November 2, 2021 - Staff Reviews

 The Aviator's Wife

By: Melanie Benjamin

BCPL Book Club October 2021 Read

Images courtesy of WV Reads.

https://wvreads.overdrive.com/media/899024

I would give it a solid 4 stars.

Not a book that I would have picked up myself and completely LOVED to warrant it 5 stars. But 4 stars as I really thought the author did a great job in weaving fact from author liberties to tell us a story about the Lindburgh's. (She even had a blurb at the end talking about how he approached this). It was fascinating to learn about a female who was so instrumental in our airline aviators pathways that we know today. We knew of Charles, but he overshadowed his wife. But to learn a bit more intimately about them was interesting. It was definitely a page turner as you wanted to know how the author progressed their story from what she knew due to facts, and then the liberties she took that could have mirrored their choices and decisions during that time period. It did keep me not actually liking Charles Lindburgh as an individual. (Which really I should know better. Most of the people in our history have some sort of shady pasts, but we never know the character of the person fully unless you were a history buff and enjoyed going a bit more in-depth). And after the read I researched a bit more about him to ascertain fact/fiction, and the fact that he did have the side family just made me judge his character harshly. I would recommend it but would not necessarily champion the book. It drew out strong emotions in me, which I think helped me to react to the book and want to voraciously read it when I could.

As a side note, I listened to it via an audiobook available from Libby our eBook vendor, and enjoyed the narrators tons of voice and her inflictions. I would most definitely listen to a book that this actor reads again as I felt like she helped transport me even more into the setting that the author was placing for us.

(AS)