The Long Way Home

By: Rachel Spangler

Narrated by: Melody Muzljakovich

Length: 7 hrs and 32 mins

Publisher's summary

They say you can't go home again, but Raine St. James doesn't know why anyone would want to.

Rory St. James was disowned after she came out at 17. She rebounded by moving to Chicago, changing her name to Raine and putting down her hometown to audiences around the country. Now, 10 years later, too old to be considered a gay youth, broke, evicted, and fresh off a much needed break-up, Raine St. James is forced to accept a job teaching at Bramble University in Darlington, the town she's been publicly bashing for the last decade.

Beth Devoroux was born and raised in Darlington. Despite losing her parents at a young age, she has been nurtured by the people of the town and is well loved by everyone who knows her. She leads a comfortable life with good job at Bramble University, a long-term but closeted relationship, friends that she can count on, and everything she thinks she wants, so why is she so drawn to a rabble-rouser like Raine St. James?

Two women who couldn't be less suited for romance - a hometown girl and the one who vowed never to look back - are drawn together by a shared past and a passion for each other neither can deny.

©2010 Rachel Spangler (P)2017 Bold Strokes Books Inc

Close to home

Being from a small town is not easy in, and of its self. But being LGBTQ, within a small town that’s a very tight Christian orientated can feel not only frustrating; but also very isolating. And this story reflects that quite well, and in a way that draws you in. And will cause you to feel not only a frog in your throat. It will also cause you to feel more nervous, then a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs; as we tend to say. As well as all of the emotions I’ve felt living in a Small Texas town. I hope the author, rights a sequel to this book, as it would be a pleasure to follow the life of Ms. Roy St. James through the eyes of another.

My first Spangler book...

I had no framework to go by so I can’t say if this is a “usual” Spangler work or not. Overall it was pretty good. The plot was well developed but a little slow. I’m a happy ever after kind of girl so I like endings that give me an idea of how things turned out. The narrator’s voice for Beth was a little breathy, making her sometimes sound like Jessica Rabbit or Marilyn Monroe. Otherwise the narration was good.

not too bad

There’s some sound feed back issues, but over all good story. I grew up in a small farming community so I could relate to a lot of the feeling the main character had.

Good audiobook

This was good. The reader has talent. She does the different voices and accents well and acts out the dialogue. I did notice some frequent technical errors (mispronounced words, dropping the ends of sentences) that I think were related to how quickly she was reading, so if she were to slow down and not get too ahead of herself I doubt it would present as an issue in her other works. I’d definitely listen to her again.

As for the story, it was interesting and engaging. I liked both of the main characters, and the secondary cast was well written. There is definitely some Disney-fication of the alleged homophobic small town; there are plenty of small towns in the US where there is actual homophobia so intense that LGBTQ+ youth get *unambiguously* disowned or even lose their lives to hate crimes. Rory’s big claim to victimhood seems pretty overblown in comparison in the end. Still, if you’re able to just roll with it and look past that issue, it’s a good story.