I received a copy of this book from the author in exchange for an honest review.
Mid-Flight is a Sci-Fi story centered on Lexi Brennan who is the main character. In the first few chapters the story is told through the interchanging POVs of Lexi and Jason who is her love interest. Afterwards, it is told through Lexi’s point of view.
The story begins on a tragic note that honestly caught me off guard and then fast forwards into the next year when the story takes place. It is the year 2038 and Lexi is struggling. 2037 had been an extremely hard year for her and everyone else. She’d lost her best friend and a deadly pandemic that had killed in the thousands had closely followed. Lexi, just like everyone else had lost people she knew to the pandemic.
One year later, and things seem to be getting worse even though she is fighting to get her life back to normal. The story mostly revolves around Lexi trying to adjust to the crazy world around her all while dealing with grief and her own life which is far from perfect. There is also a healthy dose of romance to tie everything together.
Getting into this book I had some expectations especially after reading the description but this was nothing like I thought it would be. I thought it would be about Lexi going against the dictatorial government, and starting a great movement to counter all their evil plans. There would be some romance but it would be in the background. The opposite was true. In fact, the whole thing about the “movement” that she starts happens towards the end at around 80% of the book.
Does this make it a bad book? Of course not, it is just a book with a misleading description.
There were things that I enjoyed about this book. For one, once I got rid of my expectations this was a really good story. It was well written and the author does a good job when it comes to writing different human emotions. I cried thrice and I am not a crier. The emotions were so raw and real it got to me. The story was also relatable. It explored themes on loss, mental health, racism, injustice and the effects of a pandemic.
Character wise Lexi was my favorite followed closely by Jason. She was everything I like in a main character. She was smart, strong, stubborn, bold, and compassionate. However the best thing about her was that she was far from perfect. She was a mess, a self destructing mess who annoyed me and yet I would love to read more characters like her.
With that said, there were some issues that I had that made this not a five star book for me. The first thing as I had already pointed out was the misleading description. I really had an issue with this. I kept waiting for something to happen that never quite materialized. The only way that description would work was if the book had a sequel, but as it stands now it’s a no for me.
The story itself also had an issue that is very common in Sci-Fi/Fantasy books. It’s very common to see new words and concepts that the reader is not familiar with in these categories. However, these words and concepts should be explained immediately or at the very least there should a glossary to avoid confusion. In this book new words were introduced and explained way later which was confusing for me so much so I kept thinking that I had missed something.
Personally I was confused by the whole concept of ARs and ContaCan until nearly half way through the book when it was finally explained. Speaking of the explanation, it was done in a very weird way. It was through a conversation between Lexi and Jason but it did not flow the way a conversation should. It was more like they were giving a narration rather than talking to each other.
All these issues aside, I would still recommend this book especially to people just starting on Sci-Fi books. Mid-Flight has enough stuff going on for it to be considered a science fiction book without all the complex world building and foreign concepts that would overwhelm a newbie. The romance was also super cute. The only thing I want now is my very own Jason and a contemporary romance book written by this author.