Review: Crow Flight

★★☆☆☆

I’ll be the first to admit, I’m usually one of the last people to pick up YA novels, but the premise of Crow Flight caught my attention. The story follows the hyper-logical, highly intelligent programmer Regina “Gin” Hartson. Crow Flight begins as Gin starts her senior year of high school, gunning for Harvard and unwilling to let anything get in her way. In her exclusive computer modeling class, she is partnered with the new kid at school, Felix Gartner. Gin’s logic-based approach to life begins to falter as her relationship with Felix begins to flourish, until it all comes crashing down with a dark secret hiding in their data.

I enjoyed the third act of this book, but I made it there by sheer will alone. The characters initially felt like caricatures of teen stereotypes that have been played out in this genre. Relationships and conflicts in this book flow with ease at some points and seem forced and wedged in at others (e.g. Gin’s best friend is largely left out of the latter half of Crow Flight, as a result of a spat that hardly seemed large enough to cause a schism between two long time friends). I struggled with the pacing of this book as well. Much of the book passes slowly, uneventfully, with the final act jammed full of action I wish had been expanded upon or at least kicked off earlier in the book.

The saving grace of Crow Flight, for me, was Gin and Felix’s relationship. Despite the clichés, their friendship and the relationship that bloomed from it had a depth and genuine quality that is hard to capture. Overall, a solid YA read, but not for me.

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Crow Flight by Susan Cunningham
Genre: Young Adult
Length: 352 pages
Publisher: Amberjack Publishing
Pub. Date: December 11, 2018
Source: Publisher via NetGalley
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