Cora works for Aer Lingus the Irish airline at London's Heathrow Airport check in desk. For the purposes of the story, we accept that a security alert has obliged all travellers to return to queuing at check-in desks to be checked visually and assigned seats. Cora, miserable after a failed relationship, starts to pair up travellers who are flying to visit the Game of Thrones sets in Northern Ireland. When you put it that way, it seems quite natural. Next thing, she's assigning Row 27 to single flyers, snooping online for details that might make them compatible. A flight attendant friend strikes up conversations and reports back to her.

The sub-plots include colleagues who are competing in reality shows, a mature Aer Lingus worker determined not to be promoted from her easy job and comfortable stool at check-in, and the gradual decline of Cora's mother who has Alzheimer's. So plenty is going on to keep readers interested, in between the vignettes about the flyers seated in Row 27. Obviously, the dating game doesn't always work.

This is an enjoyable light read, more modern than chick-lit used to be in that some serious issues are addressed other than dating, shopping and the workplace. I found occasional strong language and adult references so it's a book for adults or mature teen readers.

Eithne Shortall is an arts journalist for the Sunday Times newspaper, and she is based in Dublin. She has lived in London, which doubtless provided her with many of the locations in the story, and as she has also lived in France and America we can take it she's done a lot of flying. LOVE IN ROW 27 is her first novel.

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