Review: Tailspin

Tailspin by Sandra Brown
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Tailspin is a suspense ride from start to finish, the story takes place over a 48hr period, most of it in just 24hrs. Rye is a retired Air Force pilot dealing with guilt over a crash he felt he could have prevented from happening. He now is a “freight dog” flying for a cargo company and when the weather turns extremely foul, he's the only one willing to fly a black box to a doctor in Georgia.
Brynn is the doctor that shows up to pickup the mystery cargo but a plane crash and unconscious air traffic controller, there is a lot to explain to the cops. Especially when Rye and Brynn go on the run as life and death hang in the balance.

He was in this damn thing whether he wanted to be or not.

A standalone that keeps the pace up, Rye was a calm, cool, character that anchored the story. His background is hinted at and through his thoughts, actions, and feelings, the reader gets a pretty good idea of what emotional turmoil is affecting him. When he finally tells the story to Brynn, he almost works through the guilt at the same time and it felt like a quick resolve for an issue that had previously drove his character actions.

I wish we could have gotten more of Brynn's background, she didn't feel like a completely flushed out character. In order to keep some mystery to the story, Brynn's thoughts and reason for actions is kept veiled. When we reach around the half-way point, her reasons are revealed and we get to know her a little better. The side tangent with her father helped humanize her and was a great little emotional additive to a heavy action plot.

She gave him a murderous look, which only caused him to grin.

As this takes place over two days, the romance doesn't really have time to fully develop. Brynn and Rye are pretty much together from the beginning to end but the on the run aspect really does dominate this. I thought the first half was a bit hard to get into, as I mentioned, to keep the mystery up, the author leaves some motivations and explanations veiled. This caused me to be confused by some of Brynn's actions, not buy into why Rye would keep it a secret what caused him to crash, and how all the character pieces fit into the puzzle. The second half was easier to get into the flow, with some key information revealed, characters began to make more sense. There were multiple povs, the senator and his wife, the two goons, the two police detectives, and Violet, Brynn's patient. For the most part, I liked this, it gave a better rounded out look into the story and helped place all the moving pieces.

He sighed. “You're gonna make me come after you, aren't you?”
“If you want me, it's required.”

The ending was somewhat messy with betrayals and finger pointing whirling around to and from everyone; there was a truly unnecessary double cross that clogged up the end and only was surprising because there wasn't any character ground work for it. I wish things could have slowed down for the romance between Rye and Brynn, their love wasn't truly felt but the plot and action dictated the pace. If looking for lighter on romance depth but an on the run with some emotional depth occasionally popping up, Brown's writing is always worth a read.

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