Love at First Flight is a delightful romance between a charming pilot and an air traffic controller that will have any newcomers to Jo Watson’s work running to add her entire backlist to their TBRs.
An air traffic controller on the autism spectrum, Pippa Edwards is good at her job. But while she thrives at guiding planes through the takeoff and landing processes, the thought of going to her impending high school reunion and answering questions about why she’s still single fills her with dread.
When Pippa finally meets one of her favorite pilots face-to-face, she discovers that handsome Andrew Boyce-Jones is also in desperate need of a date. They make a pact to fake a relationship so that Pippa has a date for her reunion and Andrew’s moms hopefully stop pestering him to settle down. Perfect, right? But as these two co-workers become friends, the lines blur even further, and their mutual attraction is hard to ignore. Pippa can’t help but wonder if there really is someone out there who can love her exactly as she is—and if that someone is Andrew.
I adored this book. Synonyms include: smitten, loved, crazy about and obsessed with. (Pippa would cringe a little since those aren’t perfect synonyms, but you get the point.) Love at First Flight soars and its two leads are charming, lovable and imperfect. Watson used her own autism diagnosis to help craft the character of Pippa; she’s both highly competent and incredibly awkward, with some delightfully nerdy hyperfixations (cue the Pokémon battles). While Andrew does work to smooth things out socially for Pippa, he also allows her to be herself, even if that self finds multiple ways to bring up human and animal anatomy at the absolute wrong moment. Andrew never laughs at Pippa when she fumbles a social interaction, but finds a way to help her find the humor in the moment and laugh together. And there are many laugh-out-loud moments in Love at First Flight: You will be utterly delighted, and also find yourself wondering along with the characters where merpeople’s sex organs disappear to.
Love at First Flight will have readers clamoring for a good seat to watch this relationship take off, and will especially delight fans of Helen Hoang and Rachel Lynn Solomon.
