Phew this was a wild ride!

I loved how this story was laid out! We meet Jasmine and Stephanie right away and then are left to wonder what happened to them and why they are missing! I loved that even as the reader we were left guessing until the second half. Now you do have to suspend some belief on this one but overall it was just a fun popcorn thriller. I will definitely read more by Jessie Garcia! Such a great book to start the year with.

Clever and twisty and ridiculously good! Stephanie and Jasmine end up on the same plane. Stephanie for a work conference and Jasmine is trying to escape an abusive relationship. After the plane ride, both women start texting friends about meeting and falling for the same man. The texts get more erratic and then go silent. Both women seemed to have disappeared.
This is told in multiple POVs. It's suspenseful and will definitely keep you guessing until the very end.

*Special thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for this digital e=arc.*

The Business Trip by Jessie Garcia is reminiscent slightly of the popular novel from a few years ago called The Last Flight. Two women appear to have connected somehow while flying somewhere. That's where the similarities end, though. The Business Trip might have you think you're reading a novel with a predictable plot line until all of a sudden nothing is happening like you thought it would. Plenty of twists and turns keep you turning the ages rapidly. Read and enjoy!

Jasmine is trying to escape an abusive relationship. Stephanie is an executive on her way to a conference. A chance encounter on a plane changes both of their lives forever.

The story is woven through four parts, each focusing on a different part of the timeline. There are many characters to keep track of, which usually makes it difficult for me to read, but this was so well done that I immediately remembered each character as I read their chapters. It helped that the chapters were short.

The first three parts kept me glued to the book. I needed to know what was happening because I felt unusually attached to Stephanie and Jasmine through all their friends and coworkers. Once part four hit and the twist was revealed, I did some eye-rolling, but I was invented and needed to know how it ended. This debut novel shows a lot of promise, and I can't wait to see what Jessie Garcia has in store for us in the future.

What a great twisty thriller. We have 2 main FMC, Jasmine and Stephanie who are connected by being on the same plane and both of them vanish. The story is told in multiple POV which added an interesting perspective. I love you really didn't know what was going on.

There is a cast of narrators (Andrew Eiden; Dylan Fitzpatrick; Fred Berman; Gail Shalan; Hillary Huber; Jennifer Pickens; John Pirhalla; Kimberly M. Wetherell; Kirby Heyborne; Tim Campbell) and made for a full immersive experience.

Thank you @stmartinspress @macmillan.audio @netgalley for a copy of this book.

DNF

Pre-Read Notes:

I made myself stop reading the description for this one, because I was so hooked after the first few sentences and I wanted to go in as blind as possible. This concept is so compelling!

Partial Review:

Reading Notes:

Three (or less) things I didn't love:

This section isn't only for criticisms. It's merely for items that I felt something for other than "love" or some interpretation thereof.

1. Trigger warning for dv, violence against women, abusive relationships, child abuse and neglect, early life stress, sa, marital sa, gaslighting, grudge holding, more, and all in the first 20 pages. A lot of these details about the abusive relationships are unnecessary. Readers are smart, they get it, her life was horrible and trauma drives this character. No need to feed the readers a body full of it. Not to mention, bombarding the readers with backstory in the first 20 pages makes it hard for readers to connect with the book and keep reading.

2. This narrative has like 9 different POVs. That many is very challenging to manage without clarity issues. *edit This is very confusing.

3. DNF @ p74

Rating: DNF @ p74
Recommend? no
Finished: Dec 30 '24

Thank you to the author Jessie Garcia, publishers St. Martin's Press, and NetGalley for an advance digital copy of THE BUSINESS TRIP. All views are mine.
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A thriller that reads like a high stakes movie - and if you can suspend disbelief, is great thriller with shocking twists!

I am, in the sea of 4 and 5 star reviews, one of the few low ratings - so if this one sounds like your jam, you might still just give it a try! I wonder if this is a sign that I consume too much true crime. I just couldn't ignoring some of the glaring parts I didn't find believable.

But on it's own, if we just roll with the story, it's well written and kept me interested. The characters are thoroughly unlikable and the men felt a little over the top, but it played well with the other drama and was easy to roll with. I did love Robert and Freddie and they were my favorite characters. I like that it was clearly broken into parts - and each part had a separate set of narrators that give you different POV and really brought out the confusion and mystery. I wish I'd liked it more.

A huge thank you to the author and publisher for providing an e-ARC via Netgalley. This does not affect my opinion regarding the book.

**spoiler alert**

Jasmine is running away from a toxic relationship. Stephanie is headed to a news conference. As the story progresses, not all is what it seems.

I enjoyed the multiple POV in this book and the fact that you get to see the same scene from those different POVs. This was a quick, twisty read.

I didn't quite enjoy how very quickly one of the characters jumped to senseless murder as her only way forward. It felt rushed and out of character until you learn about their past, which you read about after that.

I didn't see the end coming, so that was good.

Stephanie, tv news director in Madison, Wisconsin, is headed off to a convention . Jasmine, also from Madison, is escaping the violent man with whom she's been living. The end up assigned to the same row of seats on their flight to Denver and their other seatmate asks if they are sisters because they resemble one another so much. Stephanie's friend and neighbor Robert is caring for her cat. Jasmine checks in with a friend who helped her get away.

A few days later, both women text their friends that they have met a fantastic guy named Trent McCarthy and are going to his home in Atlanta. Trent is another news director, and, a bit of a jerk. Then, Stephanie texts Robert that she is afraid for her life. He gets the police involved. While neither Stephanie or Jasmine is found, DNA evidence and their phones are found at Trent's home.

Where did the women go? What happened to them? Is Trent more than just a jerk? This mystery is full of twists and turns and both women, as well as Trent, have some secrets. This one is difficult to put down. Reminiscent of the works of Gillian Flynn, anyone who enjoys a good thriller with at least one heartless protagonist will not want to miss this one.

Multiple narrators bring the audiobook alive and the 9 hour books goes quickly!

Though I did enjoy the twists of this book, it just fell flat for me. I appreciated that it was a quick read and suspense was definitely built, but I can't say I was particularly interested in learning what the outcome was. I wasn't invested in the way I really love to be when reading a thriller. This is maybe a book for those just getting back into reading and looking for a starter thriller.

My eyes just kept getting wider and wider. I couldn't put this down. What a flip at the end! How to get away wth murder...my my my....
Jessie Garcia certainly is a creative writer. I look forward to this book in print!
I highly recommend this to all mystery/thriller readers.
Thank you @Netgalley @Stmartinspress @Macmillan for this awesome ARC. I thoroughly enjoyed this book!

Really intriguingly plotted mystery that is let down horribly by stilted and clunky writing and a weird structure.

Two women are on the same flight: Stephanie is going to a conference and Jasmine is fleeing an abusive boyfriend. Stephanie goes to her conference but then, apparently and uncharacteristically, decides to go to Atlanta with someone she meets there, leaving her colleagues in the lurch. But when they text her, something odd starts to emerge.

Ok, enough plot as I don’t want to spoil it for you. The story is told through the POVs of several characters - both the protagonists and a whole mess of people surrounding them. The author tries hard to give them distinctive voices but they end up being rather caricatured: the gay neighbor, the young social media manager, the abusive boyfriend and so on. It is also written as though they are telling someone but it’s not clear who - maybe it should have been set up as a podcast? The dialog is, quite frankly, horrible. When was the last time you introduced yourself to someone with “My name is xxx”?

Now I can forgive a lot for a good plot and this has the making of being a pretty decentone. There are a couple of nifty twists though they do rather depend on the reader letting their credibility-o-meter take the day off. However, there is a character called Raven whose deus ex machina role is so unbelievably contrived and coincidental that it upends any slight grip the story has on believability. Additionally, the solving of the mystery is actually really straightforward (though does involve great leaps of intuition), rather undermining all the smart sleuthing done by Stephanie’s friends in the early part of the novel.

I don’t like to be so harsh about a debut novel - after all, I’m sitting here not having written anything other than a snarky review - but I can’t recommend this one.

Thanks to St Martin's Press and Netgalley for the digital review copy.

Jasmine trying to escape an abusive marriage and Stephaine a successful new producer meet on a plane to Denver. Next thing family and friends of these two women are being revived that they met a man and were going to get to know each other.

Jasmine world her friend who help her escape is starting to wonder where she is and why she isn’t texting her back and why she is left to deal with the fall out of what she did.

Stephaine friends start to worry about her when she didn’t return from a work trip and would abandon her life like she did.

I didn’t see the twist t the end but I really enjoyed this story. I love how the different point of views of each person helped create this amazing end

Thank you NetGalley for the advanced copy of this book!!

Absolutely loved this book! The twist at the end shocked me and I didn’t have it figured out at all. Loved the alternating POV’s and short chapters

The Business Trip was fast paced and kept me reading throughout the night. It is a quick read but is also packed with emotion as well as dark turns. The characters are totally believable and details are on point. Would definitely recommend this book.

Wow! A wonderful debut novel. This is a finely tuned twisty thriller/mystery. So well written and constructed with lots of detail and action that kept me turning the pages. Absolutely loved the multi person viewpoints. Looking forward to reading more from Jessie Garcia. Thank you NetGalley for providing the ARC.

Two women with nothing in common meet on a plane and when they both go missing after texting that they have met a man (incidentally it’s the same man), no one knows what to believe. Where are the women? Are they safe or victims of foul play? As the layers peel, the pages turn faster and faster. A twisty good read! Thank you to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for an ARC of this book.

This was intense! We get different point of views and I kept thinking "No wait! What's happening with HER?!" as they'd switch 😂
One woman seemed to have it all but losing her family, the other seemed in an abusive situation. Both were taking a trip and before long the men and woman in their lives started to worry about what was going on.
Things got fishy, things got crazy and then suddenly I started to not like someone i originally was rooting for😱
It surprised me and the logic made no sense and things went DOWN! Then...the author threw another twist at me at the end!
I'd hoped for a better ending after everything, but it was still an incredible ride and I has fun reading it 😁

Thank you to the author, NetGalley, & publisher for allowing me an advance copy for my honest review.

Don’t wait & add this to your TBR today! I loved how fast paced this book was, hooking me from the get-go. Add in multiple narratives, and I’m hooked til the end. THAT TWIST. I had an inkling, then was stumped, and then my jaw dropped those last few chapters. I highly recommend not reading the chapter titles ahead of time.

This book is split into 4 parts, starting with getting the reader acquainted with Jasmine and Stephanie. Once you as the reader becomes attached to these characters, you’re sucked into Part 2 and you have to know what happens next on this runaway business trip flight.

Highly recommend! I had my eyes glued to the pages!

There were so many twists and turns, I’m still reeling from! The lead in was so good, I couldn’t put the book down. I couldn’t figure out who was doing what. Then I read the pivotal information and was following along only to be shocked in the end. Jasmine and Stephanie’s story was crazy good. I was smug thinking I knew the ending only to be thrown for another loop. First time reading this author. It won’t be the last! Provided by NetGalley.