This book was not what I was anticipating. I chose it for my Library book club's February read and I had greater expectations for it then what it delivered. I chose the book because the premise and story line sounded intriguing.
Here it is: Eleven individuals of various ages and social status embark on a private jet from Martha’s Vineyard. Sixteen minutes after take off the jet crashes into the ocean and only two survive. Was it chance that saved these two survivors or was there something else at work? What made the plane crash - mechanical failure? Terrorism? Human error? Questions of fate, human nature and the ties that bind humans together are raised in this pulse-quickening suspense novel.

Wouldn’t you agree that sounds like an intriguing novel? I certainly thought so but alas I was not overly impressed. Mainly I had trouble with the writing style. There was too much flipping back and forth between characters plus the timeline was mixed up a lot. There would be a chapter focusing on the back story of one individual on board the plane, then a chapter in the present day where the solving of the mystery took place with FBI agents and media/news reporters. I find this type of writing format confusing and hard to follow. There was also a lot of characters to keep track of and I might have been better off if I had started making a list of their names from the beginning. But I didn't. I found the language at times to be vulgar, which there was no warning of to the reader either. Lastly, the mystery was all around just very disappointing. When I did find out how the plane crashed and the mysteries were solved, I honestly thought to myself that it all was rather stupid and unnecessary.

**Spoiler**There was an admittedly interesting section in the middle of the novel when we were given the back story of Racheal, the 9 year old girl on the airplane who did not survive. It turned out that she had been kidnapped as a toddler from the summer home where her family was staying and her nanny was murdered. Their family was targeted due to their wealth and social status. I thought perhaps this incident would connect to the plane crash, but it didn’t. There were other missed connections too, and I feel Hawley could have made this a very tricky and tangled story if he had managed to connect multiple dots between backstories, characters, and the event of the crash better.

I rushed to get through this book just so that it would end and if I wasn’t reading this for book club, I would not have finished it at all. I’ve learned that life is too short for books we don’t like, especially when there are literally thousands more out there to discover.