Thank you Netgalley for the opportunity to read the Flight Attendant by Chris Bohjalian.
A flight attendant, Cassie, who loves to party, drink, and pick up men finds herself in a bed, in a strange hotel in Dubai, with a dead man. He's not only dead, but his throat is cut and Cassie has no recollection of what happened.
She becomes a suspect and the FBI wants to talk to her but Cassie evades them by lying to them. But others are watching Cassie too. The murdered man may have ties to the Russian mob or maybe the FBI - and there are people in high places who now want Cassie dead too. For what she knows or what they think she knows - she will have to run for her life because they are coming.
Great suspenseful novel. Recommend.

Cassie Bowden is a flight attendant who makes the worst choices, pretty much all the time. She clearly has an alcohol problem, and this affects most of her life, including her job. After one fling, and a blackout, she wakes up in a Dubai hotel room next to a dead body. Even she doesn't know what happened. She continues to make poor choices, but she had a spark about her I liked. I thought the plot was a departure from the author's norm, but I enjoyed the international flair. There was a thriller feel, which kept me guessing until the end. I loved Bohjalian's last book (The Sleepwalker,) but I think I might give this one the slightest edge. I'm almost sad I finished it. Thank you to NetGalley and Doubleday Books for this e-Arc in exchange for my honest review. I was waiting on pins and needles for it, and it did not disappoint.

Cassie is a flight attendant. Cassie is also a drunk prone to promiscuity as a result of her upbringing. She meets a man on a flight to Dubai, spends a drunken night with him, but wakes up in the morning to find her lover dead. What happens next is just one of many many awful decisions on Cassie's part: she leaves the hotel, and inadvertently becomes the target of a killer. This was a well written, fun read about a woman facing the consequences of her very very bad choices. Some of the things Cassie does were so dumb that I wanted to reach into my Kindle and slap her, however, the author manages to portray her in a sympathetic manner regardless of all the dumb things she does. Only real problem with this for me was the ending. Not likely.

Bohjalian does it again with another heart pounding, surprise ending!!! The book was a little too long but worth it at the end.

3.5-4 Stars...This book has me a bit puzzled. I am going to have to choose my words wisely so that I do not spoil anything for you. The book starts out following Cassie a train wreck of a person, who happens to be a flight attendant. She gets herself tangled up in a HUGE situation. The entire book is her trying to make sense of what she has gotten involved in. I was right there with her through the whole book. I wanted her to listen to me shouting at her to stay in that hotel room. I wanted her to listen to me when I said, please don't have that drink. She did not listen.

Chris sure knows how to keep you on the edge of your seat with a great story and this one, while puzzling, does not disappoint. If you're a fan of his, than this is the book for you. If you haven't discovered any of his books, yet, than I encourage you to pick this one up (or any of his others)!

My thanks to netgalley and Doubleday Books for this advanced readers copy.

Cassandra wakes in bed in Dubai and finds her latest one night stand dead. She panics and flees leaving her a suspect in his murder. I totally enjoyed this latest book from Bohjailan. As usual he doesn't disappoint.
A sexy flight attendant, a murder and some espionage with a surprise at the end. Winning for sure.

I loved this book ....at least I loved it until the last few pages. Still not so sure about the ending, a little confusing and just not totally believable, but what the heck it's fiction! I'll still give it 5 stars and nominate it for LibraryReads, since I think Chris Bohjalian has written another winner and I love his books.
I think the character of Cassie was so well written. Despite my love hate relationship with her(hate because of the dumb things she did), I could actually FEEL her need for a drink, I could almost understand the crazy things she did. This was one of the reasons why I couldn't put the book down: it was the character of Cassie and how she thought and what she did and why she did what she did. She was so well developed, that I almost didn't care about the rest of the book, I only wanted to know what happened to her!
I would highly recommend this to all who like a good story!
Thanks to Random House Doubleday and Netgalley for the advance digital copy!

"A smart girl is both sword and smile."

Cassandra (Cassie) Bowden is, I hope, not the typical flight attendant. She's obviously an alcoholic and suffers the blackouts and embarassments to prove it. She loves flying to far-off destinations and always finds a way to party hard and often ends up hung over and suffering from drinker's regret the next day. But this time it's really a bad "morning after" when she awakens in a hotel bed (not her own) next to a dead man -- the man she'd dined and slept with the night before. What follows takes the reader from Dubai to New York to Rome in a tale of deception and espionage with the press and an assassin on her heels. What happened in the luxurious suite, room 511, of the Royal Phoenician? Who was Alexander Sokolov? It's a wild ride with Cassie, an accomplished liar, and the other characters who can't be entrusted with the truth -- because Cassie really can't remember whether or not she killed him.

Told in alternating points of view and moving from one locale to another, this is absorbing and suspenseful. As the revelations are dangled, the complex tale unravels. I'm not sure how realistic the scenarios described are, but suspend disbelief and enjoy the trip. Cassie is definitely a mess, and I can't say that I actually liked her much, her decisions are definitely not those most would make, but her dilemma makes for great storytelling if you use your imagination. I enjoyed it!

I was so excited to be approved for this title (thank you NetGalley and Doubleday Books), so I began it immediately after downloading and read straight through to the end. I believe I've read almost every single one of Chris Bohjalian's previous books and reviewed most of them -- he's always full of surprises and touches on a wide variety of topics with some very unique themes at times. It's evident that the author does his research on the subject matter and that makes the narrative a bit more plausible even if it seems farfetched. There's quite a bit to digest within these pages.

The one detractor is something I've noticed recently -- authors inserting their own political bias and personal opinions into the narrative and represented as observations or thoughts of other characters in the novel. I don't like that. But maybe it's just me being super sensitive in the current atmosphere. Oh by the way, GO ROYALS! Regardless, I did like this well enough and know Bohjalian fans will want to add this to the TBR. Enjoy!

The Flight Attendant: A Novel by [Bohjalian, Chris]

Very strong, an enjoyable read, with a slightly weak ending.

Review copy provided by publisher.