Hostage by Clare Mackintosh - Review

I can't remember where I picked this book up. I can see the Waterstones sticker so maybe it was in fact there, but I don't remember it. But it was in the piles of books next to my bed, so I got round to it. I liked the blurb but in the eventuality, this book didn't quite make it for me. It's over complicated and it really drags in parts. 

So Mina and Adam used to be a couple, but they're separated currently. They have a five year old daughter, Sophia, who is adopted. She is very much attached to Mina but Adam struggles with her and struggles to bond with her. Adam is a police officer. Mina is a flight attendant. She was training to be a pilot when she was younger but had to drop out and instead trained as a flight attendant. She loves it and thinks it's important for Sophia to know that she will go away, but she will come back too. 

The airline Mina works for is about to launch the first non stop flight between London and Sydney, and thanks to the problems in her marriage, Mina has swapped shifts with someone to get herself on the flight. Everything starts off well, but then Mina is passed a note: either she gets one of the passengers into the flight deck, in a hijack situation, or they will kill Sophia. Mina doesn't doubt them, but she doesn't know who she can trust. 

Meanwhile, Adam and Sophia run into trouble with their babysitter at home. Mina thinks that Adam had an affair with their previous au pair, Katya, so fired her. Their babysitter Becca has seemed too good to be true... Adam is mired in his own shit and he needed support from Mina that he didn't really get. I liked Mina but I felt she was a bit self involved and too obsessed with Sophia, but there we go. 

Then there are short passages from some of the passengers, and it's not clear why until a little way through the book. I sort of did like the mystery of this, but it got a bit confusing as to who was who. It was obvious that there was a lot research into flying an aeroplane, being a flight attendant, and so on, so I did appreciate that part of the book. I also thought the deaths were well done. It's a locked room mystery really isn't it, only thirty five thousand feet in the sky. 

But something just didn't ring quite right for me. I found Adam annoying and his and Mina's relationship annoying. I feel like if they'd just talked about things they could have sorted it out. I found Adam's story back in the UK while Mina was in the air just boggling and kind of annoying too. In all I'm giving this three out of five and I wouldn't going rushing for something else by the same author.