Book Review: Donna Has Left the Building

My first ARC book review! Are you all excited? I know I am! For the sake of being a decent person, I will not include any spoilers for those of you who want to read it yourselves. After all, it hasn’t even been released yet so there’s no way the majority of you have read it. Now, sit back and enjoy my review of Donna Had Left the Building.

Summary From the Back of the Book

Forty-five-year-old Donna Koczynski is an ex-punk rocker, a recovering alcoholic, and the mother of two teenagers whose suburban existence detonates when she comes home early from a sales conference in Las Vegas to the surprise of a lifetime. As her world implodes, she sets off on an epic road trip to reclaim everything she believes she’s sacrificed since her wild youth: Great friendship, passionate love, and her art. But as she careens across the U.S. from Detroit to New York to Memphis to Nashville, nothing turns out as she imagines. Ultimately, she finds herself resurrected on the other side of the globe, on a remote island embroiled in a crisis far bigger than her own.

Donna Had Left the Building by Susan Jane Gilman

My Review

I don’t normally read this kind of book. Usually, I read more urban fantasy or straight up fantasy. But, I enjoyed this book which I didn’t think I would.

This book is well written. It’s one of those books that doesn’t feel like there’s a good stopping place because so many things happen. The one thing that I noticed was that I am not the target audience so I didn’t fully relate to the main character. There are times where the main character says things about her children and I felt kind of defensive about it. For example, she’ll say something about how her kids are quiet, or always in their room. While these are things that a lot of parents say about their children and I found myself thinking “leave him alone about it, maybe he wants time alone”. At that moment, I had to remind myself that this book is not from my perspective. I am not a parent, so I do not understand what it’s like to be a parent.

There are some parts of this character I can align myself with. But, I think you would enjoy this book even more if you are a parent to teenagers. You would have an understanding of her that I can’t have. While I can understand the struggles of being a woman, I can’t imagine the struggles of parenting.

Don’t get me wrong, though, this book is quite good. It’s just that I am not really the target audience for it. If you are a woman with teenage children, I am sure that you would relate more to this than I can. Which is fine. It’s a fantastic book and I enjoyed it anyway.

The thing about this book that was interesting to me was that it made me shift my mindset into Donna while I read it. It made me shift my view of the world and made me question things more. There were a few times through the book I actually paused and wondered what I would do in that situation. Would I ask for help? Would I tell anyone? What would I do? The writing and descriptions used makes you feel like you understand Donna. But it’s written how someone would describe something, making it an easy and familiar read. That’s hard to understand, I am sure. But, when you read it you’ll see what I mean.

Overall, I enjoyed this book. It’s very well written and I suggest you all check it out for yourselves. Warning though, you might get a little stressed.

Want to read it for yourself? Here it is on Amazon. It hasn’t been released yet, it comes out a little less than a week from today (June 4, 2019) but I wrote my review early so you all would have the opportunity to preorder it if you want.

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This is my Review of the Month for the review collection on LovelyAudiobooks.info