Title: No Way Home
Author: Jody Feldman
Publication: August 2, 2022
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Genre: YA Fiction, Teen, Mystery, Thriller
Pages: 352
SYNOPSIS: (From Goodreads)
Tess Alessandro is living a dream: she was selected for an incredible summer exchange program in Rome, where she’ll take in the beautiful sights and sounds and tastes of Italy. Her Italian counterpart, Sofia, will stay with Tess’s family while she’s away. Sure, her host parents barely speak English, but they seem cool enough.
Until one night, when Tess discovers them on a video chat with their daughter, who is brandishing a knife over Tess’s sleeping parents. They tell Tess she needs to do exactly as they tell her, or her parents will die. Without her passport, credit cards or phone, Tess is forced to commit a series of crimes that add up to a shocking plan…and unless she finds a way to outwit these criminals, she—and her parents—will end up dead.
REVIEW:
**A copy of this book was provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.**
If the film Taken was a book, this would be it! Jody Feldman’s No Way Home is a twisted version of Taken, but the kidnappers seem to be a little closer to home.
The story follows Tess as she travels abroad for a program, only for her host parents to be insane. That’s the nicest way I can put it. While that is given away in the synopsis, most of the story follows her journey to try and earn her freedom from them and save her family back home.
This story had such an interesting plot, I was excited to read it. I wanted to see how a young girl could get stuck overseas and the parents not being suspicious. The story had a nice flow to it and moved along enough to keep me interested. Feldman got to the high stakes part of the story early on, which I appreciated to hook me as a reader into the story. It was fairly quickly I realized people around her were not who they said they were.
While the overall story flowed nicely and kept me interested, I had a few issues. The first is that I didn’t really connect with any of the characters. I kind of connected with her friends she made at the school program, but not on any crazy level. I feel like I enjoy books more when I connect with the characters and I didn’t feel that pull. Second is I found the story to be slightly unbelievable and that was hard for me to really feel into the story. I just felt it was too far fetched at times and that usually makes me struggle.
Overall it is a good story and I enjoyed it enough to want to finish it. I would definitely recommend it to those who enjoy fun mysteries where you are trying to figure out how the people are going to get out of the situation they have found themselves in. This is not the first book I’ve read by Feldman and while it isn’t my favorite, I look forward to reading another.
