Books like Flight #116 Is Down!

The students have been reading this for years. I've long recognized it as a book to pull students into reading. But I'd never taken it off the shelf until yesterday.It is good! At first I was confused. The author begins by taking the readers into the thoughts and motivations of a lot of characters. I had a hard time keeping them separate. Then the plane crashed (<--not a spoiler) and I discovered I was already invested in the characters; I cared what happened: if they lived or died or what.For a while, I thought this was a girls' book. Then I thought it was a boys' book. Now I think it's just a good book.