The Wild Air by Rebecca Mascull

I’m so pleased to be hosting the blog tour for Rebecca Mascull today! I really enjoyed reading The Wild Air – it’s got a great heroine and a story that sheds light on a little known part of history. Here’s my review:

We need more adventure books these days. Especially us women. I don’t mean thrillers involving dark secrets and titles with ‘girl’ in them, I don’t mean crime books, or secret missions and explosions. I mean proper adventures, heroines doing brave, bold, daring things, going further and better than others.

Thank goodness, then, for Rebecca Mascull’s The Wild Air. It’s a proper adventure telling the story of Della Dobbs. Della is an unlikely heroine, shy and diffident at the beginning and living in the shadow of her family in Cleethorpes. Della’s father doesn’t like her very much, transferring his affection on her older brother Puck and her younger sister Cleo. When Della’s widowed Aunt Betty moves to Cleethorpes, Della finds someone who recognises her talents in engineering and love of flight. Together they work to make Della an aviatrix – one of the pioneering women flyers who made the path so much easier for later stars such as Amelia Earhart and Amy Johnson.

The book is in two distinct parts – the first is Della’s set up, flight training, and subsequent success at air shows around the country and across Europe. But then comes the First World War and Della is grounded and stuck at home instead of being allowed to help the war effort with her talent. There’s a love story too, as Della’s friend and penpal Dudley makes his feelings known. (Incidentally, we should have more pen pals in the world. Especially ones that share geeky enthusiasms.)

As the war develops, Della has to go on an adventure, even more of one than learning to fly in a man’s world. I won’t go into any more detail because of spoilers but this is what I mean by an adventure story – daring deeds, peril and bravery. Suspend your disbelief and just immerse yourself in the excitement.

The Wild Air is well researched, featuring cameos from several real aviatrixes, and there is some technical detail about the planes but fortunately (for us non-petrolhead readers) this is just the perfect amount. The story seems at once a long time ago yet startlingly relevant as we still hear about discrimination in the aviation industry. I’ve not read either of Mascull’s previous books but this has thought, passion and attention to characters in it that means I will be seeking her backlist out.

Have I mentioned the cover? When I saw the book first mentioned on social media, I loved the beautiful cover and wanted to read it without knowing what it was about. Isn’t it lovely?

The Wild Air by Rebecca Mascull is published on 4 May 2017 by Hodder Books and is priced at £18.99 in hardback.

I received a free review copy via Netgalley – thank you.