Today is my turn on the blog tour for The Journey Back. My review is written with thanks to Zoe O’Farrell for inviting me on the blog tour.

Blurb:

The Journey Back is the blistering sequel to The Journey. Kalu is a doctor, who escaped an extremist revolution in Nigeria. He tried to get his family across the Sahara to look for passage to the safety of Europe but they were duped by ruthless people traffickers and his wife and two daughters were lost at sea. Fast forward twenty-years and his daughter, Kissie is in Ukraine when Russian tanks cross the border and his family are in terrible danger again.

Review:

I really enjoyed The Journey and I was looking forward to seeing what happened to Kalu and his family in the intervening years. Once again, the characters are built up in the mind of the reader really well and I had a great level of sympathy for (most of) them and the situations in which they found themselves. 

The Journey Back feels a little more fast paced than the prequel. I think this is partly because the chapters are shorter and focus on different characters, meaning that the locations and story lines change quickly. I enjoyed this approach as I was taken to different places and I was interested in the fate of the characters. 

Once again, I enjoyed Conrad Jones’ writing which places the reader right in the moment and makes it very difficult to turn away. He has researched the different stories really well and his writing feels very authentic. As most of the novel is set in the present day, many of the conflicts and issues about which we read are still ongoing and this really makes the tension and danger that runs through the novel really hit home. 

The Journey Back is available from Amazon.

You can follow the rest of the blog tour here: