My goodness, what a book! You might actually forget to breathe whilst reading this one. It is an intense page turner that you will struggle to put down. I made the mistake of starting Falling late one night and wished that I could have read it in one sitting. It would make a fantastic movie 🎥

An impossible choice.... what would you do? Commercial airline pilot Bill picks up an extra flight at the last minute and will soon wish that he had said no. Early into the flight to New York he is given an ultimatum... crash the plane and the 140 souls on board will die, or his family will die. With his stellar crew behind him, they must try to survive this flight and keep his family safe.

There are some graphic scenes in this one, but all in the context of the story. You will feel the tension, you will feel the characters pain and fear. The tension is real and you feel as if you are in board with the passengers. A super fast paced read that I couldn’t stop reading.

Thanks to Simon and Schuster Australia and NetGalley for my advanced copy of this book to read.
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Falling certainly delivers what it promises! Fast paced and gripping, it reads like a big budget action film from the beginning. This is sure to appeal to a huge audience!

Pilot Bill and wife Carrie are seeing some fractures in their marriage. She’s at home with two kids, while he’s often travelling. He says yes to a last minute flight shift on a day when he had family obligations. Things are frosty when he leaves the house. Once in the air, he gets a message showing his wife and children strapped into explosive vests. The terrorist’s bargain is clear and absolute – crash this plane into a designated Washington target, or your wife and children get it. To complicate things, the terrorist warns Bill that there is a ‘back up plan’ on board and that any attempt to contact the authorities or thwart the operation will be seen as Bill making his ‘choice’. Who will he save? The 140 souls onboard or the 3 on the ground who (he of course now realises) mean the world to him?

This blockbuster premise launches the reader into a Hollywood-worthy explosion of a novel with the full bingo card of plot devices. There are hardboiled coppers, a cleverly resilient hostage, and vulnerable kids to up the ante. Don’t expect a lot of down time! So far so predictable – but wait. Just when you think this is going to play out like every other hostage thriller, T J Newman tosses in some properly interesting twists – particularly in terms of character development and a deep understanding of the airline industry.

Newman is a US novelist and former flight attendant. According to her bio, she ‘wrote much of Falling on cross-country red-eye flights while her passengers were asleep’. Which is kind of terrifying! Can you imagine sitting comfortably in your eye mask while your flight attendant envisages a full throttle terrorist drama unfolding on your flight! But her solid knowledge of the plane layout and flight protocols have clear benefits when it comes to her characterisation of the books flight attendants, who show outstanding bravery and forward thinking under the most extreme circumstances. *Spoiler* if you ever see a canister of toxic gas flying down the aisle, a coffee jug makes a handy sealable disposal unit! Hopefully you’ll never need this advice.

I think my favourite line from the novel was this one from wise, experienced Jo – long term friend of the besieged pilot and all round tough chick: ‘…a flight is just a random sample of the general population, a classic bell curve. A few assholes and a few exemplars, but primarily, a whole lot of sheep.’ in this way, Newman uses the plane’s unfortunate passengers and crew to ask questions about what counts as brave, wise or foolish under pressure.

What a novel., a five star read that will have your hair standing on end. Thrilling, exciting and breath taking. The novel was so well written that you felt you were part of the journey. T. J. Newman draws you right in to the action - and you fully understand the personalities of the people involved in the drama. A novel that does not leave your mind and heart after completion. The plot - storyline is just brilliant . I highly recommend this novel to all - you will not be disappointed.

Well, this was a wild ride! I might be able to start breathing again in a week.

When pilot Bill leaves his family that morning, on his way to work, he has no idea that when he sits down in the cockpit, ready for take off, his world will fall apart. A kidnapper has his wife and children, they are strapped with bombs and the only way to save their life is to crash the plane full of passengers. What will Bill choose?

I absolutely love dilemma books. They always make me think about what I’d choose. In this case, I just thought I was glad I’d never be in Bill’s position 😅Falling was such a harrowing book, from the very first opening line. Am I kind of glad we’re not really flying anywhere right now? Umm, yes. Full of twists and constant wondering about who can be trusted, it’s one you want to read while firmly on the ground.

If you’re looking for something to give you a heart pounding adrenaline rush, this is it!

WOW this was better than I was expecting. I was gripped from page 1! A great thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seat.

Thanks to Netgalley for free early access to this book in exchange for an honest review. I requested this book because the sypnosis about a plane hijacking sounded exciting and I like supporting debut female authors.

I'd describe the book as Grey's Anatomy but aviation so whether you'd enjoy it depends if you like Grey's Anatomy. I do. It's an engaging read that I finished in a day. There are some pacing issues where some parts are really exciting, anxiety-provoking, and fast-paced mixed in with some dull, redundant sections that ruined the flow. The opening chapter was also unnecessarily gory and felt like a cheap start. The good plot twists and some great side characters made up for it. The author worked in the aviation industry so the book gives a nice peek behind the scenes.

Overall, it is a good debut novel with lovely themes of empathy, friendship, bravery, and the luxury of choosing to be good that not everyone has. 3.5 stars rounded up to 4.

So, a few things first: Falling is going to make millions at the box office and I'm excited to see Universal Pictures has already picked this up for the film adaptation.

Falling is pure, jaw-clenching action, and as I barrelled through this story I realised this wasn't just the cheap thrill I'd assumed it to be. The characters are engaging and thoughtfully developed. I loved Jo, the indomitable head flight attendant (please cast Adina Porter in her role!) and her crew, especially the flamboyant Big Daddy, whose epic smackdown of an onboard Karen was a splash of comedic relief in what was otherwise an intense story. Predictably yes, it's a terrorist bad guy, but I do appreciate that Newman attempts to engage more deeply with the story behind our antagonist's motives, which is often lacking in genre fiction like this. There are a sprinkling of cringey American 'freedumb' moments throughout the climax of the novel, but it doesn't overwhelm the narrative and there was only one that really made me want to eye-roll out of the room.

There were twists I saw coming a mile away, and others that caught me by surprise. It was fast-paced and overall, I just buckled in and enjoyed the ride. I'm looking forward to seeing the film adaptation; if executed correctly, this could be the next action blockbuster to rival films like Speed or Airforce One. But don't wait for the movie, the book is a blockbuster in itself when it's released on June 2, 2021.

Thank you to Simon & Schuster Australia and NetGallery for providing me with an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This book grabs you from the first sentence & doesn't let go until the end. It's fast paced, and we get to see through the eyes of those involved as the situation evolves. I thought this was well written - T. J. Newman made me laugh a little and cry a lot. She's drawn upon her experience as a flight attendant, and I feel that this has added to the experience for the reader. This book is a thrilling, action packed read that lives up to the hype - and one of my favourites of 2021! Enjoy the flight!

Back in the 1990s there were a bunch of thriller movies which started with Speed with essentially the same plot. Madman gets hapless patsy to pilot/drive a vehicle full of unsuspecting passengers as some form of revenge for some perceived or real wrong. These movies are all based around tricked out versions of the Trolley Problem – do you kill a small number of people to save many more? First time author TJ Newman is obviously a fan of these narratives and being an ex-flight attendant where else would she set her wicked problem but on a plane. And so we have her debut novel: Falling.
After what can only be described as an exploitative and unnecessary cold open, Falling finds pilot Bill Hoffman abandoning his family to take up a last minute change to fly from LA to New York. Not long into the flight he learns that his wife and two children have been kidnapped and he is told he must crash the plane or they will be killed. He is also told that he will have to throw poison gas into the cabin before the crash (for no apparent reason) and that there is a backup terrorist on board the plane to keep him honest. Despite being told to tell no one about this, Bill trusts his flight crew to support him in thwarting the plan. On the ground, disgraced FBI agent Theo Baldwin is on thin ice but has to convince his boss to give him a second chance when he gets a message from his aunt Jo, the head flight attendant on the doomed flight about the plot.
Following this set up, the rest of the novel is pretty much what readers would expect. Bill finds clever ways to talk to the ground without the terrorists finding out, Theo keeps following his gut rather than listening to his boss because lives are at stake and he knows best, the flight crew manage to rally to the passengers to work as a team, and Bill’s wife Carrie tries to empathise with her captor whiles also plotting her escape. Newman’s experience working on planes shines through in her descriptions of the flight crew and their relationship with each other, giving a needed dose of reality into an increasingly unbelievable situation. And every chapter the plane gets closer to its ultimate destination.
Planes have traditionally provided great locations for movie thrillers – the feeling of claustrophobia and helplessness, the ease with which everything can go so easily wrong. But the advantage of movies is that the ability to overload the senses and the speed at which they move allow them even more than books to paper over cracks in story and character. Books do not tend to get that luxury. And Falling suffers as a result.
This narrative has all of the requisite thrills and cliffhangers but it fundamentally does not make any sense. It requires readers to empathise with the main characters enough and turn the pages quickly and not think about the set up or the way it plays out. One of the aspects standing in the way of that are the numerous, completely unnecessary italicised flashback sections. Without wanting to give any of the twists away, it is true to say that given all the advantages at their disposal, the bad guys end up with the sloppiest, most inefficient way to carry out their plan. The best that can be said about the plan is that they pick Bill because they want to make a point about innocent people having to make impossible life or death decisions. But even that does not really make any sense.
At its best, Falling is a shout out to the tireless work of flight attendants whose job it is to keep hundreds of people stuck in a pressurised tin can content for hours on end. At its worst (particularly the completely unnecessary baseball scenes) it is the type of flag waving Americana that might appeal to a certain section of the intended audience but that is undercut by the very real political points made by the “bad guys”. In between that it is a totally unbelievable but effective beach-read thriller that, if readers do not stop to ask any questions of it, will at least keep them turning the pages.

Apart from the first chapter (which I thought was unnecessarily gory and almost made me abandon the book) I really enjoyed this rollercoaster of a book. After a few chapters I just had to know what would happen and I finished it the same day I started it, a rare occurrence these days.
Sure, it's not high-brow literature, but it's very entertaining and would make a great holiday read. Just skip that first chapter, you won't miss anything.
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for a free electronic copy in return for an honest review.

This is a tension filled thriller you'll find hard to put down. You follow the story every step of the way in what feels like real time. No flashbacks, no alternate time lines - all the events take place over the course of 6 hours.

A pilot receives a message that his family has been taken hostage and they will be killed if he does not crash the plane. A huge moral dilemma in a ripper of a read.