Falling by Emma Kavanagh #BookReview

A plane falls out of the sky. A woman is murdered. Four people all have something to hide.

Jim is a retired police officer, and worried father. His beloved daughter has disappeared and he knows something is wrong.

Tom has woken up to discover that his wife was on the plane and must break the news to their only son.

Cecilia had packed up and left her family. Now she has survived a tragedy, and sees no way out.

Freya is struggling to cope with the loss of her father. But as she delves into his past, she may not like what she finds.

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Falling is besides a backlist book also my fourth novel by this author (I rated Case 48: The Kidnapping of Isaiah Rae and The Missing Hours with four stars and The Killer On The Wall with three stars btw) so I was curious to find out how I’d feel about this one.

There are three different threads in this novel, one’s about a missing (presumed dead) woman so there is a police investigation going on, then there’s Cecilia who survived a plane crash and there’s Freya, daughter of the pilot who was flying the plane. A connection between two people on the same plane wasn’t hard to imagine but I didn’t know how the missing woman (a police officer) could have been involved so that certainly kept me curious. Unfortunately the first half of the book was quite boring for me and I even skim read parts of it. It did pick up and got a little more interesting in the second half though so the perseverance did pay off a little in the end.

Most of all I wish Cecilia hadn’t been so unsympathetic. She was extremely unlikeable to me. She’s not to be left alone with her young 3 year old son and was planning on leaving him and his father actually on the day of the crash (I have no idea why she doesn’t afterwards). She doesn’t have any motherly feelings and she’s not even very friendly towards her own husband. At the end I know there were reasons for this and it’s not that she’s a complete sociopath, but it didn’t make me very excited to read about her.

Every puzzle piece fits in the end so I can clearly see the plot idea the author had in mind, and I like her idea, there are good twists and it’s not all that predictable, but the key is to make the journey also interesting and she lost me a few times, especially in the beginning. Maybe I was impatient and not understanding enough for Cecilia but it is what it is. I do hope I’ll choose my next one wisely because none of the thrillers I read lately is wowing me and I’m leaving it open if it’s the books or my own fault.

I bought a paperback copy of this novel. This is my honest opinion.