The Way Back Home | Allan Stratton | Review
The other day I found myself with a free afternoon and a desperate desire to read something, just for fun. I took my time perusing my bookshelf, not quite sure what I fancied picking up. And then an exceptionally bright and colourful cover caught my eye: The Way Back Home by Allan Stratton.
It’s a little different from the books I usually read but I had won it in a competition a little while ago. A quick read over the back cover had me convinced to give it a go and I’m so glad that I did! It was the perfect read for a summer afternoon.
The Way Back Home follows Zoe Bird, who spends her time avoiding her cousin, fighting with her parents and hanging out with her granny, her truest friend. But granny has Alzheimer’s and it’s getting worse. Zoe and her granny decided to run away and find the long lost uncle Teddy to see if he can help. Along the way, Zoe realises that there are things she doesn’t yet know and that things are rarely as simple as they seem.
Zoe was a truly relatable character, with a kind heart that made it easy to understand her misguided decisions. Despite everything, you can tell she is genuinely trying to help, even if her idea of the right thing to do leads to a series of misadventures. I was really rooting for her throughout and desperately raced ahead to find out how things worked out for her. Of course, there were a great cast of secondary characters along the way from the mischievous granny herself to Madi, her conniving cousin, who truly deserves the title of mean queen. Watching Zoe interact with them had me smiling and sighing in equal measure.
This book doesn’t shy away from difficult topics and reading it was a real emotional rollercoaster. It chipped away at my heart in places, before patching it back together with a little bit of hope. When I finished the book, there was a relaxed smile on my face and I felt uplifted.
In short, The Way Back Home was a great book novel to devour on a lazy afternoon with some tea and biscuits. It made me want to race through it and left me with a warm happiness that lasted throughout the day. Don’t you just love it when books do that?
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