This mystery/suspense follows flight attendant Cassie on what starts as a typical morning for her - waking up with a killer hangover in a strange hotel room next to a strange man. Only this time, the man is dead and Cassie is covered in blood. Her heavy drinking the night before means Cassie only has brief flashes of memories and the last thing she remembers before blacking out completely is that the man beside her was alive. Cassie has two options - call the police and possibly get stuck in Dubai while the investigation and probably legal ramifications play out for years or she can leave and lie. When Cassie chooses the second option - lying to her coworkers, her family, the FBI - she unknowingly starts a chain reaction that has dire consequences.
TW/CW: alcoholism, animal death, death of a parent
I found the book's description to be a little misleading - but in a good way. I originally thought from the description that this would be similar to The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins where the protagonist is an unreliable narrator due to her alcoholism and she comes across as paranoid and a bit unhinged to those around her. The Flight Attendant does, technically, do all of those things but to a much lesser extent than I was expecting. Cassie is sober a lot of the time in this book and she does have people on her side that she can, to an extent, lean on. This story also has a more cat-and-mouse type of dynamic to it more so than just Cassie bumbling through an investigation on her own. Absolutely alcohol is a main issue and factor in Cassie's life and the situation she finds herself in at the beginning of the book. However, it didn't play as big a part in the story like I was expecting it to. I did like this better because instead of the entire story revolving around Cassie's blackouts and unreliable memory, it is really just that one night in Dubai that she can't remember. That moment was a bit of a wake up call, so while she does still have drinking problems in the rest of the book, it isn't nearly to the extent that it affects her memory for the rest of the book.
I really loved Cassie's character, even when she was making incredibly frustrating decisions. She was an interesting mix of being pretty cynical and closed off but she definitely has some tender spots where we can see how she wishes things were different. While I've never (knowingly) been close to someone who struggles with alcohol, I did find her struggle depicted in what felt like a much more relatable and measured way than other books I've read. She had a really interesting mix of being very self-aware with her struggles but also coming across as a bit naive about how she's reacting to those struggles. We find out snippets of her childhood and how that impacts her life and relationships now. She knows she uses alcohol as a coping mechanism but being able to recognize it and being able to change that behavior are two different skills. I think a lot of characters who struggle with alcohol fall into the stereotype where alcohol is an uncontrollable vice and they are almost in denial about the affect it has on their lives. Again, I can't say if this representation is accurate or not, but it felt much more nuanced than other characters. I also enjoyed her self-reflection when it came to her actions even when sober and how straightforward she was that she often makes impulsive decisions. Some of her decisions were so outrageous that I was suspending my disbelief a bit and I think her 'impulsiveness' was maybe used a bit too much as a way to move the plot along easily.
Maybe it is just the police procedural lover side of me, but I wanted a whole lot more FBI involvement in this story. They are such a constant source of worry for Cassie but we really don't get much interaction on page so it ended up making the tension feel a bit uneven. There are multiple times when Cassie would be so worried that the FBI would come and arrest her or have a voicemail waiting on her phone when she landed. However, those worries were almost never addressed and we didn't see the FBI hounding her or focusing on her as a suspect. Because of this, after the first few times, any FBI-related worry Cassie had I pretty much instantly dismissed. There was so much internal conflict and pressure that Cassie puts on herself during this book but I wanted some more external pressure from the FBI. The reader knows, due to the dual POV of the book, that Cassie is in some amount of danger but she has no idea so it really feels like if Cassie wouldn't have been so obsessive then there wouldn't be much of a story at all. Additional external pressure from the FBI could have helped the narrative feel like it had more forward momentum than just Cassie bumbling around until she conveniently found something out at just the right moment.
I took a few days to collect my thoughts and I'm still mad at the ending of this book. And from my quick skim of other reviews on Goodreads, I'm not the only one. This is the sort of ending where the author is asking for a whole lot of suspension of disbelief and I think it went too far. To keep this spoiler free, I'll keep things as general as possible. The ending had some character-related reveals that felt entirely out of character. We spend almost 350 pages knowing that Character A has certain traits X, Y and acts in a particular way Z ... until it is convenient for plot reasons for them not to act like that. Also, once we were about to hit the big climax, suddenly everything just fell in place and all the characters agreed on the direction they should go from there. We spend 340 pages building up all this suspense and intrigue only for it to be resolved by 10 pages of pretty much just talking. We get an epilogue two years later that shows where some of the characters end up and all I'll say about that is that I was very surprised at where some of these characters ended up given their past history. There was one big reveal that I think was extremely underutilized in the overall plot and I really would have loved that to be played up much more.
This book was turned into a TV series for HBO and, based on the episode synopsis I read, they changed many of the plot elements. I haven't watched the series yet, but knowing that the show takes much more of an active route for their plot makes me much more excited to watch it.
Overall, I enjoyed this book and Cassie as a character but the ending was a real mess.
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