The Long Way Home by Harper Sloan | Book Review

Talk about a rise from the ashes! Harper Sloan is back in one of the emotional ways ever! This book is everything fans could ever hope for and more!
The Long Way Home by Harper Sloan
Series: Corps Security #7
Genres: Romantic Suspense

There’s a price to pay for a life with a greater purpose. The healing of time is a damn liar when you’re living a life as a dead man with no true home, and the silence couldn’t be more deafening. Counting the days, good and bad, I exist as the world keeps spinning. I can never look back. All I can do is hope I took enough out of that life to carry me forward on those dead legs. Everything that was meant to give the tragedy of my life meaning ended up holding me prisoner in this wreckage of my past.

Until now.

One look into her eyes and I’m completely disarmed. It’s only everything I thought I gave up. These walls I’ve built to protect and shroud me crumble more whenever she’s near. I’ve spent years waiting for a reason to breathe again, and now that I have her within reach, I’m not sure I can keep her. Is it possible to find both the missing piece of my soul and the remedy to my healing in one set of bright green eyes? Everything I thought I would never have is staring back at me saying … yes, I can.

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The Long Way Home Book Review

It has been five years since Harper Sloan has written a book. She has had things going on in her personal life and she wasn’t sure if she would write again. Then one day on Instagram I happened to see the pre-order for this book. So, I one-clicked it and then didn’t think anymore about it. At least not until it hit my kindle. This book takes place twenty years after Cooper the sixth book in the Corps Security series and after the Hope Town series which is the spin off. So I was curious how this would tie into the original series. 

I found that out the moment we get Drew’s point of view.

Olivia is raising her late sister’s daughter Riley while also running her coffee shop in Boston. Everything is good. She’s happy in her life and loves her little bean like she was her own child. Every day for the last three years the mysterious man has come in and sat in her shop. He never speaks but she is learning to understand his grunts. Sometimes his friends join, other times it’s just him. Then one day he is waiting to walk Olivia and Riley home.

That walk home develops slowly into more over time. Drew was drawn to Olivia from the first moment he laid eyes on her. One look and his long dead heart begins to come to life. However, he has secrets including why he’s in her coffee shop every day and why he’s so protective of her and Riley.

There are moments in this book that I had to put the kindle down and just cry. To the point that the nursing staff threaten to take my kindle away from me. Getting upset worries them, However, this book is just that emotional. There are moments that bring such joy and heartbreak within the same scene. I don’t want to give anything away but let me say that jar of glitter was as emotional for me today and it was the first time I read about it.

Riley is so perfect! She just steals the show! Sway is back and while he is always a favorite side character of mine in this book I fell in love with him. I love the relationship he has with everyone he comes in contact with. However, the way Drew talks about him just shows how much Sway touches the lives of everyone he comes in contact with. 

The other Corps Security guys and families are back as well. While we do get some time with them I do wish we got a little more with some of them to be honest. I’m always greedy for more of any scene with any of them in it.

You can read this book on its own and pretty much know what is happening. You don’t need to read any of the books that come first. However, in my opinion you should at least read the Corps Security series first. You will learn so much more about the side characters and have such a more emotional connection to everything that is going on in this book. Trust me when I say you will appreciate this one much more after reading the others first.

Before you read the excerpt below let me say that I struggled with what to share. I badly wanted to share a scene with Sway but felt like it would just give too much away. So instead I chose a scene with Riley since she stole the show every single time she was present.

We both look away and down at Riley when she climbs up his body. Pretty normal for her morning, wanting to climb to the top of her very own giant. She makes it to the middle of his chest before she needs help to make it the rest of the way up. He hooks her under her arms, and before she can even get one full stream of giggles out, he has her placed on his shoulders with his hands around her ankles to keep her safe.

I hold back a laugh when she bends down over the top of his head, curling her little body around him until she can peek at him from her perch.

A crazy mess of brown curls, a big loopy smile and giggles that rain down on him. “Morning, my giant,” Riley says, parroting the almost curt tone that Drew uses on others. She’s taken to mimicking his tone a lot lately, only she does it in a few different ways and always mixes them up to catch him off guard.

It never fails to make me laugh when I hear her trying to mimic his tone. She’s been trying to echo the exact way he speaks for a while. It’s probably the most adorable part of our day, hearing her try to be gruff and hard. Drew doesn’t speak often, or say a lot. That is, outside of the walls of one of our homes. He chooses the words he says and delivers them, that’s all there is to it. Those words he does say, well, you can guarantee they’re important.

And those carefully chosen words that he gives us?

Those matter the most, to him and to us.

“Morning, bean,” he replies in a low drawl. As a matter of fact, to the point, nothing else given. That’s just him.