She's a life-long optimist, looking for her soul mate in every man she meets; he's a resolute cynic - cruel experience has taught him never to put his faith in anyone.
People can surprise you. In the time it takes to fly from London to Chicago, each finds something in the other that they didn't even realise they needed.
Their pasts are such that they can never make one another happy and it's when they get off the plane that their true journey begins...
Although I have read several of Adele Parks books before it's been quite a few years since I last read one so when I received a proof copy of The State We're In I was very much looking forward to reading it to see what I'd been missing.
This is a story of what happens when two complete strangers, who couldn't be more different if they tried, end up sitting next to each other on a flight to Chicago.
Jo is a bit of a dreamer hoping for her prince charming to come and sweep her off her feet but maybe, just maybe, she'd already let him slip through her fingers. When she receives an invite to her ex's wedding she takes that as a sign that he wants her to come and rescue him and after a series of disasters she decides to do just that and splurges out the last of her cash on a plane ticket!
She ends up sitting next to Dean who's not all that interested in hearing about Jo's life story and mission, he has his own issues that he's dealing with. He's very cynical about love and relationships, after all he didn't have a very good role model as his father walked out on his family when he was just a small boy.
But as the flight progresses Dean begins to let down his guard and tells Jo a little about his childhood, and Jo begins to realise just how crazy her plan is... What is it about this stranger sitting next to them that makes them open up their true feelings about how their lives have turned out?
Interspersed with the main story is that of Eddie and Clara, who have links to Jo and Dean although they don't know it, who have history but have not seen each other for a number of years. But receiving a letter out of the blue after all these years prompts Clara to take steps that she's not really felt ready to take until now.
It took a while for the story to get going but I did find that once I'd got to the stage of Jo and Dean meeting I wanted to keep reading to see how it was all going to pan out so for me the second half of the book was better than the first half. This is very much a story about family, love and relationships, and how different things could have been...
I've had this review book for quite some time but for one reason or another I've not managed to find the time to read it until now. I'd seen all the pre-publication publicity asking for readers to keep the secret so I guess I was expecting it to be something really major but in reality it didn't turn out to quite as dramatic as I thought it was going to be. Overall it is a good read but not sure it's a keeper that I would read again and again.
Amazon links: Paperback or Kindle
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