This was one of my most anticipated books of the summer, and I think my expectations were too high. It was certainly fast paced, with a GREAT story - very cinematic and easy to see how this is Hawley's forte (the creator of Fargo, the TV series). A poor artist gets to hitch a ride on a private jet with a bunch of bigwigs (who all have reasons to be murdered) and saves the only other survivor (a little boy) after it crashes at sea. However, in parts it read like a script and felt disjointed. There were a few scenes of dialogue that had me utterly confused and, on the flip side, a number of overly trivial ramblings where I felt as if I was being hit over the head with too much information. One entire page was dedicated to the description of a character's time being on the high school football team, with nary a break for even a new paragraph. Just one big long word wall about how Texas football was their world. There were similar missives on art and it felt like a lot of rambling to make up for the cinematic dialogue. These philosophical tangents seemed to weigh the already good story down. Just the way it unfolded, how it holds a mirror up to current events and how we perceive them still made it worthwhile reading. "...in the war between common sense and marketing genius, marketing is going to win out." Plus, given that the ousting of Roger Ailes at Fox 'news' most definitely happened after Hawley wrote this is rather eerie...

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