Book Review: Float Plan

When a book starts with a suicide note? Well, you know you’re in for one heck of an emotional journey. In Float Plan, Trish Doller gives us every possible range of emotion, from despair and heartbreak to joy and love.

After Ben, Anna’s fiancé, dies by suicide, she spends ten months buried in her grief, until one day an alert goes off on her phone, one that Ben had set long ago. It was supposed to be the day they set off on their grand sailing adventure. Anna makes the snap decision that she is going to honor his plans, so she gets out of bed, gathers what she thinks she will need, and sails away from her life.

Of course, Ben was the one with all of the expert sailing knowledge, so things quickly go awry for Anna and she makes the decision to hire a sailing guide to help her out. Enter Keane, who is grieving a loss of his own. Their story is a beautiful slow burn, their journey filled with stunning locales and interesting supporting characters.

I truly enjoyed following Anna and Keane on both their sailing and emotional journeys. Dollar does a great job of showing that grief doesn’t follow a particular path, and that just because you’ve been through the traditional stages of grief does not mean you won’t find yourself thrown back into them at any moment. I do wish that the idea of therapy hadn’t been so quickly and repeatedly dismissed by Anna, with her loved ones just accepting her dismissal and not pressing the issue. I’d like to see more authors normalize the idea of at least trying therapy.

One last note: I would have loved to see a map included to show the course of Anna’s sailing journey! But I love maps, so maybe that’s just me. 😊

⭐⭐⭐⭐/5