This story grabbed my attention right from the first page and never let up. Just imagine waking up one morning in bed with a man you barely know, who just happens to have his throat slashed! This is what happened to Cassandra Bowden, a flight attendant with a dangerous habit of drinking combined with promiscuity.

The story moves back and forth from Cassandra to the murderer, who is thought to be a woman named Miranda. Miranda is a bit of a mystery and I enjoyed seeing her story come to light as the investigation into the murder got underway.

The ending had a few surprises. Some may have been a bit too coincidental, but I loved it anyway. This thriller had sex (though not explicit), money, murder, Russian intrigue and family drama all rolled into one compelling story. I really enjoyed it!

Many thanks to NetGalley andDoubleday Books, Doubleday for providing me with an advance copy.

* I won this book off of Netgalley for my honest opinion*

Ehhhhhhh, I'm struggling with this book simply because it took so long for me to finish because it was so long winded and with words I had a hard time even pronouncing in my head. I feel like there was a lot of detail in the book that didn't need to be in the book.

The good stuff: it has the mystery and intrigue I like. The typical "who did it" type book but waiting for the person to get caught.
The bad stuff: soooooooooooooooo many details that weren't needed. A lot of words that were hard to pronounce, a lot of narrative about Russian spies, etc. And Cassie....ughhhh, I wanted to like her so bad. However, the constant drinking and lying was getting old! At some point, I wanted to yell at her to grow up!

SPOILER AHEAD:
Who was the father of Masha?! Was it Alex, Enrico, or Buckley?! I was not clear about that!

*I received this book from NetGally in exchange for an honest review.

I enjoyed reading The Flight Attendant by Bohjalian. It was a little hard to get into at first, but after the first few chapters it really flew by! Truthfully, I found myself getting annoyed with the main character because she kind of sucked when it came to making decisions, but I think that's what the author was trying to do. Even though I was annoyed at Cassandra (the main character), I also related to her failing miserably at adulting. Overall it was a solid good book, I'd probably recommend this as a vacation read if you enjoy a good mystery.

I have never read any books by this author, but I may have a new person to add to my "must read" list. I found this book riveting, well researched, and highly entertaining. It definitely kept me on the edge of my seat, and is one of the rare books I plan to re-read to see if I can catch what I initially missed on the first read. This is an easy book to recommend, with confidence, as it will appeal to a large, varied audience.

Being a flight attendant always seemed like a glamorous profession. Even knowing that there is some bad parts, I always felt like the good outweighed the bad here. Until I met Cassie Bowden.

The Flight Attendant opened up my eyes to living with an alcohol addiction and a destructive behavior and constantly being in the public eye while trying to living a normal lifestyle. If only to feel normal while being sober until it was ok to drink again. This was a dark book wrapped up in thriller and suspense.

We meet Cassie as she is waking up soaked in blood that is not hers after a epic night of binge drinking and debauchery. The remainder of the book tells a tale of how she copes with this and when she should lie or tell the truth. Prone to blackouts and drinking too much, she can't trust herself and has no idea where to turn. Because she has no clue what has happened and if she is the killer or the innocent bystander in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The chapters traded off between Cassie and the woman who was trying to track her down. I was completely entertained with Cassie's sections of the books but found myself skimming a lot through the rest. If it wasn't for the those parts (I am intentionally leaving out more description for fear of spoilers), I would have given it an extra start, I think.

I've seen rumors that this is intended to be a movie, maybe a made for tv movie. I will be happy to watch it if it does come out on the big screen (or little screen).

This was an excellent thriller, full of tension and suspense! Cassie is a single, hard-drinking flight attendant in her late thirties who enjoys flings when she travels. Her fun ends when she wakes up next to a dead man in Dubai and can't remember what happened. Was he murdered, or did she accidentally kill him? The story is a true nail-biter, and I don't want to give away too many details. Highly recommended! Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the preview copy.

THE FLIGHT ATTENDANT (2018)
By Chris Bohjalian
Doubleday, 368 pages
★★★★

It makes a difference when authors do their homework. By his own admission, Chris Bohjalian knew next to nothing about the following key elements in his latest novel: the daily grind and road life of flight attendants, the effects of severe alcoholism, weaponizing drones, or the contemporary world of espionage. But before he put fingers to keyboard, he knew a lot and it shows.

The eponymous Flight Attendant is Cassandra Brown and, if you know Greek mythology, you're aware that Cassandra is an unfortunate name with which to saddle someone. The unconventional "Cassie" knew from an early age she needed to get out of her hometown, but perhaps she fled her stifling hometown and dysfunctional family before she was ready for adulthood. The only life she's known since she departed is that of a rolling stone flight attendant with a major air carrier. Bohjalian takes us inside a lifestyle that sounds more glamorous than it is—long journeys with quick turnarounds, surly or sickly passengers, living out of a small suitcase, unpredictable scheduling, and airline-provided sleeping quarters that are more toward the former side of the budget versus luxury hotel spectrum. As for destinations, the best even an experienced attendant like Cassie can hope for is to "bid" a route and take her chances. Even that sometimes requires some bargaining: if you want to go to Rome, volunteer for a place you don't want to go, like Dubai. Women like Cassie are essentially airborne domestics in high heels.

We meet Cassie on the downward slope. She's still attractive, but is realistic enough to see that her job and Father Time have exacted a physical toll. She has a few "bid buddies" she's gotten to know, but even they are more concerned acquaintances than close friends. What they know, however, is that Cassie fills the voids in her life with casual sex and booze. Especially the latter, which is still another obstacle between she and her sister, a responsible mother who makes sure her kids are never alone with Cassie in the rare times she's at home. Cassie's life is thus a volatile mix of loneliness, flirtation, and alcoholic-fueled hook-ups. Her drinking isn't just foreplay—it's the sort that results in blackouts and waking up in the morning naked beside a man and not being sure if you had a good time or not.

On a flight to Dubai, she chats up 28-year-old Alex, a wealthy hedge fund manager and later that day, he slips her the key for his room in a hotel that's decidedly more posh than her digs. He's younger than Cassie's usual one-night stands, but also kinder and the night begins well. There are just three things that mar Cassie's libidinous evening: a short interruption when a woman calling herself Miranda visits—presumably to brief Alex on his meeting the next day. Things two and three are more problematic: she and Alex have great sex, but Cassie drinks until she blacks out. That's embarrassing, but the fact that she wakes up soaked in Alex's blood is a real problem. Dubai is not a place where you want to be discovered with a dead man in the bed beside you and a broken gin bottle on the floor.

Cassie doesn't think she killed Alex, but then she wouldn't be the best judge of that, would she? Fight or flight? Hey—it's called The Flight Attendant! Bohjalian spins a suspenseful thriller told from Cassie's befuddled point of view and Miranda's more clear-headed perspective. This is far more than your average whodunit, one that takes us into some of those other worlds mentioned in opening paragraph. Is Cassie a deadly drunk? Did she just get away with murder? Who was Alex? Miranda? Is anyone, Cassie included, who they seem to be?

Chris Bohjalian is an author I have long admired because, yes, he does do his homework. More than that, though, he knows how to build suspense without going Dan Brown unbelievable on his readers. He is particularly skillful at getting inside the heads of characters. That may sound obvious—he invents them, right? You try thinking like someone who isn't you. Now repeat in a different mindset. And again…. I won't pretend that The Flight Attendant is the new War and Peace, but it's a terrific page-turning mystery. The final pages are a tad contrived, but there's plenty here to keep you glued in your reading chair way past your normal bedtime. The Flight Attendant earns its wings.

Rob Weir

*This book flies on March 18. Thanks to NetGalley for an advance copy.8

From the first page this book had me hooked. There were so many characters that could have been the "bad" guy, but in the end it was one you never saw coming. The characters were well defined yet not so much you could not use your imagination to fill in the blanks. The twists & turns this poor woman went through is amazing at what she survived & dealt with.

I highly recommend this book to any & all that enjoy a thriller/mystery. I can not wait to read more from this author.

I have learned to expect the unexpected from author Chris Bohjalian. And to always look for the surprise twist just when you feel you have the story figured out.

When I saw this book available through Net Galley I knew I had to read it. I love the stories that Bohjalian tells. The attention to detail is incredible. I always feel as if I can picture or feel what the characters are feeling or seeing. The story begins with Cassie waking up from a drunken blackout. She wakes, but does not open her eyes as she assesses the state she is in, as well as who she is with. To her horror, she finds in bed next to her, the dead body of the man she had spent the prior evening with. She is a female, American, on a layover flight to Dubai, and she is terrified she will be detained - and she cannot remember killing the man, but maybe she did? Calculating, she flees the hotel, manages to make her flight out of Dubai to Paris, then back home to the states, but at what cost?

The story is mostly of Cassie and her life and choices, and how she became who and how she is; a life full of one-night stands, and drunken excess, just like her father. There is something so likable about her, though. Her choices are terrible, yet she never really gives up on life. Something deep inside of her is determined to change her life, and to live a better life.

An excellent story of murder, intrigue and a little international flair. I am grateful for the opportunity to have read it.

Cassie Bowden is a binge drinker and she suffers from the occasional blackouts as a result. She also has a penchant for picking up men that she meets frequently on her flights for one night stands. On her recent flight to Dubai she meets an American man named Alex an American of Russian decent younger than she but very nice. The next morning when she turns over in bed she sees that Alex is dead. His throat was cut so thoroughly that his head is barely held on his shoulders. Cassie is in panic mode. Did she do it? Did someone come in and do it? Why did they do it and why didn’t they kill her too?
All these questions are answered in this searing fast-moving thriller. It’s a heart stopper.

A riveting international murder mystery that kept my attention throughout. Cassie is the flight attendant and she is obviously an alcoholic in denial and a party girl who sleeps around quite a bit. She flirts with a guy on the plane to Dubai and then hooks up with him for the night. She drinks so much she blacks out. When she wakes up the guy beside her is dead and there is blood everywhere. Does she call the police? No! She cleans up and goes back to her hotel and boards her next flight. What happens after gets into the investigation, a possible spy link and tension to see what unfolds next. The book was great, but I have some questions about the ending that I can't go into here since it would be somewhat of a spoiler.

This is the first book I've ready by Chris Bohjalian, but I will be reading some of this author's other books since I enjoyed this one so much.

Thanks to the author and Doubleday Books through Netgalley for an advance copy.

Thank you to Doubleday books for the free review copy of this novel. All opinions are my own. 

This book follows, Cassie, a flight attendant that wakes up in Dubai next to a dead man. She isn't sure how she got there, but she knows she didn't kill him.

This book was a thriller that, at times, had me on the edge of my seat. I was curious about how Cassie had questionable morals. Her character weaved with the back story helped me to want to see her become something more than she was. 

This book, in the beginning reminded me of a lot of novels that are being published right now. A drunk, unreliable woman is the narrator, and the reader is drawn into what actually happened because of the drunkeness causing blanks in memory. This was the part that I was more meh about; I want something original in thrillers, and it seems that it's becoming hard to do. 

The upside was that there was much more to the plot besides only a drunken narrator. It contained much more that helped draw me into the plot. I liked the two different points-of-view. It helped slowly give hints and insight towards where the novel was going. This novel brought in a subplot that I've never thought about or read about often and that helped keep me engaged. 

Happy Reading!

Caitlin

Fairly good read. Not my favourite of Chris Bohjalian's books. I do like how the main protagonist is so flawed. It's quite obvious that there has been a lot of research done about Flight Attendants, and I appreciated that. Certainly not a career I'd ever wish for! The premise of the book was very intriguing. I enjoyed most of the book, but it dragged a bit in the middle, and the ending was not at all to my liking. While you don't have to "like" or "love" any characters in a book to appreciate the story, I just found that my empathy level was almost nil where Cassie was concerned, and I found her to have few redeeming qualities, therefore I didn't really care too much what happened to her.
Thanks to Netgalley for an advanced copy of this book for an honest review.

Have you ever woken up and not quite remembered everything from the night before? Unfortunately for Cassie, she did this all too often. But her luck finally ran out, when she wakes up and finds her one-night-stand in Dubai dead - violently dead. She remembers the good sex, the interesting conversation and vaguely remembers a woman visitor with a bottle of vodka. Fleeing the hotel room, Cassie, an international flight-attendant, flies home to JFK, trying to piece together what happened and not fully convinced she didn't kill him herself.

The Flight Attendant takes us back to the Russian espionage genre where the reader is kept guessing - about characters' motivations, who is telling the truth and what really happened that night in Dubai? Bohjalian is a master at suspense and leading the reader down multiple paths of possibility. Cassie is a frustrating character. Her poor choices and behavior don't leave a lot of room for sympathy but you know her life has been shaped by her alcoholic father and powerless mother.

While I enjoyed The Flight Attendant, I feel like the end was rushed and forced into a certain page count. The pace of events unfolded at a faster rate than the first 3/4 of the book. As a fan of Chris Bohjalian, I would still recommend this book.

My Review: 4 stars

The Flight Attendant is another unique thriller by Chris Bohjalian that sucked me right in from the start. This story was an exciting, yet slow-building burn. It emphasized characters in a way that the action of the plot seemed almost secondary. I was never on the edge of my seat, or lounge chair by the pool in this case, but by the end of the story, I was completely invested in this intricate mystery and had to find out who the culprit was.

Told in the alternating point of views of Cassie and Elena, who both share their sides of the story after the murder in question was committed, added a distinctive twist. With that said, we heard from Cassie much more than from Eleana. As a narrator, Cassie was ostensibly unlikable and unreliable. She was shallow, out of control with her drinking and seemed to keep digging herself into more problems than necessary. Thankfully, Bohjalian carefully balanced the line between unrealistic while possibly feasible.

The research the author did for this novel was impressive, and added a level of authenticity. I didn’t know a lot about the intricacies of airlines and flight attendants, including the details of flight routes, what goes on in between flights, flight bidding, etc. The complicated nature of international murder, which included the legalities of foreign laws, domestic laws and their many protocols, was a much-appreciated addition to the novel.

My only and very minor complaint about the story would be the epilogue. Throughout the entire novel you don’t feel as if Cassie has learned anything or experienced much character growth at all. So when you read the epilogue, it feels as if it belongs in a different book, with a different main character.

***Thank you to NetGalley for providing me a complimentary copy of THE FLIGHT ATTENDANT by Chris Bohajalian in exchange for my honest review.***

You can always count on well researched facts, multidimensional characters, attention to details and compelling plots from Chris Bohajalian. His gift for storytelling never lets readers down and why I gave this latest gem five stars.


I didn’t enjoy reading THE FLIGHT ATTENDANT and this may be the first time I gave five stars to a story wasn’t for me. Alcoholic Cassie, a true unreliable narrator, was her own biggest obstacle. But was she also a murderer? Can a person murder someone in an alcoholic blackout, clean herself up and remember nothing?

My early theory stuck with me until the epilogue, but I was wrong wrong wrong. I should have known Bohajalian was anything but predictable, that he would outsmart me.

I recommend THE FLIGHT ATTENDANT for readers who enjoy mysteries, unreliable narrators, foreign intrigue and literary fiction.

This novel starts off starts off at a breathless pace and rarely lets up. It ends with a taut, exciting finale as well.

Cassie Bowden is a flight attendant who doesn’t believe in moderation when it comes to alcohol and sex. When she wakes up in a hotel room in Dubai with a pounding headache and only some memories of the night before, she discovers the man she’d been flirting with on the flight over is dead beside her in bed. Blood is everywhere. She’s pretty sure she didn’t kill him. Why would she slit his throat? He seemed like a nice guy. Because she has gaps in her memory, she decides to catch the flight to Paris rather than find out how they deal with drunken women and possible murderers in Dubai.

The mystery and twists and turns make this a fun, exciting read. Even Cassie’s behavior is understandable. After all, alcoholism is an inherited disease, and she’s only like her father in that she drinks too much. Oh yeah, and doesn’t make great decisions. Some of her choices made me cringe, but people making bad choices is what makes for compelling thrillers.
Thanks so much to NetGalley and Doubleday for the opportunity to review this book.

The cover and description of the book grabbed my attention....the intriguing life of a flight attendant combined with an exciting mystery/thriller. The beginning was good, and the ending was fantastic, but I got bogged down in the middle with details of Russian espionage. I just wanted to know what happened, then be done with it. This just wasn't the book for me, but I'm sure others will enjoy the international spy intrigue. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for allowing me to read the book in exchange for a review.

This was my first Chris Bohjalian book and it definitely didn't disappoint. It reminded me of a slow-burning candle the way it read because in the end you wanted to know what happened to the very self-destructive main character. I was very interested in her story and didn't care to much about the political/spy antics but understand how that intertwined into the over all story, It was a swift read and appreciated the early e-copy.
Thank you Netgalley and Doubleday publishing for the advanced copy I received in exchange for my honest review.

Great author, great story. Enjoyable read. Loved all the details and interesting back story.