Girls of Flight City
Grade : C+

Lorraine Heath joins the women’s fiction market in this World War II-set tale about daring women who used their biplanes to battle the evils of Hitler.  The volume reminds me of the work of Jill Barnett, whose book about women fighters in World War II - Sentimental Journey - also explores the romantic exploits of women caught up in the second war.  Heath’s heroine is quite memorable, even if she doesn’t add anything particularly fresh or new to the genre.

American Jessie Lovelace is a daring young pilot/stuntwoman who wants nothing more than to be a professional pilot.  She’s called into service when her flight school goes looking for recruits for the war effort. She becomes  part of the All American Eagle Squadron, teaching RAF men to fly alongside others like vivacious redhead Rhonda Monroe, whose forbidden love Peter also flies, and who soon becomes Jessie’s friend.  Jessie takes part in daring dog fights, experiences multiple scrapes and nearly dies a few times. She also finds herself falling in love with Royce Ballinger, a Wing Commander in the RAF.  Jessie must battle sexism, injury and other obstacles to make it into the sky – all the while hoping she can save her brother, Jack, from death.  But as D-Day approaches and bodies begin to fall, will Rhonda, Jessie and Jessie’s innocent but flirtatious young sister, Kitty, survive to see another day?

Girls of Flight City lacks enough urgency to really punch through the market and make itself a memorable World War II novel.  That doesn’t mean that spunky Jessie isn’t a fun central protagonist, it just means I’ve seen millions of heroines like her before.  The narrative is often slowed up or sped along by letters from the central characters, their relatives and the men they love, which end up serving as easy shorthand that shoves the storyline along.

But Heath does pick up on a bit of American history that I had no idea existed – American flight schools teaching British soldiers how to dog fight.  The material here was fun, and well-researched. A love of flying and flight comes through and makes the plane-related scenes exciting and easy to read.

But I couldn’t help but find Jessie and Royce’s romance dull; every time he calls her Fly Girl I expected her to start busting a movie and popping and locking like Jennifer Lopez on In Living Color. There’s no doubt that the novel will end a certain way. Rhonda and Peter’s romance, meanwhile, is a total afterthought that seems to exist to inject tragedy into the book.  Kitty is a young, lively and flirty presence who experiences her first heartbreak, and that makes her the most relatable person in the narrative.

I truly enjoyed the research here, and everything plane-related was a joy.  But the ordinariness of the narrative couldn’t get Girls of Flight City off the ground.

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Reviewed by Lisa Fernandes
Grade : C+

Sensuality: Subtle

Review Date : April 5, 2022

Publication Date: 04/2022

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Lisa Fernandes

Lisa Fernandes is a writer, reviewer and recapper who lives somewhere on the East Coast. Formerly employed by Firefox.org and Next Projection, she also currently contributes to Women Write About Comics. Read her blog at http://thatbouviergirl.blogspot.com/, follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/thatbouviergirl or contribute to her Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/MissyvsEvilDead or her Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com/missmelbouvier
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