Book Review: The Last Flight

Author Julie Clark tells The Last Flight from alternating viewpoints of Claire and Eva, deftly passing the narrative baton back and forth as she weaves a smart, timely tale about two women who are pushed to extraordinary circumstances and must resort to desperate measures to flee them: Claire, who wants to run away from her emotionally and physically abusive husband, and Eva, who would be anywhere to start afresh following her husband's death. A "chance" encounter at JFK airport proves to be a blessing in disguise when Claire suggests they trade places and begin a new life somewhere far away. But as fate would have it, Eva's flight crashes, killing everyone aboard, and when new evidence emerges she might not have been actually on the plane, it leads Claire to suspect there's more to Eva's backstory than meets the eye and that she was not who said she was, putting her new-found freedom at risk. Told in a series of flashbacks and in a non-linear order to deliberately mask this straightforward tale of social justice and empowerment, Clark does a neat job of building an exciting, fast paced story that culminates in a satisfying payoff.