I going to stay alive?

From Edgar Award winning and bestselling author Andrew Klavan comes the first installment of The Homelanders series.

• Exciting young adult suspense novel
• Approximately 82,000 words
• Part of the Homelanders series
  • Book 1: The Last Thing I Remember
  • Book 2: The Long Way Home
  • Book 3: The Truth of the Matter
  • Book 4: The Final Hour

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781595545862
Publisher:	Nelson, Thomas, Inc.
Publication date:	06/07/2010
Series:	Homelanders Series , #1
Pages:	346
Sales rank:	346,282
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.10(d)
Lexile:	HL690L (what's this?)
Age Range:	13 - 17 Years

About the Author

Andrew Klavan is an award-winning writer, screenwriter, and media commentator. An internationally bestselling novelist and two-time Edgar Award-winner, Klavan is also the host of a popular podcast on DailyWire.com, The Andrew Klavan Show. His work has been made into films starring Clint Eastwood, Michael Douglas, and Michael Caine. His essays on politics, religion, and culture have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the LA Times, and elsewhere.

Editorial Reviews

The first young adult novel from Edgar-winner Klavan, which kicks off the Homelanders series, offers fast-paced action sequences, but disappoints with a weak plot. Charlie West is a good student, a black belt at karate and has finally asked out his dream girl. One night, he goes to sleep and wakes up to find himself one year in the future at a secret compound, with no memory of what's happened to him. He manages to escape, and as he evades his former captors. he discovers that he's also a fugitive from the law and has somehow been drawn into an Islamist terrorist conspiracy. Details of the last day Charlie remembers are slowly filled in over the course of his escape, but the most intriguing parts of the novel are the present-day action sequences; although Charlie often gets lucky, he's also very capable of recognizing that luck and taking advantage of opportunities when they arise. Unfortunately, he's never really given any room to grow in his personal beliefs or character, with his certainty that he's always correct consistently getting reinforced throughout. Ages 14-up. (Apr.)

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Publishers Weekly

When high schooler Charlie West wakes up in a torture chamber, the last thing he remembers is a normal day. He escapes the torturers who "look foreign" only to find he's wanted for the murder of his former friend Alex, who'd fallen in with a bad crowd and lost his faith. Captured by the police, Charlie escapes with the help of persons unknown and stops a plot to kill the Secretary of Homeland Security before racing off to clear his name. Edgar winner Klavan's first of a series for teens could not be more of a mess. His idea of high school seems to come entirely from after-school specials, and the characters never rise above cliches. The tension surrounding Charlie's escape in the first half is continually undercut by alternating chapters of told-not-shown memories of his previous life; the ending is not so much a cliffhanger as an abrupt termination of the story in midstream. This jingoistic paranoia might still play in some quarters, but it is to be hoped that its time is passing. Save your thriller dollars for better. (Thriller. YA)

Kirkus Reviews