Rachel Reviews: Nice People on Planes by Lana Hart

I've read through my subtitle above and realised that it doesn't really sell this book as a taster of what it can offer but it's actually really, really good.

It is structured, as I have stated, around plane trips that Cora, our narrator, takes on planes, mainly for work trips although she does also travel to New Zealand as well. These trips are all dated and listed at the start of each chapter and the people that she meets all engage in conversations from which she launches into thought about her life mainly and about the people around her, especially her daughter Dottie, her son Dylan and her brother, Christopher. She is also stimulated by these conversations into looking back at her marriages and this causes her to reflect on what went wrong and prompts speculation into what she might want for the future.

Cora is an engaging narrator and she lives a fast-paced life. She is successful in what she does, which seems to be a facilitator sent to companies to encourage better relationships in the workplace with a view to improving productivity and results, no doubt. She gets a lot of satisfaction from this although she is starting to feel the strain as a result of the amount of travelling she has to do as well as the time it takes her away from her family and how this impacts on relationships that are important to her.

Running alongside these plane journeys and Cora's internal examinings of self is the story of her family's bolthole in New Zealand which is coming under threat from developers who want to demolish it to build a resort. The ramifications of her accepting an offer in order for this to happen lead to confliction: it was built by her grandfather and is ramshackle by her own admission but she is invested in it, more so than her siblings as it holds more than just memories for her. However, selling it would lead to financial freedom and opportunity for her and her family and locals - what should she do?

There was much to like here. I especially enjoyed the "Interstices" that Hart chose to include: a little surreal and whimsical but as a lot of the action takes place in the clouds, it seems only fair to have them. Only on reading the book will you know what I mean!

Rachel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

This review was first published on Reedsy Discovery where I was privileged to read it as an ARC: