Love Me Anyway

by Tiffany Hawk

[Leah]

When I was offered Love Me Anyway by Tiffany Hawk to review, I said yes immediately. I absolutely love the idea of being a flight attendant, it was something I wanted to be when I was younger though it isn’t something I’ve followed through on because you have to be a certain weight apparently and it’s not something I’d like to have to be ruled over. Also the more flights I’ve taken the older I’ve gotten, the less glossy the job looks when you realise they have to deal with obnoxious passengers all day long and, of course, you could die. But I still really enjoy reading about flight attendants because I do still like the idea of flying to glamorous destinations even if that’s generally not the reality so I jumped at the chance of reading Love Me Anyway, and it’s a book I thoroughly enjoyed.

Love Me Anyway tells the story of two brand new flight attendants, Emily and KC. They share a base in San Francisco but rarely find they’re in town at the same time due to the fact that because they’re newbies they’re constantly on call. Emily has recently left her hometown of Bakersfield and alongside that, her childhood sweetheart husband and can’t wait to start her brand new life as a flight attendant. KC has spent her life running, having grown up in Las Vegas with her single mother. She sees her job as a chance to hunt down her absent father, who left when she was just a little girl. She wants to know why he left and is determined to find out. As the girls navigate their new waters, they find themselves falling in love and flying to many new destinations, but is the life of a flight attendant really all it cracked up to be?

Love Me Anyway was a really interesting read. I really liked the novel, I loved reading about Emily and KC’s lives and I loved the insight into being a flight attendant. There’s still a bit of me that would like to try the job out, even now. The novel is written in both first- and third-person, with the first person narration from Emily’s point of view and the third person allowing us insight into KC. I thought it worked very well. I loved the both Emily and KC were just two twenty something’s who weren’t at all sure where there place was in the world. I liked that they were just figuring it out as they went along. I wasn’t a massive fan of Emily’s relationship with Tien and as such for that portion of the novel I jut wanted to get back to KC’s narrative.

The ending of the novel was a little weird for me. It ends 10 years after 9/11 and it was a little bit too political for my liking with Emily being a bit too outspoken, it seemed out of character and out of sync with the novel to throw in bits about wars and bombs and it was just a bit weird. I also felt really sad KC didn’t get the ending I felt she deserved, I thought she was a bit robbed with how her life ended up. But apart from that, I really liked the novel. It was a very impressive debut novel, and I loved the insight into United Airlines and the insight into 9/11, you could feel the panic rising off the page and it’s almost like a personal insight into the terrors – if anything would ever put you off being a flight attendant that would do it, sadly. Yes, I definitely recommend the novel, I did enjoy it!