Flight Girls- Noelle Salazar

This book quite literally soars.

What a book to start the new year off with. The Flight Girls is easily one of the best WWII books I’ve read to date.

The Flight Girls tells the story of the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs) and the integral role they played during WW2. While not allowed to officially be members of the military, these women made it possible for more men to join the war by taking their places in tasks such as testing out new and repaired planes before they were sent back overseas, ferrying planes between bases and even training soldiers.

Our protagonist is Audrey Coltrane, a young, strong-willed woman filled with nothing but the desire to fly. The story opens with her journey living a leisurely life training pilots in Hawaii, her finding herself swept up in a romantic interest, and eventually caught in the midst of fire in Pearl Harbor on that fateful day in 1941.

Forever changed by the horrors of experiencing the attack first-hand and the lives lost, Audrey joins the WASPs program searching for her place amidst the war. It is through this program in which we witness the most incredible bonds of these heroes. The WASPs were a group of women in dangerous, courageous, often thankless job against constant adversity. These “sisters of the sky,” find themselves leaning on one another through harrowing, life altering events anyone outside their field could never truly comprehend.

I found myself completely consumed by The Flight Girls; laughing and crying along with Salazar’s beautifully illustrated characters. This story is all heart, a story of the enduring power of love and friendships. This exhilarating book has the ability to make your hair stick up on ends and feel as though you, too, were soaring among these magnificent, unsung heroes.

The 400 pages flew by much too quickly and I will miss these girls but look forward to what Noelle Salazar has in store for us next.