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One summer morning, twelve-year-old Edward Adler, his beloved older brother, his parents, and 183 other passengers board a flight in Newark headed for Los Angeles. Among them is a Wall Street wunderkind, a young woman coming to terms with an unexpected pregnancy, an injured vet returning from Afghanistan, a septuagenarian business tycoon, and a free-spirited woman running away from her controlling husband. And then, tragically, the plane crashes. Edward is the sole survivor.

Edward’s story captures the attention of the nation, but he struggles to find a place for himself in a world without his family. He continues to feel that a piece of him has been left in the sky, forever tied to the plane and all of his fellow passengers. But then he makes an unexpected discovery–one that will lead him to the answers of some of life’s most profound questions: When you’ve lost everything, how do find yourself? How do you discover your purpose? What does it mean not just to survive, but to truly live?

I very much enjoyed Edward’s story–it’s hard to imagine what it must be like to be the sole survivor of a plane crash, and Napolitano shows several different sides of that. I wanted more, though.

Instead, there was a lot of time spent showing the victims, which felt macabre and unnecessary (I didn’t need to know about their pasts). I would have preferred to see more about his aunt and uncle’s relationship or Shay and her mom–there were so many opportunities to show the growth in the characters who lived instead of focusing on the dead. As with 99% of the split timeline books I read, I would have preferred all of the past scenes and using that time to stay in the present.

Overall, I enjoyed Edward’s story; I just wish there had been more of it.

Rated PG/PG-13 for some language and adult themes.

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For more dual timeline/split timeline novels, check out:

The Charm Bracelet by Viola Shipman
The Night the Lights Went Out by Karen White