The Last Thing I Remember by Andrew Klavan

This is a young adult book for boys aged 12-15 years. Supposed to be action packed, I must say I was pretty bored with it. Well, I am not a boy and I am not aged 12-15, but still, I enjoy a YA-novel as much as the next person.

The Last Thing I Remember has an awfully good premise: Young Charlie West goes to sleep as a happy and cleancut young man and wakes up strapped to a chair, battered, bloody and bruised. And the last thing he remembers is the happy day at school, his success in karate, his deep love of his country and God.

Now he has no clue why he is being held captured, being tortured and being talked to like he is playing a major part in some warlike game, involving death, terrorism and definitely no love of his country or God. How did this happen to him? Charlie goody-goody West? Charlie who lived a healthy and wonderful and most of all normal teenage life!?

Right. That sounds much more intriguing that it really is. I grew absolutely mega tired of Charlie West. No, I don't need profanity, sex or drugs in my reading. And in fact I enjoy YA novels (or other novels as well) that does not have profanity, sex or drugs in them, and I do not necessarily think that those issues need to be in a good book. But I need som edges and Charlie and this book and the premise was too much. Not enough edge at all. Friends and enemies are laid out way to thick in this one, and it becomes boring to the extreme. It actually felt kind of like I was being indoctrinated.

All that said, during my reading I sort of detected that maybe it was laid on so thick in order to make the reader think a bit. Can you really put up things like that? Is the world really just black or white, depending on the eyes of the beholder? Was this what this book was all about? This did intrigue me, and I gave Charlie another chance in book # 2, The Long Way Home.

Both books are part of Andrew Klavans Homelander-series. I can't say that I was all that impressed, but as you can see, I am not finished with Charlie West yet. And if you read this series, you will also want to find out what on earth happened between the time Charlie went to bed a happy average and good teenageboy and woke up strapped and tortured.