The Flight Attendant
A Novel
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3.8 • 133 Ratings
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A powerful thriller 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. • Don't miss the acclaimed HBO Max series!
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 forty thousand 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.
Look for Chris Bohjalian's new novel, The Lioness!
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Chris Bohjalian’s 20th novel gave us shades of The Girl on the Train—not only in the alcoholic narrator who must piece together events from a blacked-out state but also in its unflinching yet compassionate tone. Bohjalian adds bursts of dark humor to Cassie Bowden's story, which proves that the only thing worse than waking up and not knowing what you’ve done is running away and telling as many lies as you can. Bowden’s rapid evolution from flight attendant to near-murder victim to suspected international spy leads to an ending full of unexpected twists.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Blackout drunk Cassie Bowden is used to waking up in strangers' beds, but what she discovers one morning in a sumptuous Dubai hotel suite is instantly sobering blood-soaked sheets and the dead body of the handsome American hedge fund manager she met on her flight over. Even worse for Cassie, the assassin who executed him already regrets sparing the passed-out flight attendant. It's a killer set-up, and Bohjalian (The Sleepwalker) initially maximizes the dual plot lines: Cassie, flying on primal survival instinct, tries to stonewall investigators, testing the truth of the maxim that God looks out for fools and drunkards; hit woman Elena methodically closes in for the kill. Bohjalian's less successful in avoiding clich s or in making an espionage subplot plausible. Then, with about 50 pages to go it's as though the bell has rung for the final lap, with the author unceremoniously detonating a plot bombshell that triggers the frenetic, exciting, but not especially convincing sprint to the finish. Bohjalian's fans will still have fun.)
Customer Reviews
Suspenseful and unexpected
Some great twists that I definitely didn’t see coming.
A great read
Not so cheap flights
Author
Award winning American novelist, playwright, and screenwriter. 20 novels to his credit, of which this is the most recent. HBO is making it into a TV series produced by, and starring, Kaley Cuoco, who needs a new gig now Big Bang Theory is finally finished.
Plot
Cassie is a late thirties flight attendant with a fondness for alcohol and one night stands. She wakes up in a Dubai hotel bedroom next to the dude she was partying with last night, who is now dead. His throat has been cut, there’s blood everywhere, including on our gal, and a broken vodka bottle on the floor by the bed. Cass is prone to blackouts and fears she might have offed the dude, although she’s sure she would never do something like that because the only person who ever gets hurt when she’s drunk and out of control is her. Rather than report it to the police in an Arab country, she high tails it out of Dodge. Turns out the vic wasn’t what he seemed, apart from hammered, and the real perp is…cue twists, turns, her sister, other bad dudes, a nice dude, a female lawyer with an Armenian name (there’s always at least one in a Bohjalan novel), blah, blah, blah.
Characters
Fit for purpose, I suppose.
Prose
Professional, easy to read
Bottom line
Mr B borrows from The Girl on The Train, Red Sparrow, and at least one other contemporary novel that I can’t remember now. The start is great, the rest no so much, and the less said about the epilogue the better.
The Flight Attendant
I really enjoyed this book. Great plot and ongoing suspense. I loved the ending.