Apparently Two Days Gone is part of a series, the Ryan DeMarco Mysteries. Who knew? I have no idea how it appeared on our library cart. I thought TW picked it up. I also thought she had already read it and left it on the shelf for me to read because it was good.
Turns out, she hadn’t read it yet but it was good.
Dark. Very, very, very dark. Also, heart-freaking-breaking. One of those… what choice would you make if forced to make a horrific and impossible choice. Good lord.
I do kind of want to go back and read some of the other books, to see how DeMarco got to the point he’s at now. I mean, they gave enough backstory to get the gist but I might have to go back and read it for myself. Hold the phone, it IS part of a series but this is the first one? Now I’m frustrated. What do you mean this is the first one? You’ve given us a really dark and flawed character with an #ASSTON of backstory and we don’t get to actually live any of that backstory with him? Now I’m not so sure I want to read another… maybe. Hell.
I don’t know, I find that a little fascinating (I haven’t read the book, I’m just thinking like a writer’s daughter). Giving you a dark and flawed character, but not how they got that way, means you can go back later in the series and show how he became dark and flawed. And if it was through poor or bad choices, as in, deliberately doing bad things, well… we already like him. Instead of starting him off bad and having to struggle for us to like him. I hope that makes sense? I’m thinking here of the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, where the protag is an utter a-hole but I hear that throughout the series he becomes a likable savior. Which I don’t know because I despised him so much after the end of the first book I never read the rest of them.
That makes sense. I could get behind that kind of revelation. But this is not that.
In this book, we learn pretty quickly what happened and it’s a horrible, heartbreaking thing. And, throughout the book he attempts to be making strides to move on, get himself together, and at the end — it appears as though he’s made one huge step. Which feels to me like the author is going to keep this hero moving toward the light and away from the dark, and we’re never going to live through that really horrible darkness with him. Instead, we got dropped in at the end and we’re going to be with him, in future books, as he gets his act together? I don’t know…