Once Upon a Twilight!: Book Review: Remove Before Flight by Colleen Young

Remove Before Flight
The Taking Flight Trilogy #2
Author: Colleen Young
Reading Level: New Adult
Genres: Coming of Age | Romance
Release Date: March 25th 2016
Review Source: Author

In the first book of the Taking Flight trilogy, we were along for the ride as college freshman Cory Sorrano started her first year of flight school and found herself in the center of a steamy love triangle between her classmate Samson Wallis and flight instructor Cole Turner. Book One concluded with Cory making a surprising choice – but will she stick to it?

Book Two follows Cory as she begins her summer internship with a charter airline in Washington, D.C. As much as she’s enjoying her work, how will she deal with the office bully or her flirtatious mentor? Meanwhile, Samson is continuing his summer studies at Southern Gulf University. Will he be able to stay focused even as an old love interest begs for his help? And lastly we have Cole, who has graduated and is starting his journey as a professional pilot. He’s struggling to let go of his feelings for Cory and he may have found just the cure for his heartbreak in the form of a sexy pilot named Ana.

This one’s a fast-paced read and will conclude with the long awaited and mysterious “Event.” Buckle your seat belts and get ready for the ride!

Remove Before Flight is book two in the Taking Flight Series by Colleen Young. I must tell you first that I absolutely love this series. It isn’t a super duper deep story, nor a classic to go down in history, but I just absolutely love the realistic nature that this author writes in. So many YA books follow similar formats. There are always tons of unnecessary misunderstandings that lead to pages upon pages of drama that in real life could have been resolved in a matter of minutes. Colleen Young is so awesome in giving us the drama that we need to stay interested and keep the characters and plots relevant and progressive, but also realistic in the sense that when an unnecessary misunderstanding does pop up the characters are not dumbed down. They figure things out pretty quickly and we can move on and move along with the story without the reader getting frustrated at the obliviousness of the characters.

So let’s start out with the plot. Corey, Samson, Cole and the rest of the gang are back from book 1. This time it is summer and rather than the story being taken place all on campus at the college they attend to become pilots, Corey is off to Washington D.C. for a summer internship, Samson is still at school taking summer classes, and Cole has gone to Texas to take his final classes to becoming an official airline pilot. We left off in the last book with Corey and Cole breaking up because Cole was older than her and was graduating and leaving, and Corey and Samson finally admitted their feelings for each other. This book picks up with Corey and Samson figuring out exactly what their relationship is with each other now and the trials of tribulations that occur with being apart for the summer in a long distance relationship.

Now what about Cole you ask? Of course it would be too simple for Cole to be out of the picture and for Corey and Sampson to simply ride off into the sunset. Especially since this is a trilogy and this is only book 2…so I knew things weren’t going to be that easy. So of course since we switch between Corey, Samson & Cole’s POVs throughout the book we learn that Cole is still very much hung up on Corey. He writes her letters telling her that he is in love with her. Cole knows that she is with Samson now but he isn’t going to let her go without a fight. We see Corey and Samson’s relationship through their POVs and it is solid, they are falling very much in love, you 100% think that Cole is irrelevant, but when Corey and Samson have a huge fight and then Cole happens to ask Corey to come and visit her in D.C. during that fighting period weekend, we realize that things are not as black and white for Corey when it comes to Samson and Cole and we thought they were.

I have to say this is the part of the story where I have huge disappointments in Corey. This is not anything to do with the author writing it badly, in fact her bad choices and questionable behavior make the story that much better, but after loving her so much from the first book through to most of this book as a strong, funny, honest and good girl, it was so disappointing to see her morals and values on certain situations. Of course young people make stupid decisions, but I never thought she could do some of the things she did with a pretty much clear conscience. It was so out of character for her and I just really started to not like her for a lot of her actions towards the middle and ending of this book. I won’t say anything more, but you will understand what I mean completely when you read this book.

I HIGHLY recommend this book. I loved the first book but this one was leaps and bounds even better. I will say that this book became a little more “adult” in the sense of the intimate scenes involving Corey and her love life. The first book was pretty PG. Although this book is absolutely no Fifty Shades of Grey, we do see a bit of a push between PG-13 and R rating. So start this book immediately, or the series if you haven’t read book 1 yet! I give it 5 stars because it was really a huge step up from the first book (which I loved too) and I can’t wait for the final installment that should be out in June.