Catching Air

by Sarah Pekkanen

[Leah]

Sarah Pekkanen is an author with quite a few novels and novellas to her name, most of which I have in some form or another – some are paperbacks, some kindle copies, but the only one I’ve read is her debut The Opposite of Me. It was a very enjoyable novel, and part of the reason I’ve got a Sarah Pekkanen collection on my TBR shelves. So when I spotted her new novel Catching Air on Netgalley, I quite liked the sound of it! I quite enjoy novels set in B&Bs – they offer a lot of scope and various different characters, but characters you don’t have to stick with the entire way through if they irritate you! I couldn’t wait to get stuck in, and there was one plot line in particular that caught my eye!

Though I very much enjoyed Catching Air and all three lead characters, it was most definitely Dawn who captured me most. The plot she’s featured in is fantastic, pulse-pounding stuff and it offered a pace change-up from the norm! At first glance Dawn’s life seems great – living in NYC, a great job at a good firm, a loving boyfriend, and the chance to help her boyfriend show his dad he’s got what it takes to make it on his own, having always been treated poorly by his father (a quite common theme in the novel, actually), but it all turns out to be a lie and Dawn finds herself on the run, and in stacks of trouble, and I just felt so sorry for her! When you fall in love, you fall in love, it isn’t natural to question it or ask if your boyfriend is genuine so I really felt for her situation.

That’s not to say I didn’t like Alyssa and Kira as I did – they’re sisters in law, whose husbands don’t always see eye to eye, but when Alyssa and Rand offer Kira and Peter the chance to own a third of their B&B in Vermont, it seems ideal – Kira and Peter can escape the rat race for a slower pace of life and it eases the pressure on Alyssa and Rand, who are desperately trying to adopt a baby! It was great! I thought I would struggle to like Alyssa as she seems very hippy like – travelling the world on a whim, not eating meat, meditating, all that kinda stuff but I thought she was super sweet and felt bad for ever doubting her! I very much enjoyed Kira, though perhaps not as much- she’s very high strung, and a bit of a control freak, and at times I felt sad for Peter as she did string him a long a little bit, but I could tell they were in love.

Catching Air was super enjoyable. I adored the Vermont setting, I’ve never read a novel set in Vermont before, and I loved the idea of the B&B sitting atop a snowy hill and relaxing by the fire in the lounge… It was blissful actually, to imagine! Tasting all of Kira’s magnificent creations… Yummy! The novel was a bit fraught at times – organising Jessica’s wedding was insane, bridezilla alert! And the two brothers Rand and Peter didn’t always get a long, but mostly it was fine. Pekkanen is a fine writer, and I’m dying now to get a bit of spare time to read the rest of her earlier novels that I’ve missed out on. She paints a wonderful picture with her words (I just have to close my eyes and I’m there at the B&B) and she really makes you care about the characters and you can’t go wrong with an author like that!