Title: Full Flight
Author: Ashley Schumacher
Genre: YA
Rating: 3.5
Everyone else in the tiny town of Enfield, Texas calls fall football season, but for the forty-three members of the Fighting Enfield Marching Band, it’s contest season. And for new saxophonist Anna James, it’s her first chance to prove herself as the great musician she’s trying hard to be.
When she’s assigned a duet with mellophone player Weston Ryan, the boy her small-minded town thinks of as nothing but trouble, she’s equal parts thrilled and intimidated. But as he helps her with the duet, and she sees the smile he seems to save just for her, she can’t help but feel like she’s helping him with something too.
After her strict parents find out she’s been secretly seeing him and keep them apart, together they learn what it truly means to fight for something they love. With the marching contest nearing, and the two falling hard for one another, the unthinkable happens, and Anna is left grappling for a way forward without Weston.
Solid writing in this, and I enjoyed the story, until tragedy occurred. Up until that point, this was a light, fun YA read. The tragedy felt pointless and completely unnecessary. It accomplished nothing in the storyline, as people’s perceptions had already been changed before it happened. And…the story ends shortly after it happens, so it’s not liked the reader gets to see Anna finding her way forward. The story just ends. Sorry, but this just didn’t work for me. It felt forced and manipulative, not believable.
Ashley Schumacher lives in Dallas. Full Flight is her newest novel.
(Galley courtesy of St. Martin’s Press in exchange for an honest review.)
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