"A stellar, suffocating, all-consuming thriller about the search for truth after a scandal in the sky."
Initially grabbed by the enticing cover, I then realised it was Hailey of The Silence Project fame, a dazzling debut and LoveReading Star Book in 2023. By page seven, I was in. All in.
The disappearance of an Airbus a320 somewhere over the Lake District jolts us straight into the action. A ghost flight with only two people on board, we soon find out that GFA578 crashed into a mountain killing the two pilots Captain Daniel Taylor and First Officer Luke Emery. Part of the Goldfinch Airlines fleet - the company Carly Atherton's brother Jamie is a pilot for. A Stansted to Glasgow flight. A plane Jamie should have been on but he tested positive for Covid so another pilot went in his place. And that pilot was Carly's boyfriend Luke.
Hailey cleverly takes you outside the action: "If this was a twisty psychological thriller then the reader might be presented with several questions - and the answers revealed at key points in the story. But however much I wish this story was fiction, it is not."
Consumed by grief, determined to find the answers of why GFA578 crashed, journalist Carly spends four years of her life dedicated to finding the truth. After choosing not to fictionalise the story Carly decides on a part reportage part narrative record of the strange but true events that led to that terrible tragedy. A cautionary tale by Carly Atherton. The search for why and how a one hundred percent serviceable plane could fall out of the sky. Via a series of articles in Planet Home, articles asking, in the face of a climate emergency, what possible justification could there be for a pointless 600km flight from Stansted to Glasgow. Shining a light on the travesty of ghost flights, how 500 empty planes a month fly over the UK, how 200,000 ghost flights per annum fly across Europe.
We grieve with her, for the chronically messy and unfailingly kind Luke. For the future they should have had. On the ropes, she's a journalist passionate about exposing inequality and unfair behaviour. Just this time, it's closer to home.
As breadcrumbs are intentionally and unintentionally dropped along the way, we start to see the lies and deceit uncovered. Account by account. Conflicting memory by conflicting memory. The mastery of manipulation. All pawns controlled by a psychopath in a mammoth game of chess.
This is a page turner if ever there was one, and a thoroughly deserving LoveReading Thriller of the Month and Star Book. Gobsmackingly good with a thumbs-up from us.
| Primary Genre | Thriller and Suspense |
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