Another delightful romance by Jenny Colgan. As others have described, it's a great adventure story, with very subtle romance. A romance that's not a romance if you will. Loved the characters. A wonderful story! ( )

Morag MacIntyre is a pilot, working for her grandfather's company. She flies to the northern parts of the UK which is desolate. The small prop plane brings mail and supplies to the north. However, Morag is nervous about piloting after an incident, but her grandfather has confidence in her ability. Morag is trying to decide whether to move to Dubai with her boyfriend, but is concerned about the family business. On a flight, when the pilot becomes ill, Morag is forced to crash land the plane on remote Inchborn Island. She meets Gregor, an ornithologist from Glasgow, who is living there along with a goat, a chicken, and a hawk, plus a few other animals.
His quirkiness grows on Morag, but when she is rescued and returned to her old life and boyfriend, she has to make some decisions.
This is a quirky romance. ( )

3.5 stars

I received this book for free, this does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review

I had...I had fooled them, I supposed. This made me feel unusually grim.

Coming from generations of pilots, with a brother who's only into art, Morag felt a certain pressure growing up to fly. Luckily, she loves it, the feeling of her, the plane, and open air. Her life's been go go go, as she co-pilots for a big airline away from home but when an accident happens, she's shaken up and begins to question if a promotion and moving even farther from home is what she really wants from life.

And suddenly nothing else mattered: not my fears, not the job, not my future, not Hayden. Not Gramps, not the airline. Not every stupid problem in my life. Nothing but this---me and Dolly---versus the world, versus the elements.

Summer Skies was a standalone pleasant story to read. The history of Morag's family and why she feels the pressure she does and how her love of flying was formed gave readers a character that they could bond with and understand. Coming into the story after Morag's close call while flying and having to pass psych evals and flight simulation tests, added some tension as we see her passing everything she needs to pass but having her first person pov letting us readers know that she is in fact not emotionally ok. Adding in a blooming romance with a man she meets on the job, Hayden, having for the first time a partner, and then a chance at a promotion, Morag's life is moving in the direction she has planned all out. When she gets called back to her home, her grandfather is sick and they need her to fly their family's Cessna that island hops the archipelago, it leads to her finally getting time to sit still and realize maybe what she planned for in life, isn't what she truly wants.

A place to which I belonged utterly; a place where I could breathe.

The charm of the story really shines when Morag goes back home and we get to meet her family and friends, who with some shenanigans and tough love, help Morag start to heal. When another emergency happens in the air, Morag has to break through her fear and fly, which leaves her landing the plane but getting stuck on a tiny island because of a storm. Having meet the ornithologist who is temporarily staying on the island, and thinking him a grump then, her and Gregor have a less than friendly beginning. I loved their back and forth, especially the dry teasing from Gregor about Morag eating all of his bread he baked for his lunch, and because Morag just recently got a nasty shock about Hayden, it's pretty clear where Gregor and Morag's relationship is going to end up. The second half of the book is Morag forced and gradually learning to slow down, breath, and take the time to think about what she really wants from life as she's stuck on the tiny island for a few days. We get a closer look at Gregor and an eventual reveal about a tragedy he experienced in his own life that has lead to his little more taciturn personality.

This had cuteness with goats and chickens showing their personalities, learning to heal from emotional tragedies, stillness, some romance, and taking the time and courage to decide what you really want out of life; a contemporary fiction story to escape into and feel good after reading. ( )

Leave it to Jenny Colgan to create a few characters, an idea of how to bring them together, by making them care about each other, plopping it down somewhere in Scotland and voila - you have several hours of enjoyable reading. She never disappoints and The Summer Skies was no exception.

One of the things that made this book so readable for me was the interesting information about flying little planes and small independent airline companies. I think I knew that the reservation lady could be the problem solver, sometimes baggage handler and the passenger calmer downer, with a few other jobs thrown in but the character who played the part to perfection was hilarious as well. Equally interesting was the description and training required after an incident in the air and the emotional and psychological impact it can have. The “seen from the sky” descriptions of the northern islands of Scotland were artful. Then we get to the prickly ornithologist who of course may not be exactly what he seems and yes there is an education on the island birds as well as a chicken named Barbara.

All good and funny and well told and a large thank you to Jenny Colgan for a really special book. Thanks as well to HarperCollins and NetGalley for a copy. ( )

Morag McGinty is a third-generation pilot of a tiny plane-taxi service called MacIntyre Air that flies around the chain of islands off the north coast of Scotland. Morag loved the feeling of “bursting free the chains of gravity; soaring up through the clouds, bursting through, even on the grayest and dullest of days . . . the blue sky stretching ahead of you, the darker curve beyond all yours….”

She thought she should want more though, so she left for London. Now she was working out of Heathrow Airport, co-piloting big planes, and flying around the world. She lost confidence, however, after a near miss in the air, and had to take a work leave and attend some counseling sessions with Hayden Telford, an HR consultant. Morag told him she was over the incident because she didn’t want to lose her job, but she really wasn’t; she was struggling with anxiety and lack of confidence. Hayden was cute and seemed genuine, however, and Morag started dating him.

Still on leave, she felt an obligation to return to her home in the tiny island town of Carso when the woman who helped take care of her beloved grandfather called. She told Morag Gramps was very sick with the flu, and they needed her to take over his routes for “a week mebbe.”

Morag agreed to come and help but only as a co-pilot. Gramps’ usual co-pilot, Erno, would pilot their plane Dolly, a Cessna Twin Otter, even though Dolly was a plane Morag had been flying since the beginning.

Erno grumpily agreed, but then events conspired to put Morag back in the pilot’s seat. Moreover, during a storm she got marooned on Inchborn Island, home of an ancient abbey, bird-watching station, chickens, a goat, and one ornithologist, Gregor Cameron, whom Morag regarded as a “monstrous weirdo.”

Gregor and the life he lived on his isolated island was in every way the opposite of Morag and her life, but offered Morag lessons she never knew she needed.

Evaluation: Jenny Colgan manages to be consistently satisfying in predictable ways but in such diverse circumstances in each book you hardly notice and certainly don’t object.

Her stories are lovely and charming, and you feel all warm inside after reading them. ( )