celinethormann 's review for:

Falling by T.J. Newman

5.0

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This was an extremely effective, couldn’t-put-it-down, edge of my seat thriller that anyone who is afraid of airplanes is absolutely forbidden to read. The fact that it was written by a flight attendant adds a lovely element of realism, and the respect and admiration the author has for those who work in the aviation industry is palpable. There have been a lot of plane crashes in the news lately, and yet people still fly every day and feel safe about it. We don’t often think about the fact that we literally blindly put our lives into the hands of the pilots and trust them to deliver us safely to our destinations, but this book definitely thinks about that as it explores the kind of person who becomes a pilot and how that burden and duty can affect and shape them. Elements of this book were extremely reminiscent of the Netflix movie Carry-On, to the point where I looked up whether or not this book was listed as inspiration or source material (it wasn’t). That being said, this is the kind of book that is extremely easy to picture as a movie, and I would not be surprised if this or another book by this author ends up on our screens at some point. This book was tense, entertaining, engaging, and just the right amount of “implausible but in a fun way”.