Full Flight definitely left me in tears. Ashley Schumacher can write grief like no other. The last eighty percent of the book I thoroughly enjoyed. I wish the rest of the book had that same intensity for me. Instead, it didn’t click for me. I had to push myself to keep listening, I wanted more character development. I may have enjoyed the novel more if I had read it as opposed to listening to it. I found the male narrator’s voice to be too deep and older for such a young character.

Thank you NetGalley, St. Martin’s Press for this audiobook.

Thank you Netgalley for this audio edition of Full Flight by Ashley Schumacher.

The narration was great, I love it when audiobooks provide multiple voices to help keep the characters straight. It adds a whole other dimension to the book.

I don't know that Ashley Schumacher and I were meant to be. I appreciate her stories, and I think had I read them in my teen years, I probably would have loved them, but this fell flat for me. It had all the bones for a great angsty teen romance, but the bones were a bit too hollow.

I really enjoyed this poignant beautiful story. I use to be a band camp kid so this story took me back and had me thinking about fond memories of those times. I listened to the audio of this which was great. i enjoyed both narrators' voices. I was disappointed though because the copy that I was given to listen to. Wes's final chapter where he gets into the car accident was cut. It only said the chapter number and Wes and then went into the next chapter where everyone is waiting in the living room to tell Anna that Wes had died. I got teary eyed about it but i didn't cry probably from the shock since the audio was missing a very important chapter.

Thank you to Ashley Schumacher, Tantor Audio, and NetGalley for the opportunity to listen to and review this book.

Honestly, I have not cried this much since "A Fault in Our Stars." Schumacher has written a really beautiful and moving story about growing up in a small town, young love, and heartbreak. While this was not a total knockout book for me (I cannot say I identified with the Texas Football and marching band culture of it all), I did really value the story and the characters here.

I had really high hopes for this book. It sounded like a simple, cute premise and I love a YA love story. I just couldn't get into it at all. I'm not going to give any spoilers but with just about 1.5 hours left (audiobook!) there was a massive twist that felt kind of like whiplash. And then it felt like the story sort of had a point. I wish that was somehow weaved into the rest of the story.

The narrators of this story captured the characters perfectly. They kept me fully engaged and wanted to continue to listen. This is a YA novel. It starts off a bit slow, but she captures the feelings you experience during this age and falling in love. The angst, the second-hand embarrassment you sometimes feel, and of course, the heartbreak that is bound to happen. I was unsure how she would manage to wrap up the story but it all came together very well.

Another hit from Ashley Schumacher! In the first ~2/3 of the book, I felt a little let down because these book didn’t feel as poignant as her debut novel; it felt like any YA love story—albeit one that perfectly captured the feeling of falling in love for the first time and took me back to my own high school days. However, in the last quarter of the book, Schumacher brought the beautiful trauma just like before! I love her explorations of grief. There was more profanity than I would except in a YA novel, but other than that, it fit the genre well. I wondered how it could end well but was so impressed by how well she wrapped it up with such an emotional and fitting conclusion. I will definitely be on the lookout for more books from Ashley Schumacher in the future.

The only thing I would have changed about the audiobook is I would have loved to hear the “Full Flight” music in the background of the story! Would’ve been a beautiful and creative touch.

This book was a slow build its a cute slow build story then the last 20-30% tore you apart. If you read the synopses on the story you can figure it out. But I don't always read the whole thing. I'm glad I didn't it gave the end more of a impact for me. I haven't cried cried in a book in awhile and this one got me.

Anna is the sweetest girl and does everything for everyone wants to please everyone. But inside she feels so alone. But she hides it from the world and she never opens up to her family or friends. Just keeps the smile in place.

Weston is the school/ band outcast. He left his Jr. year and when he comes back there's so many rumors and stories surrounding him. He never was that popular but its worse no one wants to give him a chance. The only friends are 2 boys he's always been friends with. But he's not sure if they really want to be his friend or just around because they always have been.

Anna needs help with her bands duet and Weston is playing the other part who better to ask. He says yes without really meaning to. He tries to pawn it off on his friend but there's something about her he cant figure out what it is. Like calls to like

Despite what her friends and family say about him (because of rumors) they start a friendship which turns into a relationship. She's finally standing up for herself to her friends and family and finding herself. Then the End happens and gutted.

I do wish the end expanded on her afterwards how she's changed as a person. Her sadness is 100% but I would of loved to see the shaping years after.

I had the E book and Audio and thank god I did to switch back and forth between the two. I had to switch fully to the audio at the end.

I was about 25% into the book and I knew It was gonna stick with me. One of my favorite movies growing up was garden state there is a quote about people after they grow up there home isn't there home anymore and they spend the rest of there life looking for a place that is home.

Full Flight had a quote very similar and I had to highlight it right away and it will now stay with me.

"<b>When my room is dark and a certain piece of music comes on my headphones, or when the sun hits the lake just right, I’ll feel homesick for a place I’ve never been. </b> But you don’t tell people that, not even the Ratios or Jonathans of the world, because they’ll think you’re being melodramatic or too much of whatever it is that people are afraid of having too much of. Instead, I quietly collect them, the moments that make me hungry for something I’ve never tasted, hoping that someday I’ll be able to piece them together into a map that will lead me to a place where wildfires make sense and the people you love don’t change or leave or break. Anna’s warmth at my side <b> makes me reconsider that the homesickness is an unknown place. Maybe it’s a person. Maybe it’s her. </b>"


Special thanks to NetGalley and Wednesday Books for sharing this digital reviewer copy/ Audio Arc with me in exchange my honest thoughts.

I loved thisss!!! It kept me on the edge of my seat! I definitely will buy a physical copy when this lovely story comes out! Highly recommend!

Was I intrigued by this book because it features a bunch of high school marching band kids? Absolutely. Did it hit all the nostalgia notes that I was hoping it would? Yes.

This book was beautiful. I thought the main characters--the side ones AND the main two, Anna and Weston, were well crafted. The relationship between our broody "I'll ruin you" boy and our "I don't care, I'm going to get to know you anyway" girl developed naturally. I remember being in high school and falling for the bad boy, so this book took me back to the field in more ways than one.

I also appreciated that Anna is a bit on the chubbier side, but that aside from a few mentions here and there (I think to remind the reader of what Anna looks like), her weight isn't a big focus. And even when it is, it's spoken of with reverence and respect. I think these kinds of characters, and these sorts of moments, are really important, especially for teenagers.

The relationship was a bit of a slow burn, and while I tend to enjoy that type of development, at times it felt maybe a little slow.

My main “complaints” is that the blurb for the book does give away a bit of the major moment, and so when I got to it it wasn't the emotional sucker-punch I was expecting. HOWEVER, there were little moments afterwards that really got to me and I was crying while trying to wash the dishes.

Overall I thought this was a really lovely, and a bit tragic, book. It felt like it took some cues from John Green on how to really tug at the heartstrings.

The voice actors used were great and came across as young, which is always nice. I especially liked when they emphasized emotional breaks in their voices and the infliction of anger / sadness, etc.

Same Sky 😭.

This book was so good!

A huge thank you to NetGalley and Tantor Audio for my advanced listeners copy of Full Flight.

Y'all know I'm not usually a YA book reader. If every YA book was written like Full Flight I'd be invested in the genre full time.

What I Loved-

*The Audio- Full Flight is written with a dual perspective and has two narrators. Tina Wolstencroft and Cody Roberts did a fantastic job bringing this book and its characters to life.

*Anna- Anna is a girl after my own heart. She loves music. She Loves Christmas. She has strict parents and is part of her local church. I loved seeing her find a balance between being the person her family wanted her to be and rebelling. Very mildly. But Still. You see Anna starting to make her own decisions. I love Anna.

*The Nostalgia- Full Flight made me reminisce about my own high school experiences.

*The Writing- I loved the way this author wrote these characters and the way they navigated situations. When reading YA I usually get frustrated with teenagers acting like teenagers. The teenagers in this book were not overly immature. They were well balanced and realistically written.

*The Romance- Anna and Weston's romance was so bittersweet.

Why This Book Lost Stars-

It took me almost half of the book to truly get into it. Once I was all in the second half made up for the slowness of the first half.

Overall- Highly Recommend. I will definitely be reading more by this author.

In Schumacher's sophomore novel, high school junior, Anna, is struggling with insecurity. She joined the marching band much later than all of her peers, and is struggling to keep up. Love interest Weston has been deeply impacted by his parents divorce and spent his junior year in a neighboring town, but has returned to small-town Enfield, Texas for his senior year. Weston is socially ostracized and struggling academically. When the two get paired up to play a duet in the band’s performance number, Anna agrees to help Weston with his academics if he’ll help her with her part of the duet. Anna quickly learns that Weston is more than his tough (?) exterior.

I absolutely adored Schumacher’s debut novel, Amelia Unabridged, and had been highly anticipating Full Flight. I wanted to love this (and went in completely expecting to love it) but in no way was I the target audience for this book.

Schumacher’s lyrical writing that I loved so much in Amelia Unabridged is here, too, as are a lot of other similar elements including a motif involving a specific animal; this time the Kauaʻi ʻōʻō. I appreciated that the main characters here were outsiders and while their struggles with social inclusion looked different, neither was popular.

Unfortunately, there was a lot else here that didn’t work for me as a reader. First, I wish that Full Flight had been marketed as Christian fiction, because Christianity is so central to this novel. As a result, there was a lot of built-in shame messaging about sex, responsibility, and respect implicit in Anna’s relationships with her parents, the relationship between Anna and Wesley, their friendships, how Weston is treated as a student, and marching band culture.

I am fully in support of authors of YA choosing not to include profanity in their novels, but there were characters here whose central personality traits were that they were offended by cursing. I felt like the characters lacked depth and often read as caricatures (Anna’s parents in particular, though I also can’t understand why Weston had the reputation that he did: because of his leather jacket? The rumor that he cut down a tree? Because his parents are *gasp* divorced?)

I felt so alienated as a reader, the instalove (and this is very much instalove) relationship between Anna and Weston just didn’t feel genuine to me. And because so much of what happens in this novel hinges on believing this soaring, deep, love connection, things that other readers describe as heart-wrenching felt melodramatic to me.

I think that this book will resonate better with readers who share things in common with Anna and Weston: experience with marching band, the small-town Texas vibes, the youth group hopping, divorce. I’m thinking that readers who appreciated books like A Walk to Remember may be more the target audience for this one than I was.

I ended up reading the majority of this on audio, and I think, unfortunately, the narration only compounded the challenges that I had with this book. It was hard for me to hear Cody Roberts’ narration as that of a teenage boy, and Anna’s point of view often felt overacted in a way reminiscent of someone reading poetry from their journal at an open mic night. I’d recommend picking this one up in print, if possible.

Beautiful. Beautiful story. Beautifully written. The way Weston’s fate was handled was beautiful. It’s a lyrical version of what “all the bright places” wanted to be. Characters were all well developed, even the secondary characters I felt I knew.

I love this book. I received an ARC from Tantor Audio through NetGalley and I am so ecstatic that I did. Because this book is just good. First of all - it’s not too much, which some may critique, but I like that it doesn’t push too much on the reader. The writing is good enough to guide the reader down Anna’s (& Weston’s) thoughts and expanding on those thoughts without being overbearing and flashy. Ashley Schumacher’s writing is really soothing, no matter the content, it’s intelligent yet easy to read. The words just flow well together.

Because I listened to the Audiobook, I want to highlight the narration from Tina Wolstencroft and Cody Roberts. They did an excellent job performing this story and bringing feeling into it. Because of the ending of the book, I’m glad I listened to this story; it felt like I was listening to a friend and I was much more emotional.

To the meat - I loved the story. I love tragedy, which this is btw. The outcast kid falls in love with the quirky/odd duck that still fits in, what’s not to love? Oh AND it’s set in small town Texas, which was portrayed excellently. I adored the grappling of faith displayed in here, which happens to a lot of teens that grow up in church/the Bible Belt. No this isn’t a Christian novel, but it handled that topic well in my opinion. My favorite part of this book was the jacket (read the book, you’ll get it). Second best is the final few chapters, the Band content and the final duet. I felt like every conflict in the novel was resolved, everything wrapped up neatly. I do recommend this book and I will be purchasing a paperback for my shelves. It’s one I will probably revisit often.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Car accident, Death, and Cursing
*Spoiler*
Death. I honestly love a good tragedy. Even bad tragedies. I like when HEA doesn’t look like rainbows and sunshine. For Full Flight, HEA looks like finding a way to move on past the death of a loved one and grief to continue living life and accomplishing dreams. After an entire novel of falling in love, moving past hardships, Anna’s boyfriend ,Weston, dies in a car accident driving home from her house. There’s no gore here at the final 20% of the book, just a lot of grief and sadness. There is also cursing and brief mentions of sexual activity between minors (which I always take a portion of the rating off for). I don’t think the content is too heavy to be disturbing at all, but felt it deserved mentioning.

Thank you Net Galley for an audio ARC of Full Flight by Ashley Schumacher. This is a YA Romance that parties two teenagers, one creative and one brainy. It is beautiful, inspiring and more. Thank you!

A heart-wrenching story of first love and perseverance.

I really appreciate the synopsis of Full Flight for giving the reader a heads up as to where the plot's going -- without being an obvious content warning, it still gave this reader a chance to emotionally prepare herself for what was to come. (Of course, ymmv, skip it if you don't want any inklings.)

I, too, was in marching band, and played saxophone, and had my first romantic kiss with a mellophone player. I loved all the little details author Ashley Schumacher included, from learning drill to carrying around your shako. I know the "eyes... with pride" thing wasn't unique to our band, but that still hit me. I remember those big feelings all too well.

My biggest critique is that I wanted more direct support for Anna. While I liked that both characters' mental health experiences were described on the page, I wanted something more. Like... therapy? Talking with her parents about the times she feels the waves coming, threatening to pull her under?

To be sure, I thought it was really lovely, the way she and Weston saw each other for who they were, and who they could be. I also thought the Kauaʻi ʻōʻō bird metaphor was meaningful. The audiobook narration (two narrators, one for Anna and one for Wes) was great. I especially recommend this one to anyone who likes books that make them feel things!

This story is poetic where the authors writing flows effortlessly like a set of music notes playing a beautiful song. Every line has meaning and every word carries an emotion that the reader feels deep down in their heart. From the simplest scene to the most heartbreaking, this author used her talent to convey an imaginative experience through meaning and emotion. It’s so eloquent which is sometimes hard to come by with YA books.

Though this is a YA book, it’s topic, emotions, and characters are relatable to anyone at any age. I have never been in band and some of the situations were things I didn’t go through at their age, but I felt as if I understood the pain and pressures of Anna and Weston. The narrators truly capture everyday teenagers with Weston and Anna. They did a good job bring the emotions to the surface of this story in a way that felt true to each character. Their pitch and inflection is what I had invasion for Anna and Westin.

Anna and Westin are beyond adorable. Their little moments are cute and reminiscent of the sweetness of falling in love for the first time. This was a beautiful story that will capture any reader and resonate well after they finished this book. Thank you NetGalley and Tantor for this audiobook

Thank you @wednesdaybooks @netgalley for ALC of Full Flight. Wow what a beautiful book about first love. I loved seeing Anna and Weston’s relationship develop and how it was brought to life by the narrators.

The story is so well written and I love how the story was tied in with Weston’s obsession for Kauai ‘o ‘o bird. I didn’t read the synopsis in full detail and the twist gutted my heart.

I have never read an Ashley Schmacher book before, but I thought the cover and blurb looked sweet... I was not ready for the utter devastation this book would make me endure. It was beautiful, but I was not mentally prepared. Do I regret it? Naw, but as a frequent romance reader, I will need to read 2 small town romance and one instant love fluff book to recover from this. The prose was poetic and beautifully done; the characters were believable and lovely.

Wow - I didn't expect to love this as much as I did. Beautiful story on friendship, love and heartbreak. I was gutted by this book and did not want this story to end. I love Anna and Weston's playful relationship. The whole novel was so cute and light. But oh my goodness the last few chapters completely broke me!

This was the first book I read of Ashley Schumacher and I can't wait to read another. This was marvellous and I would recommend this to all! ALSO look at that beautiful cover too!!! Gorgeous.
This book reminded me of 'Five Feet Apart' and I would highly suggest if you enjoy this one.

Thank you for the chance to read this!