Flight by Kate ChristieMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
As long as you enter the book knowing that it isn't a lesbian romance, and, for the most part, borderline not lesbian fiction (heck, most of the book sees the female main character dating and fooling around with a man), and instead see the book as a slice of life, coming of age, with a bit of 'questioning' then you might be like me and enjoy the book. Just, seriously, don't think of this as a lesbian romance.
So....
Ashley Lake is from the north, she seems to remind people constantly (at least as often as someone points out that she is from the south - which will immediately cause her to say 'I'm actually from Chicago' (or just from the north). Of course she's lived all but three years in a suburb in Tennessee, and but still, she doesn't see herself as Southern. She only lived three years of her life in the north because her family came back from a visit to Disney World on a plane - a plane that crashed on landing. Killing everyone but for her. So she went to live with a relative, the only one who could get past their grief to take care of the child. And while Selma wasn't from the south either, at some point she got talked into moving there to head up a library. So, Ash goes to live in the south for 15 years of her life.
But now Selma is dead, and no this isn't a spoiler, this happens before the beginning of the book. The book opens with Ash puttering around in her home, the home that used to be Selma's. Just . . . kind of stuck in grief. Her aunt had gotten ill, with Cancer, while Ash was in the last year of High School, and so she, Ash, spent the year watching her aunt die. While also avoiding or, by circumstances, being avoided by those things that had made up her life until now, that had given her life purpose - namely competitive running (she dropped off the team either before or near the beginning of her senior year), and her best friend forever, Austin (or is that Austen? I can never remember when it's a person's name) - though there Austin is gone because he left after high school graduation (he's a year older) to join the Navy.
The book opens with the above, as noted, and with Austin back. He immediately asks that Ash join him in New York, to move there. To spend a year doing something other than college. So Ash, impulsively, agrees.
So . . . they drive to New York. Austin wanders around doing his thing (he has a waiters job, and is big in doing gay stuff, what with him being gay - reason he's out of the Navy now, they kicked him out for it), while Ash tentatively explores this gross, dirty, disgusting city. Living her life. A slice at a time. Deciding she should probably do something to make some money but doesn't want to be indoors, so becomes a bike messenger. Continues her running. Wanders. Hangs out with her gay friends. Dates a man with super long hair. Never once questioning, despite having a gay best friend and an aunt quite open to the concept of LGBT stuff, that she herself might be anything but straight.
Eventually hangs finds a running buddy, a cousin of someone she works with/for. Meanwhile Ash continues to date Drew, the man (as opposed to Drew the woman, Drew is one of those names easily used by either gender, see Drew Carey, Drew Barrymore). Life happens, continues.
That's what most of the book is about, the above. See, not a lesbian romance. Can't say it isn't a romance, since most of that time sees Ash dating Drew, but . . . well, *shrugs*.
An interesting enjoyable book. That ended far short than I expected. Since the book opened with the main character at age, I think, 38 or something like that. And the book didn't get anywhere near that age by the end. (view spoiler)
Rating: 4.50
July 30 2017
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