*I received a free copy of Nowhere But Here from Harlequin Teen via Netgalley. This has in no way influenced my voluntary review, which is honest and unbiased *

Nowhere But Here by Katie McGarry
Series: Thunder Road #1
Published by Harlequin Teen on 26 May 2015
Genres: Contemporary, New Adult, Romance
Pages: 496
Format: eARC
Source: Netgalley
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Seventeen-year-old Emily likes her life the way it is: doting parents, good friends, good school in a safe neighborhood. Sure, she's curious about her biological father—the one who chose life in a motorcycle club, the Reign of Terror, over being a parent—but that doesn't mean she wants to be a part of his world. But when a reluctant visit turns to an extended summer vacation among relatives she never knew she had, one thing becomes clear: nothing is what it seems. Not the club, not her secret-keeping father and not Oz, a guy with suck-me-in blue eyes who can help her understand them both.

Oz wants one thing: to join the Reign of Terror. They're the good guys. They protect people. They're…family. And while Emily—the gorgeous and sheltered daughter of the club's most respected member—is in town, he's gonna prove it to her. So when her father asks him to keep her safe from a rival club with a score to settle, Oz knows it's his shot at his dream. What he doesn't count on is that Emily just might turn that dream upside down.

No one wants them to be together. But sometimes the right person is the one you least expect, and the road you fear the most is the one that leads you home.

Nowhere But Here was like a double-hit: one to the gut, and one to the heart.

My Nowhere But Here review:

I’m not sure I’ll be able to explain what I loved the most in Nowhere But Here, the characters were amazing, both Emily and Oz were well fleshed out, and their parents were very much present in their lives. Very different parents, though – Emily grew up with her mother and her adoptive father, not knowing much about her biological father apart from the fact that he was high up in a motorcycle club. All Oz wanted was to be a part of that same motorcycle club, and he didn’t have much to do before he would finally be able to patch in. That was… until Emily arrived in town, having just learned her grand-mother, whom she had never met, had died.

Because of strange things having happened to her during her childhood, Emily had a very strong fear of the dead, and it didn’t help one little bit that when she arrived at the wake, her grand-mother just sat up and stepped out of the open coffin! Nowhere But Here is like a hidden gem, both the characters, the plot and the story itself had little secrets that needed to be brought out into the open, and the grand-mother was the only one willing to try to make that happen.

I loved that the motorcycle club acted like a big family, taking care of their own, and having a security company to make sure everybody would have a paying job. Nowhere But Here was also pretty different from other new adult stories because there really wasn’t any teenage angst, even with everything that was going on around them, Oz and Emily managed to stay calm and collected for the most time. Stepping outside their comfort zones, figuring out who they were and what they wanted to do with the rest of their lives was a big part of the story. And of course, Emily getting to really know her biological father was important as well.

Written in dual points of views, first and third person perspectives and mostly present tense, Nowhere But Here managed to take me completely off guard!

Some of my favorite Nowhere But Here quotes:

Eli’s this biker my mom hooked up with once and he abandoned us the moment Mom said,”I missed my period.”

It’s true. Mom avoids discussing her life before my birth. I assume it must be because it hurts to know she has family that threw her out because she chose to have me.

All that TV bull about how anyone who rides a bike is a felon – they don’t understand what the club stand for. The club is a brotherhood, a family. It means belonging to something bigger than yourself.

Reading this book contributed to these challenges:

• 2015 New Release Challenge

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