Unfortunately for her, what she mistakes as painstaking orderliness is in reality a controlling, domineering nature. She wants to completely reject her childhood with its crazy instability and unpredictability, so she wants the safe, boring fiancé. Her choice in fiancé comes from an immature desire to have everything that is “anti” her past. What is her subconsciously telling her? For a long time, she turns a deaf ear to it while showing up conscientiously for that unsteady job. Yet, paradoxically, she chooses to work a job with unreliable hours. Ava could’ve chosen a desk job in any big city with better benefits and predictable hours. Waldon does an excellent job of sowing the seeds of this self-discovery when Ava chooses an unstable career, when what she deeply desires is stability. She has Ava lay herself open to self-questioning and doubt. Socrates has said that the unexamined life is not worth living. The Layover is about Ava overcoming the insecurities of her childhood to discover for herself who she is and what she wants. Ava thinks that he has come down in the world from the pinnacle of flying success to serving coffee to disgruntled passengers.

Jack, the former Air Force pilot, has his own parental demons to fight as well as process the reason he had to leave a prestigious piloting job with a hefty paycheck. He is amused with her animosity and deflects her barbs with casual insouciance. She has forever linked Jack with her past humiliation and devastation, and so she is not best pleased to have to work the back of the plane with him. Her final act of subconscious rebellion is going to be her last three-day stint all the way to Belize.Īnd who should she meet on the flight, but Jack Stone - perfect body, perfect flight attendant, and perfect buddy of her past cheating ex. Ava is happy to oblige him in whatever he wants. One of his asks is that she quit her nomadic nine-year career. Ava craves routine, she craves stability, she craves “normalcy.” So when she meets a man who is all of that, she says “yes” to him the minute he proposes. As a result, she has lost friends who like predictability.Īva’s deepest sorrow is the way she grew up at the mercy of laidback parents who weren’t interested in parenting or watching out for a little girl in the midst of plans that were disrupted on a whim. But those times she is home differ from week to week.

Ava is a flight attendant - three days out of seven, she’s on the move. And the minute she is up, she is in motion. Ava Greene always wakes up from deep sleep in disorientation of where she is: hotel or home? Either answer could be true on any given day.

The layover review