If We Fly

Nina Lane, ‘If we Fly’

Nina Lane, ‘If we Fly’, a ‘What If’- novel, book 3.

As ARC reader I received this book for free and promised an honest review. Here it is.

English isn’t my first language. Sorry for errors.

Rating: 5 (of 5) stars.

In general: Well written love story trilogy with an exciting end.

This book contains all 3 parts of the ‘What If’ series: part 1 ‘If we Leap’, part 2: ‘If we Fall’ and part 3 ‘If we Fly’.

The main characters are introduced in part 1:
Josie Mays. Living in coastal town Castille, Maine. College art student. In her childhood saving wounded animals in the woods and studying art were for her more important than nice clothing or boyfriends.

Cole Danforth. His father is owner of the local brewing company. Cole’s senior student in Marine Science at the same college as Josie. Josie has a secret crush on him since he helped her when she was seven years old and some schoolboys tried to steal her Halloween candy. Cole’s father is a sadistic tirannical man who manipulated his mother into suicide. So, since his 18th year Cole lives alone in a rented room above a boathouse.

After a long time not meeting, Josie (now 20 years old) and Cole (few years older) see each other again during a summer vacation and the two lonely persons fall in love. Their love has the usual problems as young, inexperienced people have. They doubt if they deserve being loved. Cole, protesting against his manipulating father has sometimes trouble with the law and builds a bad reputation and Josie is a sometimes dreaming artist who has a slight problem with the daily organisation of her life. But they live happily together for a year: Two students living in a tiny apartment working hard for their classes and different jobs, enjoying their youth: hiking, swimming, argueing and making wild, fulfilling love.

Then their lifes change completely. At the end of an anniversary party of Josie’s parents the family drove to the airport. The parents will make a holiday-trip. The car crashed. Josie’s parents and her younger brother died. Josie recovered in hospital, but due to a concussion she doesn’t remember anything from the car accident. Visiting Josie in hospital, Cole tells her he will leave Castille and end their relationship. He feels guilty for the crash that killed her family, so she can never really love him again. It shattered her heart for she needed him to heal from the pain caused by the death of her parents and little brother. And hates him for leaving her alone.
She too leaves her hometown to become a talented painter. But mentally the crash caused long-lasting damage. For years she’s afraid in the dark and cannot sleep at night. It shows in her dark abstract paintings of nightmarish, dystopian landscapes and disembodied heads. Somber, but admired by collectors and gallery owners.

In part 2 Josie returns to Castille after 10 years. To paint a mural in memory of her parents and to help her divorced sister Vanessa who’s pregnant.
Arriving in Castille the first person she meets is Cole. His attitude to her is ambivalent: he doesn’t want a mural and he asks Josie to leave as soon as possible, on the other hand he pays for the repair of the house in which she temporally lives and he wants to help her with her phobia. Sofie still hates him for leaving her when she needed him most, but admires his body and dreams about the sex they once had.
Painfully they try to retrieve their old love. It’s complicated for both are changed during the ten years they didn’t see each other. But just at the moment it looks like they will overcome their problems, Josie discovers an old photograph in which she has the keys in her hand of the car that crashed later that night.

In part 3 the discovery of the key inspires her to research more for what exactly happened in the fatal night of the crash.
Nina Lane describes an exciting story about Josie’s attempts to get back her memory of the car accident and the way this investigation influences her relationship with Cole (and her sister Vanessa). It creates a very interesting end to this trilology.

R. Huiszoon.