I received an ARC of this book for an honest review. I started this several months ago then set it aside. The beginning is tough to read-it's very raw and the first person tense threw me. When I picked it back up, I flew through the book. The pain and grieving is so real, and the book lets in just enough hope that it feels very truthful and meaningful. It's unlike a lot of romances because of how dark it gets, for both the main characters. I loved the descriptions both of sailing and prosthetics, it gives enough information about the processed involved with both without feeling encyclopedic. The ending felt rushed, I would have liked a few more chapters of the HEA!

Oh my I loved this book! The perfect amount of romance, self discovery and starting over!

After the death of her fiancé just one year prior Anna has struggled to move on. With the date of their vacation sailing the Caribbean approaches she decides to set sail alone. What starts off as a solo trip soon becomes a trip for two after Anna realizes she may need more help then she first thought. Keane is a professional sailer who has suffered a tragedy of his own. While sharing their stories of lose and what comes with it, Anna and Keane first develop a friendship that may have the potential for more.

Though this book is short it definitely packed a punch! I absolutely loved Anna and Keane and their relationship was just so pure and heartwarming! Trigger warning, suicide is prevalent in this book as it is how Anna lost her fiancé and much of her reflection centers around this topic! If you are looking for a short perfect book to add to your collection, this is it!
Oh my I loved this book! The perfect amount of romance, self discovery and starting over!

After the death of her fiancé just one year prior Anna has struggled to move on. With the date of their vacation sailing the Caribbean approaches she decides to set sail alone. What starts off as a solo trip soon becomes a trip for two after Anna realizes she may need more help then she first thought. Keane is a professional sailer who has suffered a tragedy of his own. While sharing their stories of lose and what comes with it, Anna and Keane first develop a friendship that may have the potential for more.

Though this book is short it definitely packed a punch! I absolutely loved Anna and Keane and their relationship was just so pure and heartwarming! Trigger warning, suicide is prevalent in this book as it is how Anna lost her fiancé and much of her reflection centers around this topic! If you are looking for a short perfect book to add to your collection, this is it!

Soon after I requested this book, I experienced my own loss. It has been on my shelf for a while and I read it just yesterday. OH MY GOSH! I love this story SO HARD! I can easily see myself re-reading this every few months. What a unique story. And that meet-ugly I'll call it.... I've never read any of Trish's YA novels - i'm so glad I had the chance to read this. I can't wait to tell friends and patrons about it. I need to get a map and see all the islands Anna and Keane visited. I am a cat person but I also fell in love with Queenie. So many contemporary romance novels are good but don't have the emotional maturity, the true darkness that life serves us. I love that Anna reached a "state of grace." Keane is perfectly imperfect. Love, love, LOVE this novel!!!!!

Anna is floundering. After her fiancé took his own life, she’s feeling stuck, that is until an alarm on her phone reminds her it’s the day she and Ben were supposed to leave on their sailing voyage around the Caribbean. On impulse, Anna hops on the boat Ben left her and decides to make the journey herself: the only problem is, she doesn’t quite know how to sail. After a treacherous first night, Anna decides to recruit an experienced sailor to help get her to Puerto Rico. Keane Sullivan has been having a tough time getting hired to sail, and jumps at the opportunity to help Anna. Both Anna and Keane must navigate uncharted territory, and grapple with the things they’re running, or in this case, sailing away from.

Although I assumed Float Plan would remind me of other “close quarters” romances, it actually more so reminded me of popular travel memoirs like Eat Pray Love and Wild. It focused much more on themes of grief, redefining one’s capabilities, and find meaning in small moments along the journey. Anna and Keane were both likable, flawed, and compelling, and while their romance felt inevitable, I’d say it was their friendship that was the most compelling portion of the story. If anything I felt that the last few chapters were a bit of a disappointment in how the romance plot line tied up; where as the rest of the book felt very much “it’s the journey not the destination” I found the romantic conflict and resolution to be pretty abrupt, underwhelming and low-stakes. Overall, however, I thought the premise, characters, and adventure were very enjoyable and will be easy to recommend to library patrons.

“Be brave, but careful. Be smart but also reckless once in a while...And don’t dunk the boat.” Float Plan by Trish Doller

4 stars. I like this book a lot! It’s about the journey of Anna in her boat, at sea, sailing to fulfill the dream of her beloved boyfriend, who committed suicide almost a year ago. Along the way, she meets Keanne, a sailor at loose ends at the moment, and hires him.

Anna had struggled after Ben’s suicide. And truly brave of her to sail first by herself. And then sensible enough to know she needed help. I like that she came out of her depression, I like how she came out it it, truly a journey. I like Keanne, and how he is good to her. And how they grew into each other. I like how she learned she can live without her new love, but chooses not to. I like how her world expanded so much. And I like the happy ending.

It’s a love story and women’s fiction too - more of the latter for me because Anna grows here.

Thank you NetGalley and St Martin’s Press for this book. Enjoyed it!

I felt every emotion reading this one. I felt Anna's pain but also could feel her being put back together again by a journey she was meant to take with man who left her just shy of being a widow. And Keane, with struggles of his own, is everything we needed him to be. Well done.

I struggled to get through this one. Overall, a lovely story of grief and journey of letting go. I personally struggled connecting with the characters and ultimately left disinterested in finishing.

Float Plan is not just a romance. It is the very definition of Women's Fiction, Mental Health, Grief, and some comedy thrown in. A very strong contender for best book of the year.

Anna Beck has lost her Fiance to suicide. She has lived 10 months and 6 days without him. So on the day they planned to leave on his Alberg to sail around the world, Anna does it anyway, even though she is a novice at sailing. She rents her apartment, quits her job and leaves telling no one. After a few rough days at sea, she needs help and finds Keane, a former professional sailor who has lost his leg in an accident.

This book is about grief, and the crazy things that it will make you do. As a Reader, I feel like someone has finally gotten this right. Trish Doller has done an amazing job of describing how to put your life together after losing someone you love. Throughout this book, we laugh and cry with Anna, commiserate with her breakdowns and cheer for her at the same time. The descriptions of the beautiful places we visit in the book make us want to be there with Anna and Keane as we can clearly see it through their eyes.

Never has a book completely touched me in a way that makes me want to share it everywhere. Doller's beautiful writing and her depth of the characters make the reader want more. I haven't cried at the end of a book in a very long time. Five stars for this amazing novel.

This book was sooooo:

mel·an·chol·y

noun
a feeling of pensive sadness, typically with no obvious cause.
"an air of melancholy surrounded him"

There were things that I really loved about this book and things that I didn't.

But I read it in 1 day and it made me feel all the feelings so that is always always a win in my book.

There are triggers:

(view spoiler)

4.5 stars

Mare~Slitsread

4.5 Stars

It being February, I had decided last night to double down on my romance reads for the next couple of weeks and somehow managed to remember I had a copy of this on the ol’ Kindle. When I woke up this morning it was around 50 degrees, but by 9:00 it was 30, dropping and the snow was blowing so hard it was a near whiteout. That right there is what you call the gods smiling upon your choice to read a book set somewhere warm.

Float Plan is the story of Anna who has barely been going through the motions for nearly a year after her fiancé Ben’s suicide. As a last ditch effort to propel herself through the final stages of the grieving process, she decides to set sail – literally - and takes the boat he painstakingly prepared for one epic journey through the Caribbean. However, it doesn’t take much more than making it to her first port before she becomes painfully aware that this was not meant to be a solo task. Enter Keane – a man suffering his own loss who responds to Anna’s advertisement seeking a skilled sailor who will help her get at least to Puerto Rico. Of course eventually this happens . . . .

♫♫♫And your lips taste like Sangria♫♫♫♫

Sorry, got sidetracked for a second there.

Anyway, this is a super slow roller with a little bit of melancholy (which I really sort of dig) and almost fade-to-black sexytimes with two very likeable characters . . . .

“In a matter of days, you’ve solo sailed across the Gulf Stream, dodged a one-nighter with a married man, eaten flying fish, and scaled a mountain. Granted, it was a wee hillock of a mountain, but how many mountains would you have scaled otherwise?”

“None.”

“So maybe you know more than you think.”

“God, you’re like an Irish Mary Poppins with facial hair.”

Who are both hoping to eventually find a “State of Grace.”

It loses a half star because the added conflict was simply thrown in for dramatic purposes only and the timeline immediately prior to the happily for now got waaaaay rushed compared to the remainder of the story.

ARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you, NetGalley!

Loved this book! The character development and chemistry were great and the descriptions of all the islands and people were so vivid. Highly recommend!

Well this wasn't what I was expecting. To be honest, I'm not certain what I was expecting. What I received though i LOVED

This was basically a wonderful captain's log of adventures of the sea and finding ones self during grief. It was fantastic.

I loved the amount of detail we recieved about everyday sailing terms. It was the perfect amount.

I also appreciate that everything felt completely realistic. Anna's feelings are shared so beautifully. I would have easily read 100 more pages of this.

Thank you @stmartinspress and @netgalleu for the advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.

Thanks to NetGalley and St Martin's Press for an advanced copy of Float Plan in exchange for my honest opinion.
I devoured this fun book in one day, in part because it was so entertaining that I couldn't put it down! Anna takes off on a wild adventure that she isn't entirely prepared to accomplish, but Keane helps her learn more about sailing and about her self. I thought it was incredibly cute and fun, and I loved being able to witness Anna's experience - both her boat's journey around the Caribbean and Anna's personal growth to overcome the tragedy in her past and start to become the person of her future.
If you're looking for a fun read with beautifully detailed descriptions about the Caribbean islands which makes you feel like you're traveling there yourself, I highly recommend Float Plan!

ADORABLE. I loved this one!! Sweet, emotional & raw, this one was refreshing but also swoonworthy! Would totally recommend to rom-com fans.

Almost a year after the suicide of her fiance Anna gets a calendar reminder for a vacation they had been planning. Having spent the last 10 months lost to her grief she hastily decides to take the sailing trip solo. When things go wrong she realizes she's not equipped to continue on her own and hires Keane, a professional sailor that needs to get to Puerto Rico. Keane is battling his own demons in a life that took an unexpected turn. Working together in close proximity brings its own set of complications.

I have put off writing this review because I know that whatever I have to say isn't going to do it justice. Float Plan is an absolutely exquisitely written book. It handles suicide and grief so gently while giving them space to be what they really are, tragic and unpredictable. I was extremely nervous to read this not knowing if I could mentally take it, after the first page I had to stop and give it a little time. Once I truly got going I could not put it down. There are so many things I loved, the portrayal of grief was so accurate, the fact that a main character has a disability, the tenderness, and so much more that it's too much to list. I'm not someone who enjoys boats, or the water really, but Float Plan made my heart ache to go tropical island hopping. This is genuinely the best book I've read so far this year. I can not recommend it enough, despite its tragic plot, it's beautiful, hopeful, inspiring, and all of the synonyms that go with those.

Float Plan is definitely one of the best books I've read so far this year. While it is a romance, there is so much more to it than that. It's a story about grieving, moving on and learning how you want to live your life.

Anna Beck is lost and floundering nearly 10 months after her fiancé, Ben, committed suicide. She's still trying to understand why he did it and what her life really means now that he's gone. When she gets the alert that it's the day they were to leave on a sailing trip that had been one of the things Ben was looking most forward to, she realizes she has to take the trip. She leaves Ft. Lauderdale on the boat that is now hers and plans to make the trip exactly as Ben had planned. She quickly realizes that she doesn't have all the skills that she needs to make the long distance trip, so she decides to look to hire someone to travel with her and help her out.

Anna ends up hiring Keane Sullivan, who is an experienced sailor and is already on his way in the same direction she's heading. The two find a kinship due to the fact that Keane also understands loss given that he lost his leg in an accident. Anna is able to lean on Keane when the sadness hits her especially hard, but she also finds that she's beginning to see Keane in a different light as well. Is she beginning to move on?

There was so much to love about this book. Doller wrote it in a way that engaged you from the outset and you felt for and rooted for both Anna and Keane. We've all experienced loss in our life and have been in a position where we weren't sure which end was up and I appreciated the realness in which these characters were written. Do yourself a favor and pick up this very entertaining and at times heart-wrenching story.

**I voluntarily read an early copy of this title courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review**

In "Float Plan," tells the story of Anna, whose fiance killed himself, leaving her the sailboat they intended to sail to their destination wedding in the Bahamas.

Anna sets off on the trip on the appointed day on her own, but on the first day, she realizes she's not capable of doing this on her own. She gets drunk and almost sleeps with a married man, then runs off and passes out, only to find herself returned to her boat by an Irishman named Keane, an experienced sailor who has been edged out of the profession he loves because after an injury, he has a prosthetic leg.

She hires him to help her navigate her trip, a trip that turns out to heal them both.

This is a gorgeous novel that makes me, a person who ranks beaches and tropical oceans at the bottom of the travel wish list, actually intrigued by the idea of visiting the Bahamas. In many ways, this is an ode to the parts of the Bahamas that are off the beaten path. For that reason alone, it's worth reading.

Readers should know there's heavy language and a lot of earthy references.

Thanks to St. Martins Press and Netgalley for the advance read.

4.5/ 5 stars

Float Plan is the author's adult romance debut (I believe that she usually writes YA). This is my first book by this author and I really enjoyed it very much.

I had not read the book blurb. So the opening was even more powerful for me. I thought that the beginning of this book was very strong. And I was hooked right from the start.

The narrator is 25 year old Anna (1st person POV). Something happened in her life. And now it's a year later and she is still dealing with the aftermath.

I can't recall another book where the author got me to feel so much in just a few pages. I could tell right away that I was going to like this book.

This book has romance. But it is really so much more than that. To me this book is more about a person trying to heal.

My favorite thing about this book was the setting. I loved everything to do with the sail boat and the tropical setting. It was really a great thing to read in the middle of winter.

This book was emotional and moving. And I wasn't expecting to feel so much. I would definitely recommend this book.

I can have a heavy heart these days and this book lifted me up a little bit, taking me across the Caribbean even though yes, I'm still in my Brooklyn apartment. I hadn't read any reviews before I picked up the book so I didn't know about any of the trigger warnings: There are quite a few, main one being self-harm.

After losing her fiancée, Anna decides to take the boat they had bought together and sail 1,700 miles to get to the island where they would have gotten married. But her journey takes a different turn when she meets Keane, who is also dealing with loss but of a different kind. (He lost one of his legs in an accident a year ago.) I loved their chemistry but I'll say the book is a 4 and not a 5 because 1) the end feels a bit rushed and 2) I wanted more steam!

I'd definitely suggest this book for those looking for a quick but well-written read.

If you only read one romance this year, let it be this one. Float Plan was everything I needed and more right now. A second chance at love romance with sailing and a differently abled main character made this book perfect. Top that with a slew of characters you just have to meet and Float Plan was knocked out of the park for me. I'm pretty sure this is going to be my favorite romance of the year.


Triggers: Fear, suicide

Thank you to the author and publisher for allowing me to read an ARC of this book in return for my review.