The Gravity of Missing Things - Marisa Urgo

Author: Marisa Urgo

Genre: Contemporary Drama, Young Adult.

Rating: 4.25 stars.

In a Nutshell: Fast-paced. Serves its target YA readers well. Read the triggers though.

Story:

A commercial Boeing 747 has gone missing with almost 155 people on board, including the chief pilot Jenn Ashby. There’s no distress signal or mayday alert. It has simply vanished. Soon there are loads of conspiracy theories online, most blaming Ashby for whatever happened.

Ashby’s family includes her recently separated husband and their two daughters, 17 year old Savannah and 16 year old Violet. Both the girls are dealing with their own demons, and the plane event has set off things beyond their control. Violet decides to take things in her own hands after she finds a letter addressed to her, written by Jenn the night before the accident, asking her to “trust me.” She is determined to clear her mother’s name. Will she be able to do so?

The story comes to us in the first person perspective of Violet.

Where the book worked for me:

✔ It was wonderfully fast-paced, despite the number of topics it covers. After a long stint of slow-medium paced books, this felt like a gust of fresh air.

✔ The chapter titles worked nicely for the story. Rather than only having the plain numbered titles, there are tags such as “Day zero”, “Day one, morning”, and so on. This helps tremendously to know the timeline of the investigation and the aftermath.

✔ Though the topic is very serious, there is a lot of subtle humour throughout the story. The book is described in the end as having “humour and heart”, and I agree.

✔ Great representation. There’s a bisexual character (who also gets to spout some amazing thoughts on what life is like for bis), and a couple of queer characters.

✔ The stages of grief are covered well in Violet’s and her family’s reactions to the incident. The emotions are written very realistically.

✔ While YA characters are hardly ever layered, this book makes the characters sufficiently complicated. None of the characters are easy to classify into labels.

✔ There is no overload of characters. There are just as many characters as the story requires, and the author makes good use of them. This was also refreshing to see.

✔ I never like superfluous romance in non-romance-genre stories. But in this book, the romantic tracks work decently well. Though I could still have done without them, they aren’t SO bad.

✔ The cover is stunning, but… (see below.)

Where the book could have worked better for me:

❌ (continued from above)… it doesn’t represent the story accurately. It makes the book sound like some sort of forbidden lesbian romance story.

❌ There are too many subplots. While these don’t hamper the pace, it just feels like there’s a lot happening within a few days. Of course, the author doesn’t leave any thread dangling and all the tracks are well-narrated. But the blurb makes it sound like the plane mishap is the sole focus of the book. It isn’t.

Triggers: There are quite a few references to self-harming such as cutting oneself and also mental health issues. Won’t recommend this to the younger YA segment. 15+ years, yes.

All in all, this was a fairly satisfying book. The pace, the suspense, and the family relationship all worked for me. More importantly, it doesn’t feel like a debut as the author seems to have precise control over where they want the story to go.

Recommended for those who like YA fiction in a complicated mix of romance + mystery + drama.

4.25 stars, considering the target age group. (For readers of my age group, it might be a 3.75-4 star, which is still pretty good.)

My thanks to Entangled Publishing, LLC and NetGalley for the DRC of “The Gravity of Missing Things”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.