Number of Pages: 305

Overall Rating: 1 out of 5

Twelve high school students from across the country board a luxury plane heading to France to compete for a once-in-a-lifetime scholarship. However, the tension between competitors when they start being killed off one by one. We follow Emily as she tries to survive eight hours trapped in a plane with a killer all while trying to keep some dark secrets from being uncovered in the meantime.

The Good

I really loved the concept of the book. When reading stories or watching movies that involve a murderer, I always wish the characters just ran away and got helped instead of trying to solve everything themselves. If there’s nowhere to run and no way to reach the outside world, there aren't many options for escape. There are also moments where the trope of a locked door murder, where it seems like the murder can walk through walls, which I really enjoyed.

The Bad

Unfortunately, there wasn’t much I liked about this book. The whole thing felt like it was pulled from Wattpad or some other fan fiction site. There are so many overused tropes when it comes to high schoolers in this story, especially at the beginning. The cheerleader and football player are dating and aren’t afraid to show their love for eachother. Our female main character gets stuck in a love triangle between the golden boy and the bad boy of the group. She also feels trapped in her prettier and overall better best friend's shadow and has a long time crush on her best friend's long term boyfriend. That’s just some of the stereotypes and cliche tropes that are packed into this book. The real world, pretty out of place, name drops are also frequent throughout.

I found all of the characters to be pretty surface level and the plot to just be boring. I couldn’t remember who was who for most of the book and had to double check which person we were talking about a few times. I would have much rather the first part of the book be used to flesh out the characters more than on an activity that in the moment matters but doesn’t do much to move the plot forward. 

The actual plot didn’t start until about a fifth of the way through the book which was a struggle to get to. I almost decided to DNF this book several times and only decided to finish the book to see if I was correct. The real murder’s motive and set up felt as though it wasn’t fully fleshed out and there was no lead up to the big reveal. This book would have been much better as a short story with less filler or as a longer book with more time to flush everything out.

Overall, this book just falls flat on everything other than the overall idea. It could have been great as a group of high schoolers being trapped on a plane with a killer is a great premise. However, the characters were flat and didn’t really follow what I felt like someone with their same personality would do. There was also too much focus on the romantic subplot and the characters inner turmoil, that was thrown out the window at the drop of the hat, that the actual plot of the book got lost pretty quick. 

I would not recommend this book to anyone who wants to read a murder mystery, thriller book.