Bill Hoffman is the pilot of flight 416 en route from Los Angeles to New York. He thinks this will be a fairly normal flight however, after takeoff he gets a message that his family has been kidnapped. The kidnapper’s demands? Crash the flight or his family will die.
I had put this book on hold at the library and then at the end of last year, I paused all my holds because I had too many books out to read. So when this book became available earlier this month, I couldn’t remember why I had put it on hold. Presumably, I thought the plot sounded interesting but, as I talked about in this post, I had just read another book with the same plotline called Hostage and I couldn’t decide if I wanted to read another hijacked airplane book. But I was looking for something to read over the weekend and when I looked at my stack of library books, this one jumped out at me so I sat down and opened it up.
I liked this book. Like Hostage, it makes you think – would you save your family or everyone on the airplane? I enjoyed all of the behind the scenes snippets of what it’s like to be a pilot and flight attendant. I also liked how, even though he wasn’t supposed to tell anyone, Bill made the choice to tell the flight attendants about the kidnapping. I loved the way they all came together to hatch a plan to keep the passengers safe.
A couple of things did annoy me though. First off, the internet on this airplane is phenomenal! Bill is able to check his email and FaceTime with his wife the entire flight. First off, I’ve never been on a flight with such amazing internet. Secondly, is that what pilots do when they are “flying the plane”? The co-pilot is reading a book and Bill is working on some continuing education while checking his email and FaceTiming. Because if so, I did not want to learn that.
The writing is fine. Every character seems to gasp at least once. The bad guys were a bit clichéd; I wish they had a better backstory and reason for the hijacking. I also read this book already has a movie deal which is fair. The book is action-packed so I’m sure it will make a good action movie.
I read this book in a few hours on a rainy weekend day.
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