This publication is advertised as a first book in a series. Wrong! It is a long excerpt. When I get a book, free or paid, I look for a full story with believable reasons and a beginning, a middle and an end.
On the other hand, the protagonist is a likable character and his specific voice alone kept me reading. Although I found the plot construction lacking, the author did a good job in going into the main character’s head.
In the beginning, the main character Keegan, a teen, is brutally beaten by his mother on his sixteenth birthday. His mother wasn’t brutal to start with, but she turned brutal. Why? The reason is missing.
Then, Keegan’s father picks him up, without calling the police on the mother since he has a soft spot for his ex-wife, and drives him away toward a place where she can’t get to him; however, neither the boy nor his dad has a clue on to where they are headed.
On their way, on the desert, his father picks up a hitchhiker who is going to somewhere in Sedona. As they drive, Keegan checks his journal for things past and also writes about what’s happening in it. Then, because he worries about the hitchhiker, Keegan runs away and falls down on concrete and gets hurt even more. When he opens his eyes, he is in a bizarre place like a hospital and their hitchhiker is an important person in that place. Moreover, his father finds work and a fancy home for them in that very weird town among the hitchhiker’s friends.
From the way, Keegan told the story, I came up with the impression that he was either a wimp or a paranoid maniac; however, his voice and the sincerity in it could be the saving quality for this series, should the writer tie up the loose ends better and give convincing reasons for things that take place, within the same volume.