RATING: VERY GOOD
SPOILERS!!!
This has been a exhilarating, action-packed novel which I have loved. And the end is just so good!!!
After Carmel's death, Mina teams up with the pilot, Cesca, and two passengers, Rowan and Derek. From what they can observe, these terrorists have never met before and their plan was concocted via social media. Missouri then breaks into the cockpit and announces that she is the new pilot, and the government have announced that they are not going to grant their request, so now they are going to show them what the consequences are, and Missouri will crash the plane into Sydney's Opera House. That announcement is received by the other terrorists with shock, and it is clear that this is the first time they have known about the plan. This creates a clash between them, and Lena, who is the fake doctor, starts saying that what they need to do is outpower Missouri because the explosives are fake.
Mina, Ceska, Rowan and Derek get to open the door to the cockpit and find Amazon and the pilot dead, and Missouri on the pilot's seat. As MIssouri notices what is happening, she turns and uses the emergency axe and hits Cesca on the head. The woman falls and is bleeding profusely. MIna then turns to Missouri and using the leads of a child's headphones, she strangles her. Cesca is taken to the cabin and Derek looks after her, and Rowan and Mina stay. Mina then makes contact with control, and they are going to instruct her how to land the plane. When she is maneuvering, she feels panicky as she remembers the reason why she dropped out of the pilot school. Once MIna was in a pub and chat with one of the men in the pub; she enjoyed herself and he walked her home, and there he tried to kiss her and get inside with her, but Mina sent her packing. Then she discovered that the man was one of the instructors, and she was assigned to him. On the first training Mina was alone with him and he started touching her while she tried to focus on what she was doing. The man was disgusting, but she managed to control herself. However, she couldn't face him again, and she was not brave enough to report him. Some time later she heard that there had been an accident when a training pilot and this instructor were flying and they died, and then the man was reported of abusing their charges. Mina feels guilty because if he had reported the man, the woman wouldn't have died.
When she starts remembering all this, she has a panic attack, and on seeing Rowan next to her, she tells him to get out, and she remains alone in the cockpit. Charles, the person in control, instructs her what to do, and Mina finally manages to land the plane safely.
In her house things have not been easy. As the hours pass and Adam and Sophia remain locked in the cellar, they feel hungry, and Adam cried for Becca to give them some food and water. He thinks that she will use the cellar door, and she instructs Sophia to hide and then run away. Yet, Becca uses the chute from outside to give them the food. They have sandwiches, and then Sophia starts feeling sick, and her body swells up and she can hardly breathe. What Adam realises is that Sophia has eaten a peanut butter sandwich, and she is allergic to nuts. Adam calls desperately for Becca to give him an ipen for Sophia, and it was her who put the pen in Mina's bag, so there is not one in the kitchen drawer, but thankfully, there is one in Adam's car, which she retrieves. Adam tells Sophia how to use it, and the girl does it brilliantly and starts feeling better.
Adam then starts telling Becca from his position in the basement that she will end up in prison. He knows her because once he saw her in the supermarket in a nearer town. She didn't see him because she was focused on her mobile, but Adam saw her go into her mother's car, and he thinks that she works in the supermarket. When Adam tells her that it is a question of checking the supermarket ICTV cameras to find out her mother's licence plate number, and the police will know where to find her. Becca panics and she runs away, leaving the two of them in the basement.
Things go from bad to worse. The loan shark returns to demand his money, and when nobody opens the door, he sets fire to the house. Adam knows that they will die if he doesn't do anything. So he comes up with the idea to push Sophia up the chute and she will go to the police and alert them. Sophia is scared, but Adam tells her that she can do it. Levelling her on his shoulders, Sophia manages to leave the house through the chute, and the girl runs through the streets she takes every day with MIna to go to school because the police station is on the way there.
Adam is finally rescued, and he is told that Sophia fell and a teenager who she had played with in the park saw her, and when she told her about her father, she called the police. So now they are safe and sound, and they discover that Mina is a hero.
Mina has to stay in Sydney for a week to answer questions, but she and Adam talk often. She is angry to discover that Adam risked Sophia's life for his gambling habit. However, they eventually make up, and she returns home, nervous but happy to be with her family. They stay at her father's while the damages caused by the fire are repaired. Adam tells him about the gambling, and she also confessed to his boss, and thanks to the information he has about the loan sharks, he is not suspended, merely confined to administrative work.
Three years later it is the trial to the terrorists, and they are eventually given life. Sophia had to testify as well as all those on the plane that day. Cesca recovered, and Derek, who confessed that he was going to Australia to see his brother and then kill himself as he has found himself jobless and desperate, has been given a job and is working on televion. Cesca, Derek, Mina and Rowan have become close, and they get together once a month. Rowan is especially close to Mina, and Adam feels that he can't warm to him.
The epilogue is a letter from Rowan, and we discover that he is passenger 1G and the leader in the plan. Yet, he concealed his identity, and when he killed Carmel and suspected that he would be better without revealing himself, he kept the charade, and that is what he has been doing. He has not given up on his plan, and we discover that he is brainwashing Sophia, who he sometimes babysits, and he tells her about the terrible state of the earth and how he tried to do the right thing, but things went wrong. He tells Sophia that she shouldn't care about her parents because they are not really family as the reason they adopted her was because she was available, and not because they wanted her. We understand that Rowan plans something big soon.
Then we have the perspective of Sophia, who is worried about the environment and wants to be an environmentalist when she grows up apart from a pilot and a police officer. She talks about getting away with bad things like Rowan told him, and the last part is so surprising. Sophia, who has always liked baking, uses herbs to bake just like Becca told her to do. These creations are not welcoming as they taste horrible, and she tells us about some biscuits she has made with petals, and some of these petals are foxglove, a poison. And we discover that she has given Rowan those biscuits, which means that he will die. Sophia has given him his comeuppance for trying to kill her mum.
A great book. I really loved it.
No comments:
Post a Comment