Away from the Dark by Aleatha Romig Find the Author: Blog, Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads
Published by Thomas & Mercer on October 18th 2016
Genres: Suspense
Purchase links: Amazon
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Source: InkSlinger PR, NetGalley
Nine months ago, Sara Adams awoke with no memory. The man holding her hand told her she’s a member of The Light, a tight-knit religious group led by the terrifying and charismatic Father Gabriel. As a woman in the community of The Light, her duty is to be unquestionably obedient and to submit to the will of her husband.
But as Sara’s memory starts to return and she remembers her past, she sees that everything she’s been told is a lie. The Light is an insidious and dangerous organization, and its corrupting influence reaches well beyond the confines of the remote campus where Sara is being held.
With everything at stake, Sara struggles to sort out her true memories from her indoctrination. The desire to escape consumes her, but who can she trust? And which other followers of The Light were forced into this life, brainwashed to believe they belonged? The more she remembers, the more it becomes clear that Jacob, the man who calls himself her husband, is keeping shattering secrets of his own.
But Sara cannot flee alone, leaving innocents behind. She must fight to extinguish The Light.
We received this book/audiobook for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect our opinion of the book or the content of our review.
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Vivian’s Review: 10 Stars
Hi, my name is Vivian and I have been Aleath’d….again.
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What did I just read?!!? I finished this book a couple days ago and I have mentally not been able to process and translate my thoughts into typed words. Honestly, I don’t know if I’ll fully be able to explain to you in the review how I LOVED this book. For me, this duet has been by far the most intensely suspenseful and mysterious books I’ve read to date. One of the most powerfully captivating reads the 2016! I was completely spellbound to EVERY SINGLE PAGE from beginning to end. I even remember after reading chapter one in INTO THE LIGHT (The Light #1), I messaged my co-blogger friend and told her she HAS to pick up this book and read with me. AND SHE DID! We would constantly message back and forth things like, “OH.EM.GEE…did you get to chapter so and so and did you read what happened on so and so chapter?!?!” It was a constant adrenaline rush! At the end of each chapter, the reader is left with a mini cliffhanger that makes it IMPOSSIBLE to not read the next chapter and then the next and the next. This duet puts the phrase “Just one more chapter” to shame. *LOL*.
***SPOILER FREE***
This is book 2 in this duet and it is the final book. It essentially starts right where book one INTO THE LIGHT, left us, but with some time overlap. AWAY FROM THE DARK was all about Sara’s memories returning after living 9 months without any previous memories before her waking up a clinic with no recollection of her life before then. Now, she is living in a constant fog of uncertainty where she is plagued by visions and thoughts that she does not understand. She is questioning (which is against the rules) everything. “I questioned the validity of each recalled image. Were these memories, or were they thoughts that fleetingly appeared real? Without warning doubt would creep in. What could I believe? Was I recalling my life or was it my imagination?” –Sara. With each onslaught of resurfaced memories came an unnerving sense of elation, shock, fear, and anger. Sara’s now stable life was appearing to be shattering before her eyes. She found these new images to be “infuriating, unsettling, and tiring” at times because she didn’t know what to believe. Then one day, the “mental dam” breaks and she knows the truth. The images in her mind are indeed her memories and that means for 9 months she has been lied to. She’s been lied to by her so called friends. Her so called husband. Now, what is she going to do about it? Can she trust her husband, the man she loves? She knows there is a slim chance to get away from The Light because in the 9 months that she’s lived there, it’s been apparent that no one leaves The Light and lives to tell about it. But Sara is a survivor, she’s stronger than anyone knows and with her newly uncovered memories, that puts her at an advantage. She is determined more than ever to find a way to get away from The Light. But can she save her husband and others like her, in the process?
I do not want to give much more details in regards to Jacob’s character (and any other characters) because of fear of spoilers, but just know that this book was about Jacob and Sara’s fight to survive The Light. “It’s literally you and me against The Light.”–Jacob.
“Sara loves Jacob, and Jacob loves Sara.”
All of Aleatha’s carefully constructed details of this story fall in to place perfectly and make for one wonderfully suspenseful ride. She is quite a mastermind of twists and turns! Aleatha Romig’s ability to blend mystery, suspense and romance into one package is phenomenal. The constant impending sense of doom was ever present in AWAY FROM THE DARK. There were SEVERAL times throughout this final book (and book 1 INTO THE LIGHT) that I could literally feel my heart beating out of my chest and I swear I could feel it skip a beat. I was completely enamored by the writing style and plot. The entire book was tangible. The characters internal struggles, the external challenges, the mental breakdown. I FELT IT ALL! This duet was seriously like NOTHING I’ve read before.
This is a duet and it did have an epilogue, but Aleatha Romig did leave us readers with a sense of “’hmm’…could there be more?” I follow her fan page on Facebook, and according to her, at this time, that is the end *tears* and there is no plan to write more *tears*, BUT never say “never”. The rights for these books (and any future books) are in the hands of the publisher and I PRAY that there is at least 1 more book to completely finish this story off because that ending left me raw, gutted and craving for more! I do want to say, by no means did Aleatha Romig leave us readers hanging and make us feel like Jacob and Sara’s story was incomplete, it’s just that she left us with this “dangling carrot”, so to speak, teasing us with possibilities of more to come. And I do need more!
10+ Stars
Claudia’s Review: 10 Stars
What can I say about Aleatha Romig that you’ve already known? I’m a newbie of her work, I’ve only read INTO THE LIGHT and I was waiting, not so patiently, for book 2 AWAY FROM THE DARK. If you’re a fan of her books, you know that her writing is outstanding and this unique story is out of this world, MIND BLOWING GOOD! With this DUET, she makes our brain work. She makes the reader keep plotting theories and ideas, trying to fix the unfixable, run to conclusions…until we realize that with Aleatha Romig, we must expect the unexpected.
AWAY FROM THE DARK is the second and final book of this duet. While we read INTO THE LIGHT, we had a LOT of questions and we’re left with EVEN MORE questions (yes, I know I’m not supposed to question *wink*. You’ll understand what I mean by that when you read this duet). In AWAY FROM THE DARK, we got ALL the answers. Some were kind of disturbing as we get to know how “The Light” works and all of it inner workings in detail, at the end the mystery of “The Light” was solved.
This second book starts right were “Into the Light” left off, Sara got her memory back and now she has to face the horror she’s living. She knows she can’t trust anyone, but she can’t just run away. She wants to help the people she has come to care about while she was in “The Light”. But the uncertainty is growing because she doesn’t know if Jacob, her husband is trustworthy. I don’t want to give too much of the book, just let you know that all our questions are solved!
This is one of those books that you literally can’t put down! When the story begins with those twist and turns, and our eagerness to know more, make it almost impossible to stop reading, yes at that point you realize you’ve been Aleatha’d!!!
Even though this is a duet, I’m praying to Father Gabriel, to “The Light” (even to The Darkness), that we can have more books about this amazing world!
Click on the cover to read our review
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