If you want to start a book and be unable to stop, this is your book. Cancel your plans for the next 36 hours and buckle up.

One thing about me is that I love a child abduction story (I know, something is definitely wrong with me). But HOW can a baby go missing on a plane. This is the ultimate locked room mystery.

Readers will have to think a little outside of the box (especially at the end) because this takes some interesting turns and could never ever ever happen in a million years. But it is the ADVENTURE of a lifetime.

The author being a former NICU nurse and pilot's daughter makes so much sense and definitely adds layers to the details of this story.

🍿 FAR FETCHED BUT FUN!!

Makayla Rossi is traveling from Anchorage to New York, with her three month old son Liam. It’s a long flight, and when she needs to use the restroom she attempts to call a flight attendant to watch the baby who is asleep in his bassinet, but they are busy assisting an elderly passenger near the rest rooms.

Reluctantly, she asks the teenager across the aisle to keep an eye on him, and rushes to the lavatory.

But, when she returns, just minutes later, the bassinet is empty.

LIAM IS GONE!

How can he vanish at 30,000?

As a search for the baby is initiated, MaKayla becomes more and more combative and hysterical, and the FBI is brought in to coordinate a plan on the ground.

What they learn gives them more questions than answers, in this high octane, fast paced, entertaining thriller!

The story unfolds from multiple POV’s including those of Makayla and her husband, Jack, the First Officer flying the plane-Anna, and the FBI analyst investigating on the ground-Tina.

Author Audrey Cole is a Pilot’s Daughter so she gets ENOUGH of the details right, to make this wild flight seem plausible if you don’t work in the airline industry. But, as a 40 year flight attendant, I know that she DEFINITELY took some liberties for the sake of entertainment.

I won’t SPOIL anything for you, but I will say that commercial aircraft are NOT configured as described and MANY of the things that went on behind the locked cockpit door had me rolling my eyes or chuckling at times! Despite that, I can’t deny that I enjoyed the story!

AVAILABLE March 1, 2025- just in time for your SPRING BREAK flight! ✈️

Thank You to Thomas & Mercer for the gifted ARC provided through NetGalley. As always, these are my candid thoughts.

Audrey’s best book yet!

I love a good in flight thriller, and this didn’t disappoint. Multiple POVs, intriguing backstory, the question of unreliable narrators lingering in the back of my mind. What more could I ask for?

Makayla is on a flight with her infant son, headed home from visiting her father. Her baby is safely asleep when she decides to make a quick trip to the bathroom. When she returns, she discovers only a pillow in his place. Surely it won’t be difficult to locate a baby on a plane?

Read this one in two sittings (and only two because the first time I couldn’t keep my eyes open past 1:30 AM) I would definitely recommend this read!

Thank you to the author & publisher for the gifted ARC

Stuck on a plane, Makayla's baby goes missing while she was using the facilities. Frantic and desperate for her baby to be found, she demands a search only to find out that no one seems to even remember her with a baby in the first place.

I found this one to be an addictive, emotional whirlwind of a story. As a mother, this is beyond fear inducing. That said, some of this I had to suspend disbelief for, but when I did search the possibility of certain events, some things were, in fact, plausible. This was written well, with good character development, descriptive writing, and a sense of unease throughout. For what some may deem a "popcorn thriller," I found this to be more deep than that. Overall, this was a great read, and I give it four stars.

Thank you to Netgalley and Thomas and Mercer for this ARC.

I really enjoyed Audrey J. Cole's The Pilot's Daughter, The Final Hunt, The Last Hunt, and Only One Lie, but this one was disappointing. Cole's writing is very good and it's easy to get through her books quickly, but this story was just too far-fetched for me. Makayla Rossi's infant son goes missing on her flight home to New York City from visiting her Dad in Alaska. When she comes back from a quick bathroom break, Liam is no longer in his bassinet. She had looked for a flight attendant to keep an eye on him, but they were all busy. She asked a young girl seated near her to watch him, but she had headphones on and didn't even know what Makayla said to her. No one seems to have seen anyone take the baby. After an extensive search of the plane, Liam still hasn't been found. When passengers and crew find out that Makayla's famous mom suffered from an unusual memory disorder, they begin to question whether Makayla actually boarded with a baby or not. Makayla's high-profile investment banker husband Jack who had recently been featured in Forbes magazine is home in Manhattan. Could his visibility as someone with access to unlimited funds have put his son in danger? Many of the things that happen in this story were head-scratching and I kept thinking "this could never really happen." I hope Audrey J. Cole's next book is more realistic. Thanks to #netgalley and #Thomas&Mercer for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The premise of this one is so intriguing. It was definitely suspenseful and exciting, but it was missing that thrilling factor. I think it was more of a mystery than a thriller. Also you need to highly suspend disbelief for this one. It truly went a too over the top for me.

A mother traveling on an airplane with her infant. She goes to the bathroom and lets her child in the bassinet sleeping. Upon her return the baby is missing. A search of the flight does not find the baby. Doubts of whether anyone actually saw her with a baby. A lot more than meets the eye in this intense thriller.

*Missing in Flight* delivers a heart-pounding, claustrophobic mystery that hooks you from the very first page. The premise—a baby vanishing mid-flight—is as chilling as it is unique, and Cole masterfully builds the tension with every passing chapter.

Makayla Rossi is a compelling protagonist, her desperation and resolve making her a character easy to root for. As suspicions about her mental state grow, Cole expertly blurs the line between reality and paranoia, keeping readers guessing: is Makayla the victim of a chilling crime, or is something deeper at play? The atmosphere aboard the plane feels almost tangible, with its confined spaces and uneasy passengers adding to the sense of urgency.

The plot twists come fast and furious, and while a few moments feel slightly implausible, the book’s relentless pacing makes it easy to suspend disbelief. The exploration of themes like trust, isolation, and societal perceptions of motherhood add depth to what could otherwise be a straightforward thriller.

If there’s one critique, it’s that the ending, while satisfying, feels a bit rushed after such a meticulously built setup. A touch more time spent resolving the story’s emotional threads would have elevated it to perfection.

Overall, *Missing in Flight* is an intense, gripping read perfect for fans of psychological thrillers. Audrey J. Cole proves once again that she’s a master of suspense.

I love a good airplane thriller and whn a son goes missing many thousands of metres up in the air it's a book for me! I like the way it is written and the flow is perfect for this type of book. I highly recommend it.

This book follows a plane ride for Makayla and her son Liam. After getting up to use the restroom and going back to her seat, she has come to realize that Liam has went missing. A search of the plane follows along with the FBI, police, etc getting involved on the ground to see if Liam even made it on the flight due to his mother possibly having inherited amnesia from her mother. Is Liam safe? What happens?

This was ok, I’ve definitely read better. Not horrible but okay read. It was an easy read for the most part.

Talk about a locked-room mystery!💁🏻‍♀️
Can you get more locked in than on an airplane 35000 feet above the ground?

Makayla is flying home to New York from Alaska with her three month old baby. A non-descript flight… quiet, with a nearly empty airplane. (Ahhh, remember those days?)

Against her better judgement Makayla leaves her sleeping son alone in his bassinet as she quickly makes her way to the bathroom. She’ll only be gone for a couple minutes and the girl across the aisle agreed to keep an eye on the bassinet. (Well, sort of).
When Makayla returns to her seat her son is gone and the bassinet is empty.😱

Now the million-dollar question. How can a baby vanish while a plane is in flight?

Extremely unique and intriguing premise right?

But….You’ll need to suspend your believability, and I mean ALL of it! It does go a bit bonkers by the end! But if you’re looking for something different that you want to lose yourself in over the weekend this will be the perfect read!

Thank you to NetGalley and Thomas & Mercer

Thanks to NetGalley, the publisher and or the author for giving me the opportunity to read and review Missing in Flight.

I liked the plot and the characters.

I was totally hooked from the first chapter. The thought that someone could lose a baby in an airplane is insane! But the author pulled it off. I was frantic to know not just who did it, but how something like that could happen. Every time I thought I knew, the author injected another suspect. A thrilling read from a talented author!

Full review to come on Goodreads and Amazon. Thank you to the publisher, author, and NetGalley for a review copy

eARC provided through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This one is rough. I will say I was very sleep deprived while reading the first half of the book so I’m going to give the book the benefit of the doubt.

But. I felt that the first half of the book is off. In multiple ways. There are four POV characters with Makayla being the ‘main’ character. Every single scene with her feels incomplete. Part of it is her repetitive thoughts but it’s also the setting in general. She’s on a flight but the way her scenes are written it feels like there are only a dozen people on this entire airplane. Every time she starts moving around the plane or engaging with the flight attendants it all seems so … untrue (I am writing this before I’ve finished the book so there may be a reason I feel like things don’t make sense… We’ll see.) That being said. I’ve been on fully booked flights and on a flight that had only a dozen people and there is no way someone at some point didn’t actually see or hear a baby. There’s just no way. Again, I haven’t finished the book so I can only speculate about what’s going on.

I have a general pet peeve about thrillers and that is the pointless side plots. There are ALWAYS multiple side plots going on so that you’re suspicious of everyone and so everyone has a motive to do the bad thing. And they are always so convoluted. I read a non-spoiler review that said that the twists got a bit too unbelievable at the end and I have to admit that this always seems to happen. And I can only imagine how this one is going to get jumbled up. But again, I haven’t gotten there yet.

I’ll also say I’m not a huge fan of the writing style. It’s very repetitive. The number of times the same phrases have been used is annoying. The number of times the same backstory plots have been brought up makes the book read like a first draft where the author/editor wasn’t quite sure where to reveal information so they dropped it anywhere it sounded logical and then never went back and made things flow better. I also never want to read the word lavatory in a book ever again.

Anyway. I should critique the actual plot. It’s… bad. Makayla is flying back from Alaska to New York. She leaves her baby unattended to use the lavatory (I seriously hate this word now) and when she comes back her baby is missing. Right away we have a twist on the locked room mystery. How can a baby just disappear from an airplane in flight? The problem is the way this is written is very detached (maybe due to the third person POV?) I never felt like Makalya had a true fear of losing her son. She’s belligerent and demanding but she never has a moment of fear. My three-year-old niece got lost in a supermarket a while ago and I felt that fear and dread and she’s not even my kid, so I don’t know why we didn’t get the emotional and physical response from Makayla. It came across as ‘oh no, my baby isn’t here. Where could he be? Hmm. I guess I’ll look under the seat.’ But then later she’s demanding that people open their suitcases and that she be allowed to go into the cargo hold. But it didn’t feel like she was desperate, just that she deserved to be allowed to do these things.

Thrillers are always so difficult to critique because the things you want to discuss and analyze are almost always spoilers. So. I’ll keep things vague…

Jack (Makayla’s husband) is a workaholic who has gotten mixed up in something he should have known better than to get mixed up in. Knowing how these types of books go this is either the reason the kid is missing or has absolutely nothing to do with anything and just unnecessarily pads out the book as a red herring. I’m going with padding out the book. Because no one can be ‘good’ in a thriller. Everyone has to have some ulterior motive, or are keeping some stupid secret (which is ALWAYS a red herring). The thing is these characters aren’t interesting. They’re either good people who did a bad thing or people who are doing bad things because the plot needs them to.

I will say that if the ‘big bad’ in this book ends up being some random person I’m going to be really upset.


Okay. I’ve finished the book. It was worse than I expected. I had theories about a few things that ended up being mostly right. But the twists at the end? Wow. They were so far-fetched. I’m honestly upset.

I was also SHOCKED to see that the author has written eleven books (according to her bio). This read like a rough debut where the author hadn’t quite figured out their voice. There were also a lot of editing choices that I wouldn’t have made (I’m not an editor - so this is only my opinion). This is an advanced reader copy so there is the possibility things might be changed. Some of my complaints with the writing style: repeated words in the same sentence and paragraph, the repetition of ideas, the constant reference to the same things.

Anyway, now that I’m done I can tell you the word lavatory/lavatories was used 73 times in this book. It’s about 63 times too many.

Other things to follow up on from my first half reading:

The plane felt empty because it was. So I guess that tracked.

The repetition continued throughout the entire book.

Makayla continued to be unemotional about almost everything. Then became belligerent and aggressive.

I can’t fully speak about the ‘big bad’ because it’s a spoiler but I’m annoyed about how it all played out regardless.

And, like a lot of thriller books the twists were silly and nonsensical. Things just happened to work out because the plot needed them to, not because there was a plan, or methodology, or even a thought, as to what logically made sense.


There are other things I want to discuss that were so aggravating but I can’t because they’re spoilers. I may revisit these concerns after publication, but there were factual things about the book that didn’t make sense (nothing about the wild twists or the plot but the way planes work and how the human body moves).

There was a lot of technical flight jargon throughout the book and it really served no purpose. In fact I’d be willing to say that the entire POV from the co-pilot was just fluff and filler. What was happening in the cockpit had pretty much nothing to do with the actual plot line.

I do want to circle back to the repetition. It was prevalent throughout the book but I found it the most annoying from Makayla’s POV. I won’t give away actual plot or spoilers but this was basically what would happen in a lot of her chapters: 1) Wonder where someone on the plane went and immediately assume they’re guilty of taking her baby. 2) Get out of her seat to track this person down or look through their stuff. 3) Wonder where the baby might be. Assume that something bad has happened. 4) Be told to go back to her seat by a flight attendant. 5) Yell at the flight attendant because they’re not doing anything to find her baby. 6) Sit back down and be angry for a few minutes. 7) Repeat.
As an added bonus sometimes there was a step 3a) Assault someone.

I found the timeline incredibly frustrating to read. We’d jump around to get the same scene from another person’s POV and it was always jarring. Especially when on the plane. Towards the end of the book they’re flying over a lake and it’s pointed out in Makayla’s POV. More stuff happens in her POV before we jump over to the co-pilot. I thought the scene was a continuation but then the co-pilot points out that they’re crossing over the same river. This also happened once when Makayla texted her husband and then more things would happen and then she sent another text. We jump to the husbands POV and he’s thinking about her text but it’s the first text Makayla sent. But you didn’t know it was the first text until the next text came through. I felt like I was constantly unsettled by what was going on in the book. If that was what the author was going for then I guess she did a good job.


I just found my draft of this review and LITERALLY FORGOT I even read this book. That’s how much impact this book had on me.

Missing in Flight was my first read by this author but definitely not my last! It was such a quick read that left me on the edge of my seat! Thank you NetGalley and Thomas & Mercer for this advanced readers copy in exchange for my honest review.

I always reach for a plane-related thriller when I travel!

Missing in Flight is a kidnapping thriller set on an airplane--the ultimate locked-room setting. I was certainly intrigued by the premise and eager to find out what happened to Liam. A lot of suspension of belief is required, but it's an entertaining read. A bit slow at first, it picks up in the second half with nonstop action. While this book does fall into the trap of "no one believes the woman with questionable mental health history", Makayla is adamant about standing up for herself and what she knows is true.

This is my first book by this author, and I'm interested to see what else she has on her backlist.

A baby goes missing on a flight. It has to be on the plane somewhere - right? RIGHT? Or was there never really a baby at all.

Woah-what did I just read???? I chose to read this book on a PLANE coming home from vacation! I love Audrey Cole’s writing style and the6 are always fast paced and engrossing, so I figured it would be a win. I was on the edge of my seat, heart pounding and starting to look at the crew and passengers with suspicion! Had to keep reminding myself it was just a book! Truly gripping story with a great plot and great characters. The only criticism I have is knowing the Syracuse area well- there is not a hospital called Syracuse General! Crouse, Upstate or St. Joes are the hospitals. Otherwise- job well done- my flight went by super fast while reading this! Thank you to NetGalley, Audrey Cole and Thomas & Mercer for the opportunity to read and review this ARC- it was a pleasure!⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️