The Last Flight

It’s that time of year when I would normally be collecting books to keep my mind busy on a beach as my body soaks up the sun and takes a much needed rest. Like most, I probably won’t be taking a vacation this year, at least in the physical sense, which makes these mental vacations through reading all the more important. In my opinion, there is nothing like a good thriller to give your mind that perfect escape.

New Yorker Claire Cook appears to have the perfect life: wealth, prestige, and a handsome husband forging a path into public office. What no one knows, however, is that Claire’s husband is controlling and physically abusive. Isolated and desperate, Claire crafts a plan to disappear and leave her life—and everyone in it—behind. When her meticulous preparations are scuppered at the last moment, a chance encounter at the airport bar with another young woman suddenly seems like a fated intervention. They switch plane tickets and Claire boards a flight to San Francisco, where she later learns that the plane she was supposed to be on has gone down…

How many of us have wondered during some stressful time, what would happen if I just walked out of my life? I know I’ve had these thoughts in moments of despair. Julie Clark has deftly woven the lives of two women pushed to the brink into an exciting thriller that examines what happens if you try to leave your past behind… and asks if anyone, in today’s world of constant surveillance, can truly disappear.

Claire Cook has a perfect life. Married to the scion of a political dynasty, with a Manhattan townhouse and a staff of ten, her surroundings are elegant, her days flawlessly choreographed, and her future auspicious. But behind closed doors, nothing is quite as it seems. That perfect husband has a temper that burns as bright as his promising political career, and he's not above using his staff to track Claire's every move, making sure she's living up to his impossible standards. But what he doesn't know is that Claire has worked for months on a plan to vanish.

A chance meeting in an airport bar brings her together with a woman whose circumstances seem equally dire. Together they make a last-minute decision to switch tickets—Claire taking Eva's flight to Oakland, and Eva traveling to Puerto Rico as Claire. They believe the swap will give each of them the head start they need to begin again somewhere far away. But when the flight to Puerto Rico goes down, Claire realizes it's no longer a head start but a new life. Cut off, out of options, with the news of her death about to explode in the media, Claire will assume Eva's identity, and along with it, the secrets Eva fought so hard to keep hidden.