I just LOVED the Float Plan. Depicting a journey on a sail boat, as the main character is deeply lost and grieving following her fiancé's suicide. This book was wonderful, hard to put down, interesting, heart warming, compelling, and charming. I thoroughly enjoyed it! Thank you NetGalley, publisher, and the author Trish Doller for the copy for review. All opinions are my own.

In Trish Doller’s romantic adult debut, we follow Anna’s journey of grief after her fiance’s death by suicide. After nearly a year of pain so deep she rarely leaves the house, Anna impulsively leaves on the sailboat voyage she was supposed to complete with Ben.

She quickly realizes it’s impossible to handle alone and hires Keane, a professional sailor, to come aboard.

Anna and Keane are obviously on a physical journey, traveling around the Caribbean, but we also find ourselves on their emotional journey of learning to trust, be confident, and how to open their hearts up to each other.

I absolutely loved travelling around all the islands with Anna and Keane. There are some superb secondary characters. Although the subject matter is heavy and at times heartbreaking, you’ll leave Float Plan feeling buoyant and satisfied.

Thank you to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for an eARC

This story was incredibly sweet. For those of you who love a book as a chance to experience another life, another experience, another adventure – this is the one. While there are deep hardships and emotional turmoils that the characters encounter, the research that Doller pulls into this story is incredible, and you will feel as though you can truly picture each and every experience as the characters sail along their journey.

Fair warning, there are references and talk about suicide, trauma, infidelity, and various near-death experiences.

Float Plan by Trish Doller is an inspiring, sweet, angsty, and humorous, romantic novel about facing your fears, taking risks, grief, moving on with your life after tragedy, discovering your inner strengths, and finding out what you want from life. Anna is overwhelmed, grieving the loss of her fiancé, and is feeling confined and limited by her family and the confines of her daily life. When she gets the calendar notification reminding her that her and Ben were going to set sail for the Caribbean that day, she impetuously decides to make the trip by herself, even though she has never been sailing on her own. Realizing she’s in over her head after a rough first night at sea that could have turned deadly, she hires professional sailor Keane to help her make the trip. Keane is grieving a loss of his own and struggling to accept changes to the life he thought he would have as well. Doller’s slice of life exposition told from Anna’s first-person POV is vibrant, descriptive, and affecting as Anna and Keane sail the Caribbean, befriending other travelers on their journey.

Anna and Keane are likable and relatable characters who are wounded and each suffering in their own way. They butt heads as he contradicts many of her views on life, causing her to rethink things and open her mind to different ideas and perspectives on all sorts of things, including faith. Keane helps Anna to find peace and space to grieve the loss of her fiancé in her own time and in her own way, discovering that she can live her life without him. But Anna is not the only one whose perspective on life is changed by the experience. Keane may have been helping Anna to learn about sailing, but he taught her so much more, and along the way she helps him to begin to find peace and discover new dreams for his life. Without realizing it, Anna and Keane slowly shift from two hurting and scarred strangers – Anna emotionally and Keane physically – to friends and a seamless partnership, to becoming two halves of a whole. But whether their ships will sail in separate directions or they will be sailing the same ship together becomes an interesting predicament.

The novel’s pacing is great and the novel flows nicely from start to finish. Intriguing and well-developed characters drew me into the story, keeping my interest throughout. Doller’s inclusion of in-depth details about sailing, sail boats, and sailing and island culture helps with worldbuilding and providing a sense of real life to balance out the dream-like quality of Anna’s POV of the trip. Float Plan is a pleasant surprise for me. Instead of being depressing, it is a beautifully written, sweet romance about how sometimes the best surprises are the ones that we get when we take the biggest risks because that’s when we find out who we really are.

I really enjoyed this!! Very heartwarming, but not in a sappy way. Doller’s characters had much more depth than a lot of other recent romance reads, and I found myself really rooting for both of the main leads. The incorporation of grief, loss of identity and physical disability was done well and definitely added another dimension to the story. I'd recommend!

This was my first book from this author and it certainly won't be my last. I am giving this book five huge stars because it gave me everything I wanted. There was romance but there was also grief, heartache and loss. But there was also strength and hope and I think this book took all of the emotions and meshed them together perfectly.

I felt Anna's pain, and I felt her strength. The author wrote of grief and loss and how death (by suicide in this case) impacts the people left behind mourning that loss. She wrote about the highs and lows and I thought it was so well done. Grief is different for everyone and Anna had quite the journey after losing her beloved Ben. Upon meeting Keane and having him help her on the boat, the connection was almost instant but she was afraid of it and I think that was a totally realistic reaction.

Keane was such a great love interest. He had also experienced loss in his life and I think he was also a really great friend for Anna. He helped her on her journey to self discovery but was never "the hero". He was truly a companion.

Basically, I loved Anna's search for happiness. I loved the realistic highs and lows of her journey. I loved her and Keane together. I just loved it! This book was a wonderful contemporary romance!

Some trigger warnings to note: death of a loved one, suicide, depression, grief, loss of limb, a near drowning incident.

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Griffin for the complimentary arc in exchange for an honest review.

I loved everything about Float Plan by Trish Doller. The book centers around Anna, whose fiancé committed suicide. For ten months Anna has barely lived her life trying to recover from her loss. About ten months after his death Anna gets a reminder that that day was the day she and her fiancé were set to start sailing around the world. Anna decides to set off on their sailboat and finish at least one leg of their planned journey. After her first day she quickly learns she isn't equipped to do this alone and needs help. So enters Keane.

I don't really know where to start with this book. I loved everything about it. Doller has created two wonderfully complex characters in Anna and Keane, both dealing with their own demons. Combine this with an amazing setting of island hopping on a sailboat in the Caribbean, and I just couldn't get enough of this book.

D0 yourself a favor and read this book!

This is my second book about sailing this year! This one is fiction. The main character here is Anna, a mid-twenties woman who works as a waitress at a pirate-themed restaurant in Florida. Less than a year ago, her fiance died by suicide and she's been grieving. His parents kicked her out of their shared apartment, which she couldn't have afforded on her own anyway, and she moved back into her mom's house and shares a room with her sister and niece.
On the morning this story begins, an alert lit up her phone, reminding her that this was the day they were due to leave on a planned sailing trip through the Caribbean. It triggers something in her and she decides to do it. She gathers her stuff, shops quickly for supplies, does a quick clean of the sailboat (which was left to her in his will) and leaves.
She doesn't give notice at her job, and she doesn't tell her mom until after she's gone. But that first day (and night) of sailing has her realizing that she isn't experienced enough or confident enough to do some of the parts of this trip on her own, so she advertises for an experienced crew member.
The guy that applies, Keane, has his own issues, but he's an excellent sailor and not only does the job, but teaches her the skills that she will need to continue on her own as well.
I liked how Anna used the trip and the things that she had planned to do along it with her fiance to work through her grief and think about what she wanted for herself. Most of the trip had been planned by him, with her just acquiescing to his choices, so this is enlightening for her to find that she enjoys some of his choices and not others. It teaches her to trust herself, to know her own value and capabilities and to really think about her future more instead of just working in a dead-end job.
It also highlights the world of sailing, the friendliness and camaraderie that exists, how people give advice, and help each other. She finds new friends, some through Keane and some on her own.
At the beginning of the book she thinks she can't live without her lost love and in the journey of this novel she finds that she can, that she doesn't need anyone else, but sometimes she definitely wants a partner to share things with.
It is a romance, but there is depth here as well.

My friends have been raving about Float Plan by Trish Doller, and I now I see why! Loved this book. Trish made sailing and the Caribbean come to life. I have never been, but now I definitely want to go! I loved how this book dealt with real life issues, how how each of them had their own baggage but they really sorted it out on their own rather than the relationship healing them. This book was so good, a slow burn, but worth the wait!

Since the loss of her fiancé, Anna has been shipwrecked by grief—until a reminder goes off about a trip they were supposed to take together. Impulsively, Anna goes to sea in their sailboat, intending to complete the voyage alone.

But after a treacherous night’s sail, she realizes she can’t do it by herself and hires Keane, a professional sailor, to help. Much like Anna, Keane is struggling with a very different future than the one he had planned. As romance rises with the tide, they discover that it’s never too late to chart a new course.

Trish Doller’s unforgettable adult debut, Float Plan, reminds readers that starting over doesn't mean forgetting: you can build a new home, right alongside the old.

Anna has not yet recovered from the early loss of her fiancé and upon hearing the alarm he had placed on her cell phone reminding of the boat trip they would take together, she decides to drop everything and make the trip alone.

Problem is, she has no experience of sailing alone, because the times she sailed she was with Ben giving instructions. Even so, she is determined to face this challenge in memory of him. But so soon she realizes that really needs help if she doesn't want to be adrift and it is then that after a crazy night she meets the sweet and gentle irish Keane.

Keane has his own pains and challenges to fulfill but he cannot resist helping Anna and then as they advance through the islands programmed by Ben, they create strong bonds and the attraction between them ends up being irresistible.

As soon as I read the synopsis, I imagined that it would be a typical chicklit, but with the progress of the reading I was able to perceive the various layers of the plot and the characters. The story goes beyond Anna, it shows a little bit of Ben, a lot of Keane and presents a beautiful panorama of each island. I'm totally in love.

The ending was predictable but the way it all happened was so unexpected that I am sighing til now. A great love story.

Anna feeling lost after her husband suicide decides to leave everything behind and set sail on a journey of new beginings. A heartwarming story of a woman trying to find herself after a tragedy.

Oh my goodness how I loved this book. Even though it deals with the tough topic of suicide, the story was very well done and just beautifully written. In dealing with the grief of losing her fiance Ben, Anna up and leaves to sail the Caribbean in what would have been a sailing trip she and Ben had planned to do together. After a difficult beginning, she decides she can't go it alone so she hires someone to help in her sailing journey. Enter Keane, an Irishman who is so kind, very knowledgeable about sailing, and just plain wonderful. It was love at first sight, well sort of, for me! I loved Anna and Keane. Even though they weren't a couple, I kept hoping those two would come together in the end. Maybe they did, maybe they didn't. You all need to, really need to, read this book to find out. What an amazing journey this was. I was rooting for Anna and felt proud that she went and did this on her own to deal with the tremendous grief of losing Ben. I didn't want it to end. This book is going on my Favorites 2021 book list for sure. I highly recommend it.

Thank you to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for the review copy.

Heartbroken by the loss of her fiancé Ben, Anna decides to take the trip they were planning together on their sailboat to the Caribbean islands solo. After a few rough days at sea, she hires the charming Keane, a professional sailor, to help. And they end up helping each other in ways neither could have predicted.

I absolutely loved Float Plan!! Doller does a fantastic job at creating rich characters you want to be friends with (and/or might have a slight crush on 😉). Anna and Keane have depth and growth and I really liked how their journeys combined independent and joint arcs. And the secondary characters they meet along the way are funny and add little nuances that boost the story and add to the comedic elements.

Warning- this book will give you serious wanderlust. It’s a great escape in a time when we can’t travel and I know I’ve made a list of islands I can’t wait to visit.

Float Plan brilliantly balances a story of romance, grief, friendship, self-acceptance and new beginnings. Add this to your #TBR!

Thank you to the tagged publisher and netgalley for the gifted ecopy

You know that knot you get in your throat when trying not to cry or right before you cry? I had that feeling a majority of the time while reading this book.
I didn't read the synopsis of this one. I'd read some of Trish Doller's ya books and really liked them so I was excited to give this one a try. I went into it thinking I was getting a rom-com or maybe even a spicy romance. That's not the case, but I was not one bit disappointed!

Anna sets sail solo, on a whim, to take the trip her and her deceased boyfriend, Ben had planned before his unexpected death. She's still struggling and trying to figure out where her life is headed without him by her side.
Keane comes along just when she's starting to think she can't make this voyage alone after all. He's still coming to terms with his own life changing accident.
Trish Doller brought all the feels to life with this one. It was emotional, heartbreaking, I was devastated for Anna. Even watching her heal and moving on with life without Ben in it, I found myself with that knot.
Learning about the islands and meeting a wonderful cast of characters along the way that help to shape Anna's journey just made this story even better.

This was an incredible book. Great characters going through some truly shocking and difficult times and trying to figure out how to move forward and maybe even find a little happiness along the way. Anna is grieving the loss of her boyfriend to suicide as a result of clinical depression. She thought he was okay as he was planning a wonderful adventure of sailing for the two of them that she thought would end with them getting married. Her world is truly rocked, she is lost and stuck in grief, survivors guilt and missing the life she thought she would have. To get her out of her funk she decides to take their trip alone to regain her equilibrium, heal emotionally and mentally, grow stronger and chart a new path for herself. She soon realizes she needs help and finds Keane, who is suffering his own loss and internal battles. They are both such wonderful characters that you can’t help but want them to both be happy and get all that they want for themselves. Though this is a novel it doesn’t gloss over the impact of mental illness on those gone, but also on those left behind who loved and will mourn them. Have some tissues at hand, but also be prepared to celebrate these these wonderful characters abilities to move forward and find new purposes and maybe even love.

. I loved this book! It was fresh and fun without being cheesy. It was also deep and soulful without being heavy.
Plus, It was exactly the book I needed to read in the middle of the long northern winter after over a year of COVID restrictions. Doller's writing is clean and pleasing to read with just the right amount of description and dialogue. It's not complex but it's not elementary, it's just good. I love the characters and the story is creative and fresh. I have never read a book about sailing personally. I think Doller took a risk with the topic of suicide but with a trigger warning in the front pages and from what I can tell, a sensitive and healing perspective, although I can't say that with authority since I have never personally experienced the tragedy of suicide, in my opinion it was worth the risk. I recommend this book. Especially if you need to get away while stuck at home.
⭐⭐⭐⭐

🌊Float Plan🌊

Thank you to Netgalley, St Martins Press and Trish Doller for the e-arc.

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Review:
**TW/ Suicide, mental health, depression**

This book is everything. EVERYTHING. If I could give this book 100 ⭐️ I would. I’m a huge believer that things come into your life at the right moment, when you need them most (a sentiment that coincidentally was reflected in the book) and this book was one of them.

This was everything I didn’t know I needed or wanted. And I’m struggling to put my feelings i to words. Anna’s journey was awe inspiring. Her journey of finding herself and her own identity, learning to live, love and to let go. Of navigating a life after losing someone you never thought you’d be without. This book is so emotionally raw and relatable and the portrayal of grief is spot on.

This book pulls no punches, Right from the very first page you’re hit right in the heart with a suicide note and as the story progresses we see that the good times can coincide with the bad and you can have sad experiences but make new, happy memories.

Don’t get me started on Keane. Keane is one of them once in a lifetime (if you’re lucky🍀 ) kind of people and while Anna thinks it’s one sided, they’re actually helping each other come to terms with the hands they’ve been dealt. Together they heal, together they discover their paths in life. I love this book.

This book has made me want to set sail and travel the Caribbean, I just need to find some industrial strength sunscreen first!

Thank you so much to Meghan at St Martins Press for inviting me to be a part of the tour for this wonderful book!

This book was so much more than what I expected it to be and that was a pleasant surprise! It follows the story of Anna, who is trying to move on from the loss of her fiance who committed suicide ten months back. Desperately trying to find a way out from her grief, she decides to single-handedly sail out to the Caribbean islands on the boat that her fiance - Ben restored, while following the route that was planned out by him.

While moving from place to place with her average sailing skills, she unexpectedly meets Keane, a sailor who lost his leg in an accident and has his own set of issues. After saving her ass(literally :D) he offers to accompany her till Puerto Rico where he hopes to find a job. Setting off on their adventure, Anna ends up meeting new people and while creating new memories and learning how to sail like a pro, she also discovers that it isn't necessary to forget the past to move on - all you need to do is to make a room in your heart for the future.

“Don’t know why you would,”Keane says. “Eventually—and I say this from experience—you’ll start building a new house beside the ruins of the old. When you’re ready, you’ll know.”

When the book started off with Ben's suicide note on the first page, I was quite surprised and I was wondering whether this was going to be sad and angsty. But it was quite different and the writing pulled me in completely. After the first few chapters I was hooked!

While following Anna on her journey, we realise that this story is not just about her moving on from her grief, but it's also about her regaining her confidence in herself and learning that though she may have lost her loved one, there is a future that she can live while still remembering him.

Though the story's main focus is on Anna, Keane ends up becoming an indispensable part of her journey and I loved the slow development of her relationship with him. They started off as partners, slowly became friends while learning to trust each other and soon fell in love. I loved seeing them slowly fall for each other. In the beginning, Anna can't help but remember Ben during every moment and she's quite dedicated to the plan that he'd mapped out. But later she slowly breaks away from it and learns to create new memories for herself and seeks out the experiences that she'd enjoy. And I loved watching this growth of hers! The trip that starts out as an impulsive decision to remember Ben, ends up creating unforgettable memories for her.

Keane was also an amazing character who was so sweet and hilarious! Though he wears a prosthetic leg and is unable to find a job in sailing like he used to(though he's still just as capable), he doesn't let himself wallow in his misery.

Another thing that I absolutely loved were the descriptions of their sailing adventures and the tidbits of history about each island that they visited. It felt like I was right there on the journey along with them. And though I literally know nothing about sailing, after reading this book I have the urge to jump on a sailboat and go island hopping just like them.

Additionally all the side characters were equally amazing! I loved Anna's mom and Keane's brother along with all the people that they met on the way! Though all of them start off as strangers they quickly become wonderful characters with their own sets of experiences and stories. And honestly as someone who loves traveling, that's my favorite part. You meet people who you'd never thought you'd meet and end up having unforgettable experiences with them.

If I had any complaints about this book it'd only be that I wish I could hear a bit more about Keane's stories and his family. Keane is pretty much perfect and the romance reader in me would have loved seeing more about his experiences and what made him fall for Anna. An epilogue about their future adventures would have made it even more amazing!

I'd definitely recommend this book if you are looking for an amazing women's fiction novel with a good dose of romance and beautiful characters! Trish's writing is bound to make you fall in love with Anna and her adventures!

*I was provided with an ARC via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review*

I loved every minute of "Float Plan" by new-to-me author Trish Doller and will definitely read it again with characters you want to be friends with, a story that immediately captivated me and I didn't want the book to end when I got to the last page. I loved adventurous Anna Beck who decides to sail to the Caribbean when her fiancee leaves her a sailboat after his death and finds a second chance at love with an Irish sailor. If you enjoy riveting, emotional romance, set sail with Anna and Keane on a tour of the Caribbean and a bit of fun and adventure. I received an advance reader copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley and am voluntarily leaving my review. I liked it so much, I purchased a copy.

Anna Beck feels more lost than she ever should at twenty-five. After unexpectedly losing Ben – her fiancé – she decides that only the only way to soothe her soul is to set sail on the open ocean. She has no idea how she’s going to survive or even what she’s in for. The only thing that she does know is that she has to try.

With a little luck, she makes it safely to Bimini and any plan that she has goes all awry. There’s too much booze and too much sun. And a savior in the form of a very sexy Irishman.

Keane Sullivan rescues Anna and her dignity for untold peril. Between scraping together the scraps of her pride and getting to know the too-handsome-for-his-own-good sailor, Anna finds herself asking the unexpected question - How soon is too soon to fall in love again?

They plot a course around the Caribbean, taking in the beauty of both the landscape and the people they encounter. But when Anna finally pulls into her final port, will she be able to leave behind the man who opened up her heart and showed her just how beautiful the world can really be?

“The thing is,” Keane says, “if I am completely truthful, the last three weeks have been the happiest I’ve had in a good long while - your brush with death notwithstanding – notwithstanding - but this is not how I imagined my life.”
“Me either.”
“Perhaps our paths were meant to cross.”
“Stranger things have happened.”

In Float Plan, Trish Doller takes readers on a journey that is both heartbreaking and satisfying all at the same time. Watching her character of Anna go from being paralyzed with grief to being a powerful self-assured force was absolutely inspiring. And Keane. Well, he couldn’t have been more perfect. But he was also genuinely human and that’s such a rare combination to find.

Trish then masterfully melds all of the harsh realities of sailing, the breathtaking scenery of the Caribbean and, the sizzling chemistry between Anna and Keane to give her readers a book that is as gorgeous as a sunset at sea. And just as unforgettable…