Review: "The Flight Risk" by Macon Leigh
Learning to accept the role of fate in our lives
The red thread of fate is a concept from Chinese mythology that claims that there exists an invisible connection between two people who are destined to fall in love. No matter how far these two people grow apart, no matter how complicated their relationship gets, the string will still bring the lovers together eventually. “The Flight Risk” by Macon Leigh is a modern sapphic retelling of this concept. It explores the idea of accepting the conspiring of fate despite feeling unworthy of its gifts. It’s an incredibly well-written, funny, and heartfelt book that left me wallowing in a sea of happy tears.
Baylee Lawrence is living the good life. She has overcome her rough upbringing in the Nashville foster care system to become a world renowned and award-winning travel writer. After a sold out show at the Ryman Auditorium and crazy night out celebrating, she’s tracked down by a clever and precious teenage girl named Rivers. Rivers has run from her foster home to find Baylee and tell her that she is the daughter of Baylee’s long estranged college best friend, Tovi. Rivers also informs her that mother is dead and she needs Baylee’s help to complete her bucket list. When Baylee contacts Rivers’ case manager, she is reunited with Harper, her first and only true love who she hasn’t seen in years. Baylee reluctantly agrees to help Rivers complete Tovi’s bucket list, sending her on a whirlwind adventure into parts of her life she thought she left long behind her.
Right from the start, I felt an instant connection with Baylee. Baylee is such a complex and sympathetic character. She has this kind and generous soul that is buried under years and years of internalized negative self-talk. She has seemingly internalized every negative thing everyone has ever said about her no matter how deserved or true it is and has made it her personality. She sees herself as this massive asshole undeserving of anyone’s affections whose only redeeming quality is her writing. This causes her to sometimes make terrible choices even if she knows it’s the wrong choice. It causes her to reject and hurt people because she herself is hurt. All of this is conveyed in a way that makes you truly empathize with her. Macon’s prose renders her pain visceral, especially if you are someone who has also been caught in downward spirals of self-hate. As Baylee grows and learns to accept the good that fate is trying to bring her, I couldn’t help but feel so overwhelmingly happy for her, just as if she was one of my closest friends.
Of course, we’re able to sympathize and relate to Baylee in part because Macon does a masterful job writing from her first-person perspective. Reading the book truly felt like I was reading Baylee’s inner monologue. The prose sounds like someone’s inner train of thought rather than just the author using first-person pronouns instead of third. One example of how well Macon does this is her use of repetition. Throughout the book, anytime Baylee is either having to process some big news or remind herself of something, this information is repeated in the prose. For example, when Baylee first learns that Tovi has died, she repeats variations of the sentence, “Tovi is dead” in five out of eight sentences. In another chapter, when Baylee is reminding herself that she and Harper should not rekindle their physical relationship, she says versions of “Don’t touch Harper” multiple times in a row. Additionally, Macon’s use of staccato writing realistically conveys moments when Baylee’s flowing trains of thought are interrupted by a cascade of other shorter ones. All of this not only draws us in and helps us empathize with Baylee, but also helps us see the full depths of her emotional struggles.
Macon’s structuring of “The Flight Risk” was also outstanding. Switching between the present events of the narrative and past events can be tricky for a whole host of reasons. It can mess up the pacing of the story. It can pull focus and distract attention away from the main story. Luckily, neither of those pitfalls happened here. The stories of Baylee and Harper as teenagers and Baylee and Tovi in college are seamlessly interwoven into Baylee’s quest. The former two are not told wholly linearly, but rather through vignettes that are relevant to the plot point at hand. Coupled with the first-person perspective, this helps these vignettes feel more like Baylee reminiscing about dredged up related memories and less like basic exposition. The fact that these vignettes are told out of order also helps add depth to all of the characters. For example, after reading the first flashback with Baylee and Tovi, I couldn’t help but hate Tovi. A few flashbacks later, my perspective on her changed and I ended up sympathizing with her. Similarly, these flashbacks to Baylee and Harper’s relationship added depth to their love story and really sold me on the concept of fate in the story.
Speaking of fate, I can see how a red line of fate romance would also be tricky to write. This is because if the fateful twists and occurrences aren’t perfectly executed, they can come off as contrived and break the reader’s sense of immersion. In “The Flight Risk”, however, every single machination of fate in this story felt justified either because of what came before it or what came after. It’s easy to see how the threads of each character’s story intertwined and affected the others and how it all comes together in the end. Harper being Rivers’ social worker fit because of who Harper is and the choices she made in her life. The inclusion of seemingly throw away characters reemerging later in the story because of fate gave further depth to Baylee’s character development. It all felt as if it was naturally supposed to be there. It’s masterful storytelling.
There is just so much to love about this book. To do it proper justice, I would need way more space and time than this review. It is a book that will stick with me for a long, long time. It is without a doubt one of, if not the best, sapphic romances out there. With this book, Macon has set herself up as one of the best up and coming authors in sapphic literature. Considering that this is her debut romance, I cannot wait to see what she comes up with next.