‘Bill’s laptop pinged with an incoming email.’

And his nightmare begins. Captain Bill Hoffman is piloting a commercial flight between Los Angeles and New York. He has been called in on his day off, and his family is unhappy. His departure from home is interrupted as a tradesman arrives and he did not get to say goodbye properly.

Once the plane is in the air, Bill receives a message: ‘You will crash the plane or I will kill your family.’ His wife and two children have been taken hostage. Who has taken Bill’s family captive, and why? What will Bill do?

Fasten your seatbelt, you are in for a bumpy ride.

Fast-paced and full of twists, Ms Newman’s first novel takes us through a near impossible journey as the hostage taker seems to have every possibility covered. Can Bill’s cabin crew help avert disaster without alarming the passengers? The action shifts between the cockpit, Bill’s family and the hostage taker. And then the FBI becomes involved.

This is one flight I definitely don’t want to take.

Note: My thanks to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster Australia for providing me with a free electronic copy of this book for review purposes.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

The Falling is a story of survival. One morning a flight to New York, the pilot received a call that would change his life forever. The pilot had a terrible decision to make will he do it or not. The readers will continue to follow the pilot to find out what happens.

Falling is the first book I read by T. J. Newman. I like T. J. Newman writing style and the way she put the twist and turns in the plot of this book. A storyline that authors have been included in books before. However, T. J Newman did provide a different slant to this scenario. I like T. J. Newman's portrayal of his characters and how they intertwine with each other throughout this book. Falling was well written and researched by T. J. Newman. I like T. J. Newman's description of the settings that allow me to imagine being part of this book's plot.

The readers of Falling will learn about the anxiety that families go through when love ones go missing. Also, the readers of Falling will learn about air traffic controls role in an emergency.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for my free ARC for an honest review. I recommend this book.

This was a real nail-biter from the word go. When you find it hard to put a book down, you know it's your kind of book, and this one certainly was for me. I love nothing better than a story full of heart-stopping suspense and Falling offered it in spades.

Thank you to Net Galley and Simon & Schuster Australia for giving me the opportunity to read and review this fantastic thrill ride.

Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this book for an honest review.

Flight 416 from Los Angeles to New York, the pilots family in Los Angeles taken hostage . The hostage takers demands the pilot crash the plane or he save his family , the mother dressed in an explosive vest . Bill the pilot is told there is another person on board who will attack the plane. There are many hero’s along the way from the airline crew to the renegade FBI agent Theo on the ground. This is a fast paced thriller easy to read, however the story is a bit too complex at times and this slows down the pace of the story . This is a good read , I recommend this book 4 stars

I love a fast paced, edge of your seat, nail biting thriller and Falling ticked all my boxes! A minute by minute account of a worst nightmare scenario - do you chose to save your family from their kidnappers, or the lives of the 143 souls on board the plane you are piloting?

Brilliant, breathtaking and heart stopping!

Thank you for an advance copy of this book. I was gripped from the first page. This book depicts the frightening reality that airlines now face with terrorism threats and the way that incidents are now handled after the 9/11 tragedy. A pilot and his family face the daunting reality of having to make a choice between the pilot saving his family or saving the plane full of innocent passengers.

This is a thrilling read and I enjoyed it immensely. I am giving it 4 stars as I am a bit of a stickler for books that are based on reality not having holes in them and the one issue I struggled with is the fact the the police did not confiscate the nephew's phone from him and liaise directly with his aunty (who was part of the flight crew on the doomed flight). In reality, this would never have happened. There were a few other holes in the plot, but this was a fairly big one for me.

Other than this, the book was fast paced and enjoyable to read.

There must be some sort of magic with this book because I cant put down this book! Please pick a day to read this book when you have nothing better to do because once you started, you cant stop turning the page till the end.

Coming from the long line of aviators, reading Falling was like a trip down the memory lane. T.J.Newman definitely knows her stuff when it comes to planes, pilots and flight attendants. Thriller is built around a bunch of wonderful characters. I'd like to meet them in person. Author's insights into characters', their actions and emotions is what I enjoyed the most.

I found the suspense and thrilling part of this book is on the mild side. Some of the 'patriotic-heroic' details were a bit too much and naive. However, I read this book in one nigh. It is a very easy, unputdownable read. You can even call it a beach read.

YES! YES! YES!!
finally a book where I was on the edge of my seat!
I could not get enough of this!!
Definitely will be recommending this to my book club. They are going to gobble this up.

This book takes off on page one and does not turn off the seat belt lights until the last page. There is plenty of tension and I have to say anxiety in this one. All I will say is that the first chapter was almost enough to turn me off reading the rest of the book, it was distressing and in some ways not needed. Don't let that turn you off the rest of the book it is well worth the read.

Newman has take the tried and true airline disaster plot and put one hell of a spin on it. The basic plot is that a pilots family is taken hostage and he has a choice to make crash the plane or your family dies. Newman's writing puts in a seat on this plane. You cannot help but sympathise with Bill the pilot and his team of flight attendants as they struggle to save the souls on board the plane. My favorite character was Jo a brilliant flight attendant and one hell of a woman.

While reading this you will be questioning what you would do if placed in the same position, I am still not 100% sure. Newman is nothing if not even handed the villains are also given a voice and a chance to explain why they are doing what they are doing, that being said I had no sympathy for them.

If you are looking for a faced paced thrill rise pick this book up - just don't buy it at the airport before getting on a plane.

Thanks to the author, the publisher and Netgalley for a chance to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

(3.5 stars)
"It harkened back to a time when air travel was a rare privilege, a major event. Purposefully unchanged, the uniform kept a certain antiquated mystique alive." Growing up I was very fond of my Mother's 1960s set of Shirley Flight Air Hostess books, written by Edward Reginald Home-Gall under the pseudonym Judith Gale. These books were written during the golden age of air travel, where air crew were respected and wore their uniforms with pride. Falling, written by T. J. Newman, a former flight attendant, tries to reinsert some of that glory into a fast-paced post-9/11 action novel with limited success. As the price of tickets have come down, so has the glory, with air crew seen more as hospitality workers than the "one-hundred-pound terrorist speed bump" Newman puts forward.

Using a team of likeable characters Newman makes a case that service isn't the role of air crew: "That's not our job. Service is just something we provide." She points out that in five weeks of training, on "only one of those days did they go over food, drinks, and hospitality." This paves the way for the characters to combat the hijackers in this action thriller. In fact, my favourite bits of Falling were, like the Shirley Flight books, the insights into the way aircrew think, particularly in a post 9/11 world: "Most days, cabin compliance was a struggle. Passengers don't like to be told what to do."

"I watched a grown woman sob hysterically, I mean, rolling around in the grass hysterical, when she saw a dog get hit by a car. And all I could imagine was the look on her face when she clicked past the news of my village's annihilation. Bored. Distracted. I mean, the privilege." As for the story line and motivation of the hijackers, I found it a bit far fetched. While I am all for Americans being confronted by their apathy about what is happening in wider parts of the world, I just couldn't see this being the driving force behind making one man crash a passenger aircraft or watch his family die.

With thanks to NetGalley and publisher Simon & Schuster Australia for sending me a copy to read.

Goodness me, what a thrilling read ‘Falling’ was! I think any near disaster up in the skies is always a drawcard perhaps because, when we’re up there cocooned inside the cabin, we feel vulnerable, our lives the responsibility of the crew and pilot. Back on the ground we resume that responsibility thankful we survived yet another flight. Whether all crews are as forthright, gutsy, quick-witted, well-trained, robust and yet human, as this crew is, remains debateable but I, for one, can suspend my disbelief and enjoy the ride between the pages.

I particularly like the ‘Acknowledgments’ at the end of the book. T.J. Newman comes across as a warm and likeable person who shares her journey through 41 rejections until success! Now THAT’s a good story! I like how she lets us into her world and the people around her who inspire and support who she is. Thanks for that. I like her enough to look out for subsequent works. The only downside is my irritation at not knowing her first name. Is she a Tracy, a Tina, a Terrie? PD James being another. Why do authors do that?

Thanks for the opportunity to read the manuscript. It’s an exhilarating story with convincing characters.

That was more like it - a book I could really get my teeth into. And what a dilemma it was! Bill Hoffman, a pilot with Coastal Airways is to captain a flight on his supposed day off as the rostered pilot is suddenly unavailable. The decision is not popular with his family but he goes to do his job. Then the nightmare begins. He learns his family is being held hostage - his wife, Carrie strapped into a suicide bomber vest trying to comfort his son Scott, 10 and juggle 10 month baby Elise with bound hands. There is a man with them also strapped into a bomb laden vest with his thumb on the detonator. His demands are simple - crash the plane carrying 140 odd ‘souls’ or his family will be blown to smithereens!

There is a bit more to it than that but that is the crux of the story. Hoffman tells the kidnapper, he will not crash the plane and his family will not be killed. He has about 5 hours to work out how to do this. There is an accomplice on board but we don’t know who that is for a long time. Luckily, two of the flight attendants are very experienced. Hoffman is not supposed to tell them anything but he’s also very experienced. And sneaky. They come up with a cunning plan.

Of course as with many plans, things don’t go according to the plan but never underestimate people who are fighting for their lives. At the other end, Carrie proves to be feisty and clever as well. She doesn’t give anything away and bides her time. But will all this be enough?

This is certainly one of those ‘edge of your seat’ thrillers. I couldn’t see how it would play out or even if it would. The prologue certainly didn’t inspire confidence for the outcome. It really went down to the wire and I just couldn’t put the book down. I had to know how it ended. Kudos to the author who worked as a flight attendant for some years, so everything was pretty realistically described. I can recommend this book to any thriller lover or adrenaline junkie. It was really well done. I received an advance review copy from Netgalley for free and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Falling by T.J.Newman is a gripping, suspenseful modern day take on 9/11. I did enjoy this book and was grabbed right from the opening chapter.

Bill is an experienced pilot who gets caught up in a terror attack. Which will he choose, save his family or the passengers on board his flight. The story is quite in depth when it comes to the flight jargon, but I don’t think it detracted from the story. Chapters do jump around a little, and mid way through we are introduced to the FBI that become involved.

As much as i enjoyed this book a few little things did bother me. It was all a bit far fetched from the the link to the flight attendants nephew, to the ninja skills of the staff and passengers to survive a gas attack. But some how not too much to lose my interest. For some reason though I could not take to one of the flight attendants being called “Daddy”. Every time I read it it did make me cringe a little, not sure why it bothered me so much.

Overall it was quite a quick paced book, piquing my interest to want to read on each time I picked it up. 3/5 stars.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC in return for an honest review.

Falling is a suspenseful, compulsive airport read. It’s well written and has an engaging cast of characters. The action and dialogue lends itself to cinema and I could see this as a movie. The action arcs are reflective of film story construction.

This is a quality commercial novel and if you’re into plane hijacking dramas, this is well worth the read.

This book was archived before I was able to download it. I would have loved to read it but I didn't realise it would be archived so soon.

My sincere thanks to Simon and Schuster Australia and NetGalley for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. If you like a story that delves into action pretty much from the outset, this is the book for you.

We’ve all done it before - we’ve committed to our kid that we would attend their little league game but then work – in this case, an explicit favour from the Chief Pilot of a major US airline – gets in the way. For Captain Bill Hoffman, a seasoned pilot, the decision to take this extra shift is life altering – setting off a chain of events in which his airliner is highjacked (perhaps not in the conventional sense) by terrorists and Bill is given an impossible choice: the lives of his family or those of the 149 souls on board.

This is a fast paced novel in which twists are plenty and the central plot opens in essentially the first few pages. I generally enjoy a bit more of a lead-in to the action where the context of the story is explored. But that said, this does not affect the quality of the character development – they are richly depicted and have depth, and Newman spends a considerable amount of time describing their psyche, primarily from the perspective of one who understands the powerful sense of duty and responsibility that comes with having passengers lives in your hands (Jo was far and away my favourite character in this regard). Additionally, as someone who is an aviation enthusiast, it is clear that Newman has significant experience in this area: the aviation jargon use is there but not overpowering, and actually adds an extra dimension the realism of the writing, making you feel like you are ‘there’.

In all, this was an enjoyable book to read – a good short-ish book to pick up and delve into and one I recommend to anyone who enjoys a thriller. I rate this book 4/5 stars, primarily as a result of the re-readability; once I’ve read it once there’s probably not much else to be gained by re-reading.

A flying fantastic novel, which captures the dedication of the plane crew and the lengths that terrorists go through to bring a plane down.
Pilot Bill has been given a last minute job to fly to New York. Unbeknownst to him his family has been held hostage soon after he left for his flight. The captor has given him the ultimatum crash the plane with 140 people or his family dies.

Newman writes incredibly, it was suspenseful, action packed. I loved the in depth details of the cockpit in the plane, the scenery of landscapes of the flight to New York, and most of all I felt like I was reading a movie. It was jam packed in a small 285 paged book.

Not knowing what would go on when a plane hijacking takes place I'm not entirely sure about some of the characters reactions especially the crew members. But although having these odd reactions, I think it does build up the suspension, so eventually it does pay off.

Thankyou to Netgalley and Simon and Schuster for the gifted ARC, and an extra thankyou to T.J Newman.

Thanks NetGalley for the chance to read Fallen. As I read this book my mind was taken to all those movies like speed or die heart. Same sort of plot — even some of the things that happened are identical!! It was fun to read and as with all these type of movies it made me laugh at some of the things that happened because they become so unrealistic. However, an enjoyable light read that you know what the outcome will be but still read on till the end

There is a certain familiarity that comes with airline hijacking narratives.

Naturally, there is always a sense of mounting tension as innocent parties embark on what they think will be a trouble-free journey only to discover that their flight is going to be anything but routine and could well be the very end of them.

Then there are the stock standard characters – the protagonist with their figurative or literal head on the chopping block forced to do unthinkable things in the name of survival, or the passenger who rises to the occasion, determined not to let terrible injustices go unchallenged.

Or the flight attendant who finds hidden reserves of strength within herself and fights back in ways that impress the passengers and reinforce an oft-repeated notion that she’s not dying yet!

But where would all these characters be without a cardboard cutout bad guy/s who threaten and cajole, bully and manipulate to see their goals realised only to be bested, and they are always bested, by a hero far stronger and more right than they are.

Or by law enforcement who are so clueless that it takes them ages to realise that the hero or the renegade agent is RIGHT. Completely, utterly, inarguably RIGHT.

It’s all very predictable and all very just and certain and in a sense that’s what appeals to people.

Thankfully while Falling by T. J. Newman does contain many of these expected elements, and doesn’t really subvert them in any substantial way, it does try hard to deliver the expected thrills and spills but do it in such a way that your intelligence isn’t insulted and your humanity feels it has been listened to in some way.

It’s not always entirely successful in this regard and it does in many ways end up feeling like a brilliantly well-done homage to ’70s plane disaster films and ’90s action films, but overall, Falling is a cracking good that remembers that we all need a healthy slice of humanity to go with our larger-than-life storytelling.

The humanity comes courtesy of two major characters – Captain Bill Hoffman, a veteran pilot of Coastal Airways who’s known for his dedication to the job, his integrity and his love for his wife Carrie and their two kids.

He is, however you slice it, a stand-up guy, the sort of person that no antagonist in their right mind would actually want to mess with; naturally, of course, one does, and they, and this will not surprise you in this least, are all the poorer for it.

He is close friends with head flight attendant, Jo, a non-nonsense, eminently capable and kind-hearted person who is damn good at her day job and just as good, as it turns out, in dealing with a devious terrorist threat.

But here’s where the rather too obvious characterisation and possibly ham-fisted narrative comes abruptly to an end.

Captain Hoffman may sound from the review’s brief description like some lumbering hero without a brain, a man who takes down the bad guys, even with his wife and kids held captive thousands of miles below, and barely breaks a sweat doing it.

But in Newman’s hands, a flight attendant of many years standing who knows the type of people who work in the industry and their strengths and weaknesses, and most importantly what makes them human, Hoffman comes across as a thinking man’s hero, the sort of person who agonises over every move he makes, not in some sort of debilitating way but in way that presages action with thoughtfulness.

He also cares and even in the middle of a terrifying experience, he has the empathy to understand why the people who are using his kidnapped family to force him to crash flight 416 into the ground, are not as obviously evil as he wants them to be.

That awareness doesn’t take away from his anguish one bit and nor does it diminish the endless, page-turning tension in the plot; what it does do, and do quite effectively, is add some real humanity to both Hoffman and the terrorists, all of whom are presented warts and all but with an inherent understanding that life is rarely singularly black and white.

Jo too is a study in diversion from an empty character trope, as is her nephew who plays a critical role in the law enforcement role (though he is far more caricatured than the two main characters).

She has all the sass and smarts you’d expect but she’s also damn good at her job, a remarkable woman who confronts a host of terrifying challenges but who also admits to being scared and uncertain.

She is, in other words, wonderfully, reassuringly, human, all of which means that we get our thrilling action plot, our do-or-die moments but not at the expense of actually feeling something.

That’s rare in a novel like Falling, a certified member of a genre that is all too apt to push the pedal to the metal without stopping to consider if the people involved in the resultant action are going to be cared about at all.

The fact is that for all the cliches and well-worn tropes – they are effectively employed but still there in abundance – Falling is a rip-roaringly good read, an action fest high in the airs with heart, soul, and a real focus on social justice (though that’s not always smoothly woven in) that will leave you turning the pages with feverish alacrity even if you know exactly where it’s going at all times.

It’s proof that you can take a well-travelled genre (pun completely intended) and make something new and interesting of it with Falling one of those enormously entertaining reads that realise, thankfully, that you can have your pell-mell action and still have a beating heart and affecting humanity too.