Maggie has been a widow for two years. She has not seen her daughter Allison since the death of her husband and she misses her. She frequently reflects on their close relationship and the memories associated with her growing up. Maggie is one of the protagonists and her POV forms one half of the book. The other half of the books presents Allison’s POV. Allison has not had it easy since her estrangement with her mother but she has met the love of her life and is poised to marry him and live a life of luxury. Then, disaster the private jet she is on crashes, killing the pilot and Allison is in a remote mountain region with few supplies and someone deadly on her trail. This is the opening of the book.

Through these two strands the plot unfolds in an exciting and troubling journey with Maggie trying to unpick events leading to her daughter’s ‘death’ and Allison avoiding her pursuers and fighting the odds against a hostile environment and danger. Well, I loved it. I liked the structure of the text, even though it has been done before; I liked the revelations that were slowly exposed and I think it would make a good film. Would I recommend it – without a doubt.

Thank you to the author, publishers and NetGalley for providing an ARC via my Kindle in return for an honest review.

Non stop action from beginning to end, I couldn't put it down. Lots of anticipation, confusion and final completion. well developed characters and a "keep you guessing" storyline. Great read.

Freefall by Jessica Barry was an amazing read. Fast-paced and full of suspense I loved it. I was very disappointed when my for-review copy on my kindle had formatting issues but luckily the publisher had a spare physical copy and sent it to me so I could finish reading it.

Alison has survived a plane crash but the threat to her life has not ended. Badly injured she knows she has to keep moving and to move quickly to outwit the man who is stalking her every move.

Alison's mother Maggie knows her estranged daughter is missing presumed dead, but she can't bring herself to believe it. She decides to examine the life Alison left behind in a bid to better understand the circumstances that brought her daughter to be in the plane in the first place.

Mother and daughter must fight – for survival and to find their way through a dark web of lies and back to one another, before it’s too late.

The author did a brilliant job of portraying the complex nature of the relationship between Alison and Maggie. Both characters were well-developed and contributed a lot to the story.

Freefall was unputdownable. My bedtime came and went, and I still carried on reading because the rest of the story could not wait until morning.

Freefall demands to be read in one sitting. It is very immediate storytelling. Allison has just survived a plane crash. How did she get there, and why is she still not safe? Allison's estranged mother Maggie refuses to accept her daughter is dead. She unwittingly puts herself in harms way to discover the truth. The book is an exciting race to the end.
Allison is not the most sympathetic character. She has become hard in order to survive, but you still suffer with her in her terrifying predicament. Maggie is a nicer character, but they are equally brave. Four stars.

Thanks to Jessica Barry, Random House UK Vintage and NetGalley for the opportunity to read Freefall.
This is an amazing debut. I was grabbed by this story and was reluctant to put it down so read it in a day. Maggie and Alison, a mother and daughter who have been estranged for a couple of years, then Maggie hears that Alison was a passenger in a private plane that crashed. Maggie is distraught of course, but Alison's body hasn't been found and Maggie hangs onto a hope that her daughter is still alive. When Alison's necklace is returned to her she is sure her daughter is out there...somewhere.
I loved Maggie's voice, and the story unfolded beautifully taking me with it. It would be difficult to write more here without giving the plot away and I don't want to do that, so suffice to say this is a suspense debut well-worth reading and will very likely become a bestseller. 5 stars.

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I first started reading Freefall. Each chapter is told from either Maggie or Allison’s point of view which does give an intersecting insight. I did find the first half of the book somewhat lacking pace but I am glad I stuck with it.

This book wasn’t totally my cup of tea but I would give it three stars. Thank you to NetGalley, Random House UK and the author for the chance to review.

I loved the start of the book but unfortunately the rest didn’t live up to my expectations. I suppose not liking the main character didn’t help. Instead of me wanting her to survive I really couldn’t care less. Her back story was so unlikely as to be laughable so sorry not for me.

Freefall was an engrossing thriller. Allison survives a plane crash in the Rockies where the only other passenger, the pilot, is killed. Instead of searching for help she flees the wreckage believing someone is determined to find her and kill her. Her story is told in parallel with her mother's, Maggie, who she has had not had contact with for two years. Due to their estrangement Maggie is unaware of Allison's life, that she is engaged to marry a wealthy entrepreneur. Although grief stricken she determines to learn what led Allison to be on the fateful flight.

I enjoyed the characterisation of both Allison and Maggie and their respective journeys to find each other. The twist at the end fooled me, but maybe seasoned thriller readers will guess it. Freefall is a page turner but sometimes I felt distracted when scenes in the present time frame jumped to flashbacks. Thanks to NetGalley and Vintage for the opportunity to read and review this book.

This is an ok read about a woman who survives a plane crash, but, she holds a secret. Will she survive to tell the tale?
This is very much a read for those who love survival stories. It’s well told, but, with many errors that I’m sure (I certainly hope) will be corrected prior to publication.

The only really likeable character is Maggie, the mother, and I was disappointed that there wasn’t more depth to the story and characters. However, it’s an easy read and I’m grateful to Netgalley, the publishers and author for the opportunity to preview.

With thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for the book in exchange for an honest review.
As a debut author,Jessica Barry has written an extremely accomplished clever psychological first novel. It was an intriguing and interesting storyline and was an engrossing read. From the plane crash to the journey off the mountain, the suspense builds and reaches a climax at the end of the novel. Who lives and who dies at the end, will justice prevail?
Highly recommended

This is a fast paced thriller that has some surprises. It certainly kept me guessing as to who was who and what was what. It has a solid storyline with elements of corruption, revenge and deceit. There are some interesting characters and I was a bit disappointed that two of the most interesting turned out not to feature for long. I’d read another book by this author but I wasn’t bowled over.

What do you do when you are in a plane that just hit the ground. Hard. The pilot is dead and you are wounded. You know you have to save yourself...

The first chapter of this interesting tale is very captivating. Allison, one of our main characters, finds herself wounded, physically and mentally (why that is will be explained later) and knows she has to save herself. Although for the past few years she's led a very sheltered life, she is deep down still the same resourceful young woman. She doesn't sit down crying but takes what she needs and does what she needs to do to save herself... and her mother.
Her mother meanwhile cries her eyes out when hearing about the accident with the little plane, where supposedly her daughter died. Underneath all the crying and the deep, deep grief is a very strong woman, intent on finding out what really happened.

Apart from some small flaws that I won't mention here, a very good debut that makes me hope we will be reading more from this author in the near future.

Thank you Netgalley and Random House for sending me this book.

I àm not a fan of this book. Readers who like survival stories will lap this up. This book is continually jumping from present to the past and is more than a little confusing. Ally the lone survivor was a brat and i really wanted her to get her comeuppance. It was a good read it just did not grab me.
I would like to thank Netgalley and Random House UK for the ARC of this book in return for giving an honest review.

I did enjoy this book but I didn't love it. I did really like the premise - I loved the fact Allison had been in a plane crash and had to survive whilst being pursued by an unknown person. The description of her fight for survival was gripping and I wanted her to live. The chapters about her mother inbetween were also emotionally moving as she hunted for the daughter she'd lost some time ago. I think what turned me off what Allison's backstory in her marriage to Ben - I just didn't believe he'd pick up a prostitute and decide to marry her - reminded me too much of Pretty Woman without the happy ending! This part of the plot with him discovering she was a traitor by her phoning her friend felt a bit too contrived. But overall, a good read.

I had to give up on this book which is a shame as I feel it had potential....

I am aware that when we read the books on Netgalley they are often proof copies and I am fine with that and the odd typo doesn't affect my review.

However there seemed to be a real issue with this copy particularly affecting words beginning with f....for example

There was a ock of birds in the tree (flock)
Her nger was bruised (finger)
The rst aid kid was in the plane (first aid kit)
The of cer wiped down the surface (officer - that was a tough one to work out)

It became really distracting as it meant I had to re read a lot of the sentences to try and make sense of them which ruined the flow of the story.

Disappointing as I was looking forward to this book - thanks Netgalley for the opportunity to review the book, this is my honest opinion

I wasn't a fan of this novel but fans of plane crashes and survival stories may be. In this novel, Ally is the lone survivor in a plane crash, losing her fiance in the Rockies and having to set off and fight for her life before the individuals determined to kill her find her. While a quick page-turner, the writing itself was distracting. Scenes taking place in the present were filled with flashbacks, so there's no clear sense of being placed and weighed down in a scene. With the exception of Margaret, Ally's mother, the characters are unsympathetic. Ally especially seems to be a brat so it was difficult to care about her plight.

Thank you to NetGalley and Harper Collins for this ARC, out on 01/8/2019.

A small plane crashes in the Rockies. The pilot is killed but Allison survivies. Then comes the first surprise ... instead of working out how to find help, she starts running, hiding, doing everything she can to avoid being found.

Far away, Allison’s mother is told of the crash and the subsequent blaze that neither pilate nor passenger could have survived. Maggie is devastated at the news, more so as she and Allison became estranged from one another two years previously. However, she cannot rest until she finds out what led up to Allison being in the plane,

So we follow the story, alternating between Allison and Maggie, as they each fight to find one another, to divide truth from lies and ultimately to stay alive.

This impressive first novel grabs your attention from the start and maintains high tension throughout. There are one or two twists/surprises but mostly the plot straightforward and the art lies in the excellent storytelling and well-maintained tension throughout.

There is rich depiction of the characters involved, particularly the lives and characters of mother and daughter. Cleverly woven throughout is a sense that despite their losses and betrayals along the way, the love between mother and daughter stands deep and strong and is warming to read. Yet this is not soppy stuff, with both mother and daughter needing to find vast resources of physical and mental strength in their fight to survive as they seek to find and expose the truth of the terrible events behind the plane crash.

A superb thriller.

This is a fast paced read. There is a lot of action throughout and a good ending. I did not feel really engaged with the characters. I like to feel totally immersed in a book and this did not happen with this one.

Thank you to Netgalley for my copy.

To give you an idea of how moreish this book is, I thought I’d read just the first chapter before going to bed. Ha! I’d read to page 50 before I knew it! By that point, the main characters, Allison and her mother Maggie, had been well introduced. Some background had been given but there was still much more to learn, particularly about Allison. What on earth had she got herself into to make her want to run? I was hooked!
I like that it is told in the first person, one chapter in Allison’s voice, the next in Maggie’s. I liked hearing their thought process. Each has her own voice, but they share a steely determination. Telling a story in flashback can be annoying but here it is mixed in well with current events, and just enough information is doled out at a time to leave the reader wanting more.
I really enjoyed this book, a well-written easy and fast-paced read.

The novel starts with a plane crash in the Rockies and the survival of the only passenger, Allie. Instead of seeking help, Allie almost immediately flees the scene fearing for her life. Over the course of the novel we discover that Allie is engaged to an extremely rich man and that over the past few years her life has changed from one of mundane jobs to that of a socialite, dressed in Prada and obsessed with staying thin. The point of view switches between Allie and Maggie her mother, who although she has been told her daughter is dead, can't bring herself to believe it. What makes it worse for Maggie is that they've been estranged for two or three years. Bit by bit we find our what Allie was doing in the plane and who she is fleeing from.

I wasn't particularly engaged by this novel. It's a high concept thriller and would make a good film if you like that sort of thing. My main problem with it was that I didn't really find the characters convincing especially the main character Allie. The villains were a bit cliched (as was the reason for Allie being hunted) and really only Maggie and Tony (a man who befriends Maggie in her grief) are in any way engaging. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.