Cover Image: Full Flight

Full Flight

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Oh my goodness, this was heartbreaking but beautiful. It really shows the all encompassing teenage first love. Ashley Schumacher does such a great job eliciting all the emotions, from love to grief.

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Oh. My. God. The tears and ugly sobs that just left my body.

This books was so innately heartbreaking, yet beautiful. To read about young, first love - with a forbidden romance trope thrown in - I just adored everything about this. It was magical and everyone needs to read it, NOW.

And now, I need to read all of Schumacher's backlist.

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Decent quick read love story with marching band backdrop. Pretty predictable plot and characters that seemed like stereotypes, but a nice way to pass a Sunday afternoon.

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“Full Flight” by Ashley Schumacher is a bittersweet YA love story.

First of all, do not read the book blurb. It gives the whole story away.

Anna James and Weston Ryan are assigned a duet in their marching band. Anna needs extra help as she hasn’t been in band as long the others. She gets Weston to assist her with her part and she helps him keep his grades up. They are supposedly opposites with Anna being known as the happy, cheerful girl and Weston being the town’s weird guy. However, the more the get to know one another they realize they’re exactly what the other needs.

While I was expecting to love this, it just didn’t work for me. Schumacher writes beautifully and I did come to care about Anna and Weston and some of the side characters. The problem was that this is a new level of insta-love where Anna and Weston basically make eye contact and instantly KNOW and adore one another. I am not a fan of insta-love so I was aggravated from chapter one and while I did enjoy the story once they started actually getting to know each other, I never really got over my initial aggravation.

Another issue was the reasoning behind Weston’s being an outcast. Apparently, in this small Texas town, having divorced parents and wearing a leather jacket makes you the local pariah and I just didn’t understand it. He is literally the misunderstood sweet guy with a heart of gold that has a bad reputation that keeps him apart from everyone else. I also had a slight problem with Anna’s happy-go-lucky attitude on the outside while covering up her “shadows.” I understand putting on a front but this felt like it was a bigger problem and I didn’t appreciate how the shadows went away with Weston’s love. I don’t love the message that some person’s love can change you or help you so I was iffy on that.

Now for things that did work for me! Being a teenager can be a hard time for a lot of kids and I loved seeing Anna and Weston grow and evolve and realize they’re not as alone or as weird as they imagined. Also, I love Schumacher’s writing! She has an almost lyrical style of writing that works for me without it being over the top or showy. She’s one of those writers that I’ll sometimes go back and read a line just because it was so good. She also knows how to brings the emotions. In her characters and the reader. I love books that make me feel and Schumacher has brought that in both of her books.

Overall, I think this will work better for others. It wasn’t a me book but I can see how others will feel differently.

I received an ARC from Wednesday Books via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

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Overall, I really enjoyed this book! It unexpectedly made me cry on my plane ride home, so you know it really packs an emotional punch. However, I disliked one aspect of the book, which I see to be a common trend in YA contemporary novels. Instead of addressing or facing that the characters may have an undiagnosed mental illness, or perhaps to hide the underlying mental illness (depression), the author instead makes the characters super quirky and unique. Perhaps this was me just reading too much into by the mention of constant shadows and feigning happiness in front of others, but the characters did not seem to be adjusting well. This was quickly brushed off by obsessions with Christmas and their newfound love. My complaint may be on the more nitpicky side, but this truly was an enjoyable read.

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I really love Ashley's writing. And I think she's able to capture grief in some of it's most raw forms and make you feel all of the emotions.

That being said, I lost my sister this year, and this was just the wrong book at the wrong time for me. I was not prepared for this kind of grief.

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This was a bittersweet love story about who teens who fell in love in marching band. I loved the marching band setting, as I don't think I have EVER read a story about kids in marching band. And I loved the way this story connected with a group of teens that are rarely represented in fiction.

I liked Weston and Anna. Their romance was cute and a bit awkward and it felt realistic. I didn't love how the story ended, but since i read the summary, I was not surprised either. The summary of this book spoils pretty much the whole book, so I would avoid reading that if possible!

I loved Schumacher's previous book Amelia Unabridged. Full Flight didn't pack quite the same emotional punch for me, but it was still a sweet story that represents a teen audience that is often ignored.

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I am a fan of Amy Schumacher’s writing style in the YA genre of writing. She has a beautifully descriptive style to her. I didn’t love the overly band/musical side of this one personally. It was just a little too much for me, and this could be me never playing an instrument or just too far past that sort of high school phase to feel fully engaged.

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I absolutely LOVED the author's previous novel, Amelia Unabridged, so my hopes and expectations for this one were very high. Perhaps that was a mistake.

Small town Texas reveres football, but saxophonist Anna James and the other 43 members of the marching band take contest season just as seriously. Paired with mellophone player, Weston Ryan for a duet, Anna finds herself curious about this boy the rest of the town thinks is trouble.

I love YA and I find much of the criticism leveled at the genre to be unfair. I have heard other readers classify it as angsty, with annoying teenagers and unrealistic dialog. This may be one of the first times I feel some of that rings true. It felt very slow and plodding and I think would have benefitted from tighter editing. I cared for the characters, but this time out felt the tension was forced.

On the strength of Amelia Unabridged, I will definitely read more of this author's work.

Thanks to the author, Wednesday Books and NetGalley for the complimentary digital copy in exchange for my honest review.

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Full Flight is a young rom-com that pulls at the heart strings. It’s about Anna and Weston who secretly need each other but who try not to make it to obvious.

I knew when reading this book that it would be about two different people who fall in love. Yes it is a little insta love but was cute anyways. I love the two different perspective.

Thank you Wednesday books and Netgalley for providing and early read for an honest review.

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I loved this book! So sad (it made me cry at the ending) but at the same time I couldn't put it down, even if I had an idea of where it would end.

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I'm still thinking about this book. I had to put it down a few times to collect myself and stop crying all over my e-reader! So heart-wrenching and so good.

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The sweet relationship between Anna and Weston was just everything, I loved every second of this book. It felt very real and vulnerable.

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this was so much sadder than I expected, but was very meaningful as well.
Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for providing me with an e-arc of this novel!

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Full Flight
I've not cried this hard in quite some time.
From the dedication to the last word of the
acknowledgments, I felt how deeply personal this novel was for the author. I feel so privileged to have been let into this story, and will keep it close and safe in my heart for eternity.
Full Flight is beautifully written with gorgeous glowing prose, fully-rounded characters that leap from the page and walk around in your mind, and it's ultimately a story of star-crossed lovers navigating small town gossip mongers, first love, and first loss.
Ashley Schumacher has a way with words and grief and sadness that reminds me of Adam Silvera. Captivating and harrowing, and so, so, so, worth it.
@ashwritesbooks @wednesdaybooks @netgalley thank you so, so much for the earc of this gem.

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The characters had good relationships with each other and I think the way emotion was shown was executed well. There was a little too much band talk for me though.

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Full Flight performs the Ashley Schumacher miracle all over again—characters who are so real you weep for their pain and cheer for their success. The marching band setting was specific and fascinating, and the world these teens live in is so fully-drawn and richly-imagined. This one dealt a particularly intense emotional blow at the end, and when I finished I had to sit down, cry, and stare at the wall for a while. A masterpiece!

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*Arc provided by Wednesday Books and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review."

Full Flight is a book about a boy and girl in band that fall in love and it ends tragically. Weston is the pariah of small town Enfield, Texas after his parents divorce and rumors of him destroying a beloved town landmark. Anne is desperate to prove herself in the school's band. The two are assigned to play a duet together and the rest as they say is history.

Full Flight was a struggle to read. I was never in band, but I can't even remotely imagine a band getting ready for a competition would select someone who can barely play an instrument to be in a duet. If the story had been her learning to play to compete for the duet spot, sure, but not being assigned it. Girl falling for the town bad boy is a pretty standard troupe, but bad boy because his parents got divorced? That also seems a bit unrealistic. Maybe in small town Texas these are things? The romance was instant love and that is probably my least favorite YA troupe because it never feels organic. In the end, this one just wasn't for me personally, but I'm sure if you like insta-love and small town drama this one might be for you.

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I am so glad I finally picked up Full Flight. Several of my friends told me that it was going to be great, but that it was also going to ruin me for other books.

They weren’t wrong.

Full Flight had everything I love in a YA contemporary.

We’ve got a guy and a girl who are forced together (in this case, Anna needs help with their duet for band, Weston is her duet partner and the only one who can help her.) They start to catch feelings, but her parents hate him.

There’s romance and funny friendship. Their’s high school kids who are struggling to find their place in the world, and finally find it with each other.

ALL THE STARS for Full Flight.

And also all the tears.

I went into this one fairly blind, but based on what my friends had told me, I still prepared for the worst. I still cried a lot.

This book is beautiful and heartbreaking and hopeful and emotional.

It’s worth the read, even though I haven’t been able to read anything since I finished it.

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Full Flight is about Anna and Weston. When they have a duet, Anna is struggling to learn it. To help perfect it, she leans on Weston to master it. From there, they get to know each other more and their relationship starts to bloom.

This is one I wanted to love and when I finished it, I thought it wasn’t bad, but the longer I’ve thought about it the more I’ve realized it’s on the lower end for me. It’s one of those “that’s a book” books for me.

One thing that I think really pulled me out of this was how much band related content there was for me in here. For someone who was in band, they might love this and appreciate that more than I did. With it being on nearly every page, it was just a lot for me.

Weston was also someone that everyone said they didn’t like. He was this bad boy and a weird kid, but this was never really something that was explained. None of it added up for how he actually acted and it made no sense to me.

Which brings me to their forbidden romance once again not making sense to me. Maybe part of it was the insta-love as well as Weston’s background not making sense to me, but it didn’t work. It simply served as more of a frustrating point than anything.

This one was not for me. I could see maybe a band kid or and more of the target audience enjoying this, but there were too many things I couldn’t overlook.

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