I first picked up Liam Bracken’s, Exit Only on a plane ride to London. I’m not a very superstitious person and the atmosphere while I read contributed in a unique way to the growing suspense of the novel. Bracken’s story weaves together the lives of seven different characters that enter and leave the town of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Each chapter is told from a new characters point of view. I appreciated the simile of experiencing the novel from a new set of eyes alongside the idea that each person seated on a plane comes from a different background and offers authentic descriptions, just like on a plane and in this book, they’re all thrown together.
The way that Bracken uses his characters to bring the streets and smells and lifestyle of Saudi Arabia alive is really something special. He wraps the story around strong historical and cultural relativisms that requires a reader ready to learn as well as one reading for pleasure. The story picks up while on the returning flight the passengers are accompanied by a hefty amount of illegal products. Like most good stories, truths about human nature were revealed and they had me picking sides and liking and disliking certain characters. Fortunately for my flight to and from London, we chose the fate of another fictional story and remained Up in the Air. ( )

Liam Bracken's Exit Only gives the reader a view of Saudi Arabia through the eyes of various foreign workers. It's not always a pleasant view. I'm not an expert on Saudi Arabia, but Exit Only seems to give a realistic view of the country, warts and all. In particular, this book is a must read for any woman considering living in Saudi Arabia, even for a short time.This is not one of those action adventures with a car chase on every page, but instead Exit Only slowly ramps up the suspense as the story unfolds. Each chapter of the book focuses on a single character, and the relationship between all of the characters comes together well by the end of the book.In summary, this is an excellent book, and I highly recommend it for anyone interested in life in Saudi Arabia, or simply a good suspense novel.Thanks to ENC Press of providing me with this book through Goodread's First Reads program. ( )

Situated amidst international airline flights, “Exit Only” delves into the complex idiosyncrasies of the Westerner’s life in Saudi Arabia. Author Liam Bracken exposes not only opposing modes of existence, but also the various ways in which people choose to cope with their misfortunes. While the trajectory of the novel for every character heads for some form of escape, each struggles with the concept of “home.” Ensnared by a sense of intercontinental limbo, their lives are left unguarded, influenced by the whims of a foreign culture, commercial airline politics and the ravenous fight for individual survival.

Bracken writes, “It’s such a fine line between what’s true and what’s politically correct to say about people,” a dilemma clearly caught by the novel’s messy dichotomy between informed and misinformed prejudice. Racism, sex, hatred and brutality run rampant throughout the novel, characteristic of no one society in particular. What seem to guide each character are hopes for redemption, justification and happiness, signifiers of a shared human reality.

However, all these various incongruities amassed appear to breed a culture of insecurity and fear, one that is no longer bound to a single landmass. The distance between the East and West becomes virtually nonexistent as airports, cell phones, technology and money force every nation to live side by side. This makes “Exit Only” an exhilarating read of confusion, contradiction and unbridled emotion. ( )