The Flight Attendant

By: Chris Bohjalian

Narrated by: Erin Spencer, Grace Experience, Mark Deakins

Length: 11 hrs and 38 mins

Publisher's Summary

From the New York Times best-selling author of The Guest Room, a powerful story about the ways an entire life can change in one night: A flight attendant wakes up in the wrong hotel, in the wrong bed, with a dead man - and no idea what happened.

Cassandra Bowden is no stranger to hungover mornings. She's a binge drinker, her job with the airline making it easy to find adventure, and the occasional blackouts seem to be inevitable. She lives with them and the accompanying self-loathing. When she awakes in a Dubai hotel room, she tries to piece the previous night back together, counting the minutes until she has to catch her crew shuttle to the airport. She quietly slides out of bed, careful not to aggravate her already pounding head, and looks at the man she spent the night with. She sees his dark hair. His utter stillness. And blood, a slick, still wet pool on the crisp white sheets.

Afraid to call the police - she's a single woman alone in a hotel room far from home - Cassie begins to lie. She lies as she joins the other flight attendants and pilots in the van. She lies on the way to Paris as she works the first-class cabin. She lies to the FBI agents in New York who meet her at the gate. Soon it's too late to come clean - or face the truth about what really happened back in Dubai. Could she have killed him? If not, who did?

Set amid the captivating world of those whose lives unfold at 40,000 feet, The Flight Attendant unveils a spellbinding story of memory, of the giddy pleasures of alcohol and the devastating consequences of addiction, and of murder far from home.

©2018 Chris Bohjalian (P)2018 Random House Audio

Critic Reviews

"Filled with turbulence and sudden plunges in altitude, The Flight Attendant is a very rare thriller whose penultimate chapter made me think to myself, 'I didn't see that coming.' The novel - Bohjalian's 20th - is also enhanced by his deftness in sketching out vivid characters and locales and by his obvious research into the realities of airline work." (Maureen Corrigan, The Washington Post)

"An expertly turned thriller... [Bohjalian]'s back-loaded the story with twists, from ones that were hinted at early to left-field surprises. And the brisk and busy ending is a fireworks show of redemption, revelation and old-fashioned gunplay." (Mark Athitakis, USA Today)

"Readers who enjoyed the imperfect heroine in Paula Hawkins's The Girl on the Train and the anxiety-ridden paranoia of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment will be hooked by this murder mystery." (Library Journal)

Good

Good but not great. A bit hard to follow. The characters were hard to keep track of.

19 of 20 people found this review helpful

Good story but 1 reader got on my nerves

The story was not one of Bohjalian's - it was good, not great. Grace Experience had an annoying, difficult to listen to voice - I dreaded the Elania chapters! I would have given the narration 4 stars if it hadn't been for Experience.

8 of 8 people found this review helpful

Disappointingly Banal

Except for the surrealistic twist at the end of the story, I feel that I have experienced this plot and protagonist in a a couple dozen beach reads. Everything about it was sadly unremarkable and I struggled to finish it.

7 of 7 people found this review helpful

“Plane” dissapointing......

Chris Bohjalian is a talented author and, therefore, I had great expectations for this book. Unfortunately, my expectations were not met.
I had been so excited when I read the synopsis for this book a few months ago because the entire storyline sounded very compelling and intriguing The book faltered in many places —the first half of the book was repetitive and slow-paced, the character development of some of the book’s characters was lacking, and the book’s ending was abrupt and not very well developed. Chris Bohjalin is highly skilled in crafting great plots and character development and I just was not seeing that here.

16 of 18 people found this review helpful

Not exciting

I loathed reader #2 that read Elaina's part, terrible voice. The ending felt rushed and the twist wasn't great.

4 of 4 people found this review helpful

AWFUL 2nd female reader!

The 2nd narrator’s voice was so grating and annoying- I cringed my way thru every passage she read.
It totally took away from the story which was unfortunately filled with retelling, repetitive details throughout yet crammed with an unbelievable wrap up of plot elements in the final pages that is not worthy of this author.

3 of 3 people found this review helpful

A fun page turner

This book was pretty good, started out fast and kept me interested. Specially the few little secrets of funny stuff that happens to a flight attendant interspersed throughout the book. In the end The villain was imo a poor choice. But overall the book was fun and kept me reading.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

A so-so book. I should have saved the credit

How this schlock is on the NYT Bestseller List, is beyond my power to understand. Completely predictable at every turn and, it certainly didn’t need three readers.

5 of 6 people found this review helpful

Could not continue after just 5 mins...

I just want to say when she was trying to cover the crime scene and hoping no one had seen her with the dead guy the night before, there’s something called security cameras! And such bland words!

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

Boring

I am one “mur-mur “ away from deleting this book. Seriously I know there’s only so many ways to phrase “he said or she said”. But over-use of Mur-mur is annoying.
The story is also boring in my opinion I kept hoping it would get better, but it never did

2 of 2 people found this review helpful