This novel has a different and rather controversial premise - a group of people have responded to a veiled internet ad seeking people for a cross-country road trip - that will end in driving the bus off a cliff, because they all want to kill themselves. Yet it’s written in a sort of light and snarky way. The book is told through emails, texts, journal entries, and audio recordings, from the perspectives of tons of characters.

So, this is a really tough one to rate! I thought the writing is good and despite there being so many characters, they really come to life. But the premise - that’s a tough one and I’m not sure how I feel about the way it is ultimately handled. I’m not one to give trigger warnings normally, but I worry that this book sort of glamorizes suicide. And yet, it was such an interesting and entertaining book - I just wish it ended differently.

This is another one I got from Netgalley in digital form but never got around to reading, so I borrowed it on audiobook from the library. And it is a fabulous audio production with a huge full cast and sound effects and everything.

Averaging that all out, I’m going to give this one a 3.5, but with a big warning that it’s not for everyone.

Oh my goodness!! I'm not sure why I have not heard of this book before. It's so good, it should have been talked about on every "book club" available. The plot is solid. If you have decided to end your life, you should experience it first and the best way to do that is to take a journey with a group of like minded people who need this journey as much or more than you do. While the subject may be ending your life, the story is about living your life. It was a wonderful read.

I don't know what I expected going into this book, having only known Straczynski from his early 00s Spider-Man run (and as the creator of Sense8, which I didn't know until after reading this book). And after sitting on it for a few weeks, I'm still not entirely sure of my thoughts. I think there's some interesting philosophy behind each character's motivations but I found the end unsatisfying.

Mark Antonelli had no idea what he was getting into when he placed a controversial advertisement on the internet. A struggling writer who has never hit his stride, Mark secures a tour bus, quietly decides to end it by casting his literal farewell tour.

As additional tortured souls board the bus, each narrates the road that led to their death defying decision including illness, isolation and insecurity- their stories told through various forms of expression such as email, voicemail and journal entries. But the closer they get to ending it all, the more each of them realizes there may be some beginnings yet to be explored.

Given its decidedly serious subject matter, there is still an undercurrent of tasteful humor throughout the otherwise heavy subject matter of Together We Will Go. A story of hope in varying forms, this lovable band of misfits come to find their teaming up ironically makes each of them feel less alone.

I really wanted to like this book, but I just couldn’t get into it. The subject matter of the book is definitely something that should be addressed more in books, so I was glad to see it being addressed here. That being said, I just couldn’t get into the characters and the storyline fell flat for me.

Who knew that a book about potential suicides would be so extraordinary? I had no idea going in what tremendous emotions I would feel reading about Mark, a down-and-out writer who buys a bus to take volunteers on their "final" journey. The cast of characters is quirky, often funny, and often pathetic as they battle physical pain, past bullying, abuse, mental demons, and the heartbreak of lost love or familial abandonment. You will laugh, you will cry. But you will always remember these people as some recognize that living is true grace and dying is a choice to be made with much consideration and hesitancy. Very sweet and poignant!
Thanks to NetGalley for this ARC!

Thank you to Netgalley for an advance read copy of this book in exchange for a unbiased review.

It is weird to write that I enjoyed this book since its about suicide, but I did. I enjoyed getting to know their characters. They were written with truth and dignity and battled real demons. At one point one of the characters referred to the group as the Breakfast Club of death. Its the perfect way to describe this book.

I do recommend this story. The author took a topic that is very controversial and showed all sides of it without sharing his views on the topic and took us on a journey that makes the reader feel and think.

Straczynski's novel follows a group of people road-tripping across the country with one main goal--suicide. This wasn't as dark as I expected, which was great. While facing many real reasons people struggle with the will to live, debt, chronic pain, bullying, etc., the novel explores each topic with humor, love, and community. The epistolary style is probably the one thing that keeps me from rating the book higher because I felt that while it allowed the reader a chance to see the story from multiple viewpoints, it hinders the connection to the characters and fails to explore anyone in any real depth.
Overall, an unusual and thought-provoking novel exploring the question of if we have the right to decide not only how to live our lives, but also how to end them on our own terms.
I think many readers would find this an enjoyable and emotionally engaging read, but I would caution the subject matter may be a painful trigger for some.

Thank you NetGalley and publisher for the eGalley of this work.

Every once and a while I find a novel, I actually buy. # Together We Will Go is one. By author # J. Michael Straczynsi he's on my list for the future also.

Description:
Mark Antonella, buys a old tour bus for a cross-country trip. And then hies a young army vet to drive it. Picking up quite a few passengers on the way. This is when it starts to turn funny.....

Thank you for the advance copy,
#Netgalley, # J. Michael Straczynsi, and # Gallery Books

A quirky group of people who join the group for various reasons. An experiment in acceptance and understanding. A place where you can be yourself. All of these things come together on a cross-country ride like no other. At times funny. At times sad. Always surprising. Ride along on with this mismatched group of people and explore the various reasons people do what they do.

Twelve passengers in a tourbus are planning their final trip, ending up in San Francisco where they play eventually to end there lives. we are deeply involved in the relationships between the passengers and my interest continued to the very 'end'.

Things haven't gone well for Mark Antonelli, a failed young writer with a grim future. So he puts together a plan.... Mark buys a beat-up old tour bus and hires an ex-vet to be the driver, and he plans to drive/ride across the country. He places ads in newspapers along the route and will pick up a few passengers to join him on the journey.

But this is not a typical site-seeing tour. Mark will screen all the potential new passengers and only those ready to cash it in ... to give up their mortal coil ... will be riding the bus. Mark's plan for the end of the ride is to drive the bus off a cliff in San Francisco for a beautiful sunset view as they crash into the ocean.

New friends will be made, and lost; new romances will blossom; there will be multiple betrayals; police chases; politics in play; and a surprisingly 'feel-good' atmosphere despite the aura of pending suicide from cover to cover.

Not many authors could get away with writing a novel about a group of strangers who come together in order to end their lives sooner rather than later; take control of when they choose to see the end; and wish to 'go together.' J. Michael Straczynski is one of those few who can.

Because there is a very mellow attitude toward suicide here, I was very concerned about the potential appeal here to students, an area where there is already too high a rate of suicides every year. But then I thought,' Ah, Straczynski will clear it all up and show us the dark side of taking one's own life, and why it's better to keep living later in the book.

Warning: People die. By their own hand. It's almost glorified (it is certainly accepted). It is not made to be a terrible thing. For those who've known suicide - either family or good friends - this is not a book you will want to read.

And yet...! I really liked this book.

I know I've repeated this quote before, but this is a good time to bring it up again. Decades ago, I attended a convention with science fiction author Theodore Sturgeon as guest of honor. He was asked what the difference was between writing a short story and writing a novel (other than length). His response has stuck with me: A short story is about things people do and a novel is about people who do things.

I think about this a lot when I'm reading and writing reviews, and I've realized that the novels I've liked the most are definitely those that are about people - and people who draw me in. This book definitely fits this description. By all accounts, the people here wouldn't normally capture my attention, but I really felt as though I got to know these people. I came to understand why they were on the bus. I came to root for them, or to boo them - depending on what Straczynski wanted from me - and, yeah, I liked this book.

Looking for a good book? If you want a good, general fiction read, J. Michael Straczynski's Together We Will Go will bring you along on a journey with some other heretofore strangers who get to know one another just before their plan to meet their end together.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

I wanted to like this book, but it just wasn’t my cup of tea. I liked the idea of the premise, and the author handled the sensitive topic of suicide very well. The characters were well developed and the topics addressed would make for great book club discussion. It was a bit too heavy for me at the moment. Thank you to NetGalley, Gallery Books and J. Michael Straczynski for an advanced copy of the book.

I made only one mistake with this book, and that was not reading it sooner.

You see, this book is about a bunch of people who answer a newspaper ad for a “bus to nowhere” - that is, in invitation to join in a road trip that ends in committing suicide together by driving a bus off a cliff. And we are in a middle of a national pandemic… and each time I reached for this book I thought: do I really need to add this depressing stuff on top of all the sadness in the world right now?

But here is the thing. This book is NOT depressing. Yes, it is about people who all think they want to die. But really it is more about life and living and love, and about being heard and seen and understood. And the characters are exceptional. Beautifully drawn and so charming that even the least sympathetic one will warm your heart (yep, it’s Lisa).

My very favorite character was Karen, a woman living with an excruciating pain condition that feels like a giant spider chewing on her nerves from the insides. Karen only wants to die as a practicality, because she cannot tolerate any more days filled with this kind of terrible physical pain. But there are other wonderful characters too: Vaughn, an older man who recently lost his wife; Shantelle, a heavy woman of color who was always treated terribly for her race and her size; Lisa, a manic-depressive who feels like there are two of her, a quiet one and a chaotic one she can’t control.

The beauty of the book is that these people find each other and accept each other and feel for the first time a true and deep sense of understanding and community. Some even find love. For the first time. Do they go through with their plan to drive a bus off a cliff in California? I mean, I can’t spoil that. But the way the story unfolds and the understanding and, dare I say, enlightenment you will gain from standing in these characters’ shoes is worth the full price of admission.

I was very touched by this book and I only wish I had read it sooner. 4.5⭐️.

Thanks to Simon and Schuster, NetGalley, and the author for the wonderful and moving ARC.

I really loved the premise of this book, but I found myself getting distracted by every other book that came in. There wasn't enough compelling plot here.

This book had an interesting premise, that may not sound "heart-warming" at first blush, but it did end up being a warm read, for me. Mark is a failed writer, who as he nears 30 decides to buy an old tour bus, hire a driver and start recruiting via ads for other like-minded souls who have had enough of this life. The bus wanders across the US, picking up this diverse and disparate group, each with their own personal issues that make them feel like they don't want to go on with life. There's a young woman with chronic pain, another young woman with weight and body issues, others with health issues etc. We get to know all of them on their journey through an epistolary narrative comprised of texts, voice recordings and digital journal entries.

This was one of those books that had a quiet, subtle warm brightness to it despite being full of characters with suicidal thoughts. We get to know and care for these people. It was a read perfect for fans of books like A Man called Ove.

4.5⭐️This book had all the feels. I loved each of these characters. Their stories and the way that they were told was so great. The story is told in recordings, text messages and emails. I listened to the audiobook and really liked that the characters had different narrators.


This is about a group of people going on a cross country trip with the ending result being their death. Some people have physical ailments and others have more mental or psychological problems. We follow each of their characters on their journey to live life and die on their own terms.

Content warning for suicide, suicidal thoughts, rape, drug use



I was provided this book in exchange for my honest opinion.

This book taught me about the nuances in the conversations about suicide. I definitely appreciated that part of it, even though it made me uncomfortable and even sad at times. While it may be a difficult topic to tackle, I think we do need more open conversations about it. The book raises so many great points about the differences in how a person chooses to end their own life.

However, from a writing standpoint, the book left quite a bit to be desired. One of the characters who boards the bus deals with chronic pain, and Straczynski goes to great lengths to show her suffering. Later in the book, however, when she finds love, somehow all of her pain issues seem to decrease dramatically. Also, Mark, the person who had the idea for the bus in the first place, gets an abrupt ending to his part of the story. Straczynksi's approach to Mark's storyline as well as that of Jim and Theresa may work well for the screen -- his bio in the back lists several Hollywood credits -- but it doesn't quite work on the mechanical and developmental level in novel writing. I also found it hard to keep track of some of the people who boarded the bus later; they don't seem to get as much attention as the ones who get on in the first couple of pickups.

Overall, I don't know that I would read this book again, but I am grateful for my increased awareness now of this issue.

So sad. My heart is breaking open and I want to reach in and help, hug, love on those characters. It doesn't relieve my sadness to know they're fictional, because there are real people out there feeling this way.

When we were first dating, my husband spent endless hours catching me up on J. Michael Straczynski's amazing sci-fi epic television series Babylon 5. He watched it every week and he weren't going to miss it (this was way before you could stream television; I think you could tape shows if you had a VCR, but he didn't), so he spent the commercials (which we had to sit through) explaining what had just happened until, somehow, I caught on. Now, a couple decades later, we have watched Babylon 5 a couple more times. It's brilliant. When I saw this novel by its creator, I knew I had to read it.

As expected, it's brilliant.

Written in an epistolary format using journal entries, voice-to-text entires, texts, and emails, this story of a group of strangers on a cross-country trip to end their lives sounds like it would be sad, but it is somehow life affirming.

For those who need trigger warnings (a phrase I truly despise), yes, there is a lot here: suicide, suicidal ideation, suicide assistance, drug abuse and addiction, mental illness, chronic illness, rape, murder...The list goes on. But, hey, that's life as we know it. And as Straczynski's characters know it. Hence the desire to end it all.

Straczynski manages to capture the voice of a dozen different characters. Each one is distinct. Some are very witty, some acerbic, some angry, some sad. Their stories are told and we ride along, learning who they are and why they're here. Funny thing is, it's not really a sad story.

So many truths are laid bare here. Not just about the characters, but about our character as a society.

Trigger warnings have been applied. Make your own choice. But for my money, I would bet on Straczynski. Dylan would, and he's a pretty good gambler.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC in return for this unbiased review.