Falling

I did not care for these characters whatsoever. Not even a little bit. And I really wasn't kept at the edge of my seat with the suspense so I basically had nothing to read it for. 
It sucks since it's such a short read and I love fast-paced thrillers but nothing worked for me in the 30% that I read.

With how much people rave about this author's books, I honestly expected more.

This felt like watching a movie where you started it half an hour in - there was so little setup I felt like I'd missed something and felt completely detached from the characters.

It was easy enough to get through but felt a bit flat and predictable. I also felt like the end was weird and like it was stuck on to try and appease people who sympathise with terrorists, it just felt odd and out of place.

Also, must there be a grown man called 'Big Daddy'? No.

Americans = good
Literally anyone in the middle east = suicide terrorist

When I started reading it, I had to double check the publication date, it looked like something that would come out in 2001, not 2021. Where was T. J. Newman on January 6?

A perfectly cromulent thriller. I never quite resonated with why the terrorists did what they did, but then again, are we supposed to understand? I think the book would have hit harder if we felt their plight viscerally from the get-go, but they start out claiming it's random chaos, which takes the legs out of under their ultimate, deeper reason. Which honestly could have been compelling entirely in its own right.

Other than that, I liked the plucky flight attendants and the resourceful FBI agent, Theo. I did not like the bizarre and sudden attempt at poignancy at the World Series, though. It felt wildly unrealistic.

Solid 3 star thriller. Sometimes that's just how it is.

Took almost 40% to be read before I was even slightly interested. It was similar to a roller coaster of events but a lot of lulls between each interesting event. Chapter 37 had me rolling my eyes because it was so unbelievable. I'm not a quitter so I finished.

Talk about a book that took a bunch of plots from old airline movies from the past and mashed it up together to make a story. This story is boring, unrealistic and all over the place. It just seems she was trying to hard to get that “wow” factor, but it ended up flat. The cliches were so bad. Yawn. Not a fan.

Wow..this was much better than I thought it would be. Predictable and at times a tad too technical but such a fun and easy read.

The first half of the book was a little slow for me. Then all of a sudden things just took off, and sucked me in until the end LOL. That ending had me all hyped up

i couldn't wait for this book to be over, it wasn't even 300 pages and it felt so slow, i was bored and uninterested in the characters and everything the characters were going through—sad because this was one of my most anticipated releases for 2021 and now that i've finally gotten to it... sigh

*4.5

A very tense and thrilling read! I enjoyed it from start to finish, although it's taken me a while to complete it!

I loved it. I was in the edge of my seat from start to end. A real page turner. I loved the characters. A highly recommended thriller.

I write books for a living. I have read thousands of books in my lifetime.
Falling would have to be one of THE BEST I've ever read for sheer compulsive page-turning.
I didn't want to put it down.
The stakes get higher with every scene.
Bill, a pilot, has to make an impossible choice. Save his family from terrorists by crashing the plane he's flying and killing 143 innocent passengers.
What happens next is just mind-glowingly good.
I will be recommending this book to everyone I know, it is THAT GOOD!!!!!!!
BRILLIANT!
(As an author of 78 published books, I'm in awe that this is T.J. Newman's debut. Filled with admiration and inadequacy!)

okay the beginning of this book had me hooked, but something happened somewhere in the book and it bored me. i don't know how to explain it, but it was just like your every day hollywood movie about a plane abduction. didn't add anything new for me.

Some of it was predictable but I loved it anyway. This is the first novel for the author and she knocked it out of the park! Once I started, I could barely put it down.

I Just Want To Watch The World Burn. I'm of two minds on this book, so I'll write both reviews here. ;)

Every Airplane Action Movie You've Ever Seen - And That Is Why It Works. Briefly looking through the other Goodreads reviews (as I do before writing my own reviews), I saw a few criticisms along the lines of “you can pretty well imagine any airplane action movie you've ever seen, and that is what you have here” - and, yes, that is actually valid. But need I remind readers of this review that many of those movies have made millions of dollars at the box office, and at least a few others have achieved a cult following over the years? There are reasons these movies work, and it is for these same reasons that this book works as well. Another, much more valid, reviewer noted that the opening scene - featuring a hole in the side of a falling aircraft - had absolutely nothing to do with the book, and in fact (my own point here) was immediately retconned at the beginning of Chapter 1. This, along with the visual of the cover that makes the reader think that this will be about a falling aircraft, almost smacks of deceptive advertising - which a careful examination of the cover shows is barely averted by the fact that if you remove the title and flip the image into a 3D (mathematical) plane such that one end of the cover is closer to you than the other, it is clear that the actual image is not of a plane falling, but flying. Which is actually the action tale we get - a man forced into a Job-esque (or perhaps Solomon-esque?) decision of watching his family be murdered... or he can murder 150 people while committing suicide. Along the way, the FBI gets involved and we get a compelling ground story, though the bit at Yankee Stadium (not Dodger Stadium as another reviewer noted) during the ninth inning of Game 7 of the World Series is in fact contrived yet cool. Ultimately even with these issues, this is still a 5* book - though yet again, I do not understand why this book gets all the hype and publicity while other books that are at least as good languish in obscurity.

And from the other side...

“That was then. Now I Just Want You To Burn.” Ok, so that title is a bit spoilery, as it is in fact a line that occurs late in the book. Though out of context, it is just cool. :D This is one action-packed book that has a few cliches - hello, ninth inning of Game 7 of the World Series- yet still manages to keep the reader glued to the page, desperate to see what happens next. Like some (yet far from most) other airplane action tales, this one has a strong ground game (even the dang World Series scene turns out cool, if contrived) mostly featuring an FBI agent regularly frustrated by FBI bureaucracy and seemingly as immune to damage as Halo's Master Chief. (Seriously, I think this dude absorbs more critical wounds than I've ever seen in any other action movie.) If you're looking for a straight up “don't think too much and just enjoy the action” type of tale, this one really is pretty dang good, up there with most any Die Hard movie (the books the first two Die Hard movies were based on actually had a bit more thinking involved, and yes, I've read them both - about three years ago, IIRC). While I still don't understand the massive hype and publicity of this book - I've seen as-good-or-better tales languish in obscurity this year simply because they don't have the strength of a Mega publisher behind them - again, for what it is, this book is truly solid and a really fun time.

As you can see from both lines of thinking, this book is still, even with its issues and even with my questions re: strength of publisher, very much recommended.

I think I “wrong read this” because I really don't get it. I reallyyyyy didn't like this. I would give it 1 star but the beginning was fine and I thought this guys son was a cute character. So 2, I guess?

This was so bad. More of an action than a thriller to me? I had a REALLY hard time with the villains here and while I will give the benefit of the doubt to the author I just don't think this was that well researched on an international affairs level. This was really really hard to read because of it for me and there were just so many cringe moments.

Solid outing for a debut novel, if a bit over the top. Look forward to reading Hostage so I can compare and contrast.

Astounding! I couldn't put it down.

I was so excited to read this book that I ordered it from Blackwell's because it was published earlier in the UK! It did not disappoint! This was a thriller that grabs the reader from the start and takes you for a ride, and at the conclusion, you are left with something to ponder. Great book! Highly recommend!

The premise of the book is terrifying; to be stuck on a plane knowing that you probably won't survive! My heart was in my throat as I was reading and I couldn't turn the pages fast enough.

The book alternates between the characters: Bill, the pilot; Carrie, his wife; Jo, head of the cabin crew and Theo, an FBI agent. This really helped with the pace of the novel and gave it a three dimensional quality. As Bill embarks on a routine flight he receives a message from home. His wife and family are being held hostage with an explosive vest strapped to their bodies. The abductor demands that the pilot makes a choice: who will die, his family or the passengers aboard the aircraft? In order to keep his family safe he must crash the plane.

The novel was so credible, due to the author's own experience of working as a flight attendance, that I was really drawn into the storyline and the drama that unfolded. A fast-paced, action-packed thriller, which I very much enjoyed.