krysreads 's review for:

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah

5.0

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This was the first memoir I read on the topic of child soldiers. It was the first I read about the Civil War in Africa. I've heard of the genocide in Rwanda, I watched the movie too. It was terrifying! Reading A long way gone: memoirs of a boy soldier was such an intense memoir that I had ever read. I had a lot of trouble putting it down. I didn't want to miss a thing. I took that book with me every where I went to make sure that my spare moments were spent reading. A Long Way Gone had the appeal of taking a glimpse into another persons suffering, reading about their hardships and using it as a motivator to try to change what you know, what you don't make a change in the world.
A long way gone is a gripping, "not-what-you-expected-what-happens-next" book that will keep you interested as you go down memory lane with the author, Ishmael Beah, as he describes his childhood being taken by rebel soldiers and turned into a child soldier himself along with several other boys in the wilderness of Sierra Leone, Africa. Reading this book will heightened your sense of imagination as you read the words of murder, starvation, surrender, death, and pure honesty as the author retells his story and how he survived, recovered and took a given opportunity to help others that have suffered the same fate.