Long Way Home by Carolyn Gray
Loose Id
Gay Contemporary
ISBN: 978-1-61118-566-9
Reviewed by Cassie




Lee Nelson, a member of the world-famous band Dream, is used to being alone even in a crowd.  He tells himself he doesn’t mind being single, or that his bandmates know next to nothing about him.  After the terrible events the band has endured, Lee just wants to get things back to normal.  Then he receives a pair of tickets to a ballet performance in Dallas, and normal flies out the window.  The city he grew up in is the one place he never wants to return to.  Seeing his former best friend’s little brother dancing at the ballet after his bandmate forces him to attend definitely doesn’t help Lee regain his equilibrium.

Dancer Gevan Sinclair doesn’t expect to see Lee Nelson in the crowd at one of his performances.  Despite the crush he always had on Lee, the best friend of his long-missing brother Stefan, Gev isn’t happy to see him.  At first.  Just when he thinks maybe it will be nice to catch up with the man he once adored, it becomes apparent that Lee and Gev’s meeting was no coincidence.  Suddenly, Gev’s roommate is dead, and it looks like Gev himself is a target.  Gev and Lee are pushed together by danger, murder, and the mystery that scarred both their childhoods.  If they make it through alive, will their budding feelings for each other stand any chance of surviving the revelations to come?

Long Way Home is the sequel to A Red-Tainted Silence, but since I read the first book when it came out (like 5 years ago), I didn’t really remember much from it.  Fortunately, Long Way Home stands alone well enough that I was able to read it without having to reread the first book.  Lee is an interesting character.  He’s the strong, silent type, deeply scarred by witnessing his best friend’s abduction when he was only thirteen.  No one in his life knows about his painful childhood, not even his bandmates.  Going back toDallas is Lee’s idea of hell on earth, and he wants to get out as soon as possible.  Unfortunately, bandmate Nick insists they use the ballet tickets someone sent anonymously, a decision that sends Lee into a tailspin.

Like Lee, Gev was scarred by his brother’s disappearance, and his mother’s refusal to move on from the horrific event.  He’s tried to move on, finding friends and a job he loves, but he’s still somewhat stuck in the past, just as Lee is.  After his initial shock at seeing Lee, the old feelings he had for the man start to come back, even though he tries to fight them.  Then his roommate is murdered, and other people start getting hurt, and they realize the case of Stefan Sinclair is far from closed.  Gev starts to think maybe pushing Lee away for his own good would be best.

Long Way Home is suspenseful, action-packed, and often emotional.  Some parts of the plot are far-fetched, but like a good action movie, it was usually easy for me to suspend disbelief (at least at the time—a few parts seemed very unrealistic when I thought about them later).  I really liked Lee and Gev together.  I sympathized with them both and wanted them to be happy.  Their relationship moves forward in fits and starts, and the circumstances put them both in emotional high gear, making the speed of their feelings a bit more believable.  The details of the mystery part of the story are twisty and convoluted, leading to a finale that was both predictable and totally unexpected at the same time.  Overall, I enjoyed Long Way Home.  It has all the elements of a good soap opera—famous people, passion, suspense, traumatic pasts, and a lot of drama.  It’s a great diversion for a cold winter afternoon.