I must firstly apologise for the amount of time it has taken me to provide a review of this book, my health was rather bad for quite some time, something that had me in hospital on numerous occasions and simply didnt leave me with the time I once had to do what I love most.

Unfortunately that does mean I have missed the archive date for many of these books, so It would feel unjust throwing any review together without being able to pay attention to each novel properly.

However, I am now back to reading as before and look forward to sharing my honest reviews as always going forward. I thank you f0r the patience and understanding throughout x

There is quite a few "passenger plane goes missing" television series out currently, and this book is just as entertaining as any of them! The book was gripping, compelling and you just had to see how everything ended up! Recommended.

The premise of this was promising however I found there was something missing for me and I couldn’t quite connect with the story

This book was everything I look for in a book. It was so exciting. The plot was fantastic. It really had me on the edge of my seat, and my heart racing. It was very well written and flowed well.

I tried very hard to get into this book, but either it was for me or I wasn’t in the right frame of mind as I had been reading it for while and only got to 30% in

A fast paced and well put together conspiracy theory thriller which will keep you on the edge of your seat.

Flight 702 disappears on the way from London to New York but no one seems to know what happened or where the plane is now. 256 passengers are missing, including student Kaitlin's twin brother Connor, a computer hacking expert. Kaitlin can't accept that Connor is dead and is determined to uncover the truth about what happened.

As she digs deeper, she makes increasingly unsettling discoveries. Was Connor actually responsible for the hack he was credited with uncovering? Did he also hack into the plane causing a crash? Could someone else have brought a bomb or biological weapon on board? Or was it just a chance accident?

Family and friends urge her to accept that her brother has died and move on, but spurred on by a mysterious messenger she is forced to find out what she can alone, soon finding herself making enemies of gangs and shadowy figures who it seems don't want the truth to surface. Is her life in danger because someone has something to hide? Or is she just being paranoid like everyone thinks?

The premise of this novel was promising. An aeroplane enroute from London to New York goes missing, crashed into the Atlantic, the passengers dead. A young student Kaitlin neglects her studies to investigate what happened, her twin brother on board.the doomed flight. Unfortunately, I found the characters one dimensional the plot far fetched and rushed though it would make a good film script.

This book is brilliant an edge of your seat read. When flight 702 goes missing and her twin brother was aboard katlin knows he hasn't died and decides to investigate. The twists in this tale is so amazing it almost feels like your never going to work out what has happened. Its in no way predictable and I just loved it. The flow of the book was amazing. It was a joy to read this book much praise for this book and thank you to the author for writing this story I look forward to reading more by this author.

I seem to be reading a lot of books recently about bad things that happen involving planes but I’m finding them all quite addictive. Passenger List follows Kaitlin as she tries to find out what happened to the flight that went missing with her twin brother on board. She doesn’t believe the official explanation and is determined to get to the truth. This novel does require a lot of suspension of disbelief but if you can do that then it is a very fast paced page turner and one that will keep you guessing all the way to the end. There are lots dark alleys and red herrings in the novel alongside quite a few shady characters but all this serves to keep you on your toes, and I quite liked not knowing who to trust and not knowing if Kaitlin was making good decisions or not. This would make a great holiday read!

Apologies this was a DNF from me at 10%,was quite an interesting opener but then went into the realms of unbelievably for me

When Kaitlin Li’s twin brother, Conor, disappears after Atlantic Airlines Flight 702 vanishes while flying across the Atlantic, with all passengers and crew presumed dead, she becomes obsessed with solving the mystery. She sets up a Facebook page for tips and is soon investigating. Inevitably this leads to a whole heap of conspiracies and various people who might be kooks, spies, or various shades of baduns.

The tragic, and downright weird, tale of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which disappeared without a trace over the Pacific in 2014, clearly inspired Passenger List. MH370 has inspired many conspiracy theories and these are clearly also an inspiration for Passenger List. In real life I have no time for conspiracy theories, but in fiction I love a conspiracy thriller. For example, personally I suspect Lee Harvey Oswald was the sole assassin of JFK, but I love a JFK conspiracy novel or film and Oliver Stone’s movie might be hokum but was great fun.

That said, as I read Passenger List I wondered whether this was going to be just a rehash of MH370 conspiracies, all pushed along by cardboard cutout genre fiction tropes and two-dimensional characters. This is a novel inspired by a podcast (a drama podcast, obviously. Not a true crime one). It feels cardboard cutout and there is little depth to the characters. That said, the plot moves along at pace and when the final denouement occurs it is believable, even for someone like me who doubts conspiracy theories in real life. The author doesn’t go with the most outlandish theory, but ends with something much more realistic, knowing as we do how governments have a tendency to cover their backs.

Passenger List is the fourth aviation-based thriller I've read in the past few weeks and boy do those giant steel cans cruising through the air at 35,000 feet make for a tasty thrill ride, although this one does, thankfully, take a bit of a different approach to the others. Kaitlin Le has recently been given the news that her twin brother, Conor, was aboard the doomed Atlantic Airlines Flight 702 which took off from London, Heathrow on route to New York. It had fallen off radar and disappeared completely somewhere mid-flight and no one has any explanation as to what happened. Of course, the authorities presume that all 256 passengers aboard have perished but how does a huge jetliner vanish into thin air in this day and age? With precious little accurate information to go on people resort to speculation to fill in the blanks. Conspiracy theories spread like wildfire as those with loved ones who were travelling that fateful journey pray for solid evidence and some action.

Le, a college student, cannot accept the official story of his death. Her refusal to believe that the plane was taken down by a flock of birds marks the beginning of her own investigation, one which entangles her with the suspicious movements of internet hackers and the FBI. She knows that she will have to fight for the truth. Those who no longer have a voice are counting on her to unravel their collective fates. Inspired by missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 and the search for answers, this is a compulsive and distressingly realistic page-turner. It moves rapidly, is immersive and although it lacks in the subtlety department, it more than makes up for it in terms of how fun, entertaining and addictive it was to read. You really feel for Kaitlyn and her family, and I understand the need for answers outside of the sanitised media version of events. There are plenty of twists, turns and emotional developments and never a dull moment. An engrossing, action-packed and palpably tense thriller.

I'm not sure if it's a coincidence but I have read a few novels where the reader is trapped on a plane but this was one of the more interesting. The premise felt very true to life and possible. I always find the idea of a missing plane very eerie and this one added to that. A thriller of a read and I swear I had whiplash by the end such is the pace of all the action! A lot of fun.

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. Absolutely LOVED… Kept me guessing right up to the end. Non-stop from page one. This is a must-read

It’s been 11 years since the TV show “Lost” ended its 6 year run. It was a drama where survivors of a lost plane were making a new life on an Island in the South Pacific, as they awaited rescue.

It’s been 7 years since Malaysia Airlines flight 370 disappeared after making an unexplained turn South. Several countries joined in an effort to find the plane over 4 years, covering 46,000 miles and spending a combined 200 million dollars.

And, we remain fascinated, as TV show “Manifest” currently in season 3, follows the passengers from a commercial airliner which disappeared, and then landed, 5 years after it went missing.

“Passenger List” introduces us to Atlantic Flight 702, which vanished mid-flight between London and New York, again with no answers.

College student Kaitlin Le’ s beloved twin brother, Conor was on that plane, and she doesn’t believe the “official” explanation -that a bird strike after take-off must have caused more damage than originally thought.

She starts a hot-line and receives plenty of tips from conspiracy theorists, until finally one message offers to point her in the right direction, with an encrypted APP, for her to download, and a warning that once she chooses to investigate what she learns-she might not be coming back.

She learns the identities of the passengers, and wonders if there is a government cover-up after learning about the people onboard. Would her Government bring down a plane if they thought it was in the interest of its citizens? Can she crack the case?

Although the premise was interesting, unfortunately the execution was not-with just about the entire book being told through conversations.

Ironically for me, the conclusion was as “hard to buy into” as the conspiracy theories she initially scoffed at.

Expected publication: June 24, 2021

Thank You to Orion Publishing Group for providing a gifted ARC through NetGalley. It was my pleasure to offer a candid review.

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.

Well this was a thrill a minute kind of book! No chance to catch your breath between twists and the action just never stops. I have been reading a lot of plane based stories recently and I am thankful that I have no trips happening in the near future as they are all involving crashes.

Kaitlin li refuses to believe her twin brother Conor is dead. He was on Atlantic Airlines flight 702 that disappeared without a trace mid air. No wreckage has been found but all passengers and crew have been declared dead. But she would know if her own twin had died and she is determined to find out what really happened. She puts her life in danger, talking to other family members of those who were on board. Is it a government cover up? How high doesn’t it go? there are plenty of theories going around.

This was a quick and exciting read. Thanks to Orion and NetGalley for my advanced copy of this book to read.

I liked the idea of this book from the description given but sadly it was all just a bit too far fetched for me. How a student with very little money can jet around the world trying to solve the mystery of the disappearance of a plane her brother was on, is just beyond me.

It is well written and does leave you wondering who Kaitlin can trust and who she can’t but did I find it thrilling..........no! Did I find it remotely believable...........no!

Having said all that I do think it will appeal to others much more than it did to me.

Thanks to NetGalley for the chance to review this. It was gripping and thrilling from the beginning. Really well written, great storyline and characters. Thoroughly enjoyed it from start to finish!!

Thanks NetGalley, Orion Publishing Group and John Dryden for an ARC to review.
Absolutely loved it, it was like watching a heart racing action movie.
When a plan disappear without a wreckage or any clue whatsoever, a mystery stays unsolved.
A huge cover up from every governrate agency possible
Kaitlin refuses to accept the formal story, insisting on understanding what happened to her twin brother.