Good Morning,

Happy weekend everyone. Fingers crossed we can all have a weekend of sunshine, happiness and contentment. I am finally pleased to say that I will be getting my first Covid Vaccine today. I feel like I’ve waited a lifetime for it to be my turn so I’m thrilled about this.

Book 📖

Thank you to @TrapezeBooks and @johnscottdryden for this advanced copy of Passenger List in return for an honest review. Passenger List is due to be published on 24th June 2021 and you can get a copy here.

Description 🔖

Atlantic Airlines flight 702 left London for New York, but it never made it to it’s destination. The world is stunned when the plane doesn’t turn up anywhere and the disappearance cannot be explained by any of the official authorities.

Kaitlin’s twin brother was on flight 702 along with 255 other passengers. She refuses to settle for the flakey explanations about what has happened and six months after the plane left London, she is still investigating for herself.

There were some suspicious passengers onboard and they were carrying some pretty heavy secrets. The more that Kaitlin digs, the more she realises that this mystery goes a lot deeper than she originally thought and there are plenty of people who don’t want anyone to find the truth.

General Thoughts 🤔

I was intrigued by the concept of this book and where the storyline could possibly go. My mind was racing between possible conspiracies right from the start of the book. Just when I thought that Kaitlin could be on to something, her avenue of investigation would be shot down and it was back to square one. The methodology of looking into the passengers that were onboard was really interesting and I think it was this that created the many twists and turns that this book took me on.

Obviously, I’m not going to give any spoilers, but I had my suspicions about what had happened to flight 702 and I ended up being quite close to what eventually unfolded. The clues are all there in the story and the characters. There were a few problems that Kaitlin ran into on her way to finding the truth and some of them I couldn’t get my head around and didn’t feel believable. That said, they added to the action and kept up the very fast pace of this relatively short book.

Characters 👭👫👬

I did like Kaitlin’s character and I thought that she was extremely brave and determined. However I did have a few “really?!” moments with her. She was in college so in my mind I’d placed her age between 18 and 21 but I couldn’t get my head around someone of that age being able to do some of the things she did or even dealing with some of the dramas she got into in the way that she did. Nothing major that put me off the character, but I did question how realistic some of it was.

I really liked Rory’s character. I don’t know why, but I often get drawn to the flawed characters who are trying to do good. His intentions didn’t start in the right place, but he soon shifted. By the end of the book, he was fully invested in the investigation and for unselfish reasons. I think he was a support that Kaitlin didn’t know that she needed.

Writing Style ✍️

The book is written in real time and there are no fancy changes in POV or time jumps, but I don’t feel that any of that was necessary. It was extremely fast paced and so I think a simple structure helped to ensure I wasn’t lost. I think some of the character development could have been a little stronger however for a book of this length, maybe I’m asking for the moon on a stick.

This is nothing to do with the writing, but I had to mention it somewhere. The formatting of the ARC I received was a little off. There were no paragraph breaks therefore when location or character changed within a chapter (which happens lots and I liked), I often found myself going back a sentence to figure out what on earth just happened. No reflection on the author, just a note about the formatting which did impact my experience.

Conclusion & Scoring 🎖️

Overall, I enjoyed this book. It definitely kept me on my toes and there are lots of twists that kept me interested. What I didn’t realise until right before I started is that the book is inspired by a Podcast by John Dryden. I’m not sure how or if the two fit together, but I’m a bit of a podcast fiend, so I shall be looking it up for sure. Great book, that I would definitely recommend for a quick and exciting read.

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