Oh, boy. I am not sure where to begin with this one.

I can sum up my thoughts rather quickly - reading this book is a big waste of your time!

The writing overall is OK and there were a couple of scenes that were written well (the sinking of the ship itself) - so well written and put together that I think Lehman had a lot of help, because the rest of the book has plot holes the size of Titanic. But let's not forget Lehman's wonderful writing throughout the book, such as: “She knew that he knew she knew he knew better.” What???

When one calls a book "a novel of the titanic" you'd expect much more of the book to actually be on board the Titanic, wouldn't you? Well, less than a third of the book actually takes place about the ship. There's a lot of detail about the ship, some accurate and a lot of not-so-accurate bits. The actual sinking of the ship felt very rushed, was wildly inaccurate in places, and other than a few moments here and there, just left me feeling disappointed.


Lydia gets married on the ship, for crying out loud, and is pregnant, and her brand new husband John decides he's going to finish writing a poem and then sits down and dies. The scene where he dies was so horribly bad I was laughing so hard I had tears coming out of my eyes.

Lydia of course survives the ship sinking, watches Craven (the family business's head honcho and the book's big evil bad guy) acting like an idiot/coward/fool, and then days later, marries him with hardly any thought. Then lies to him for the next 18 years, never admitting the child isn't him. And Craven is such a man about town, but is clueless that Lydia isn't a virgin.

Lydia survives the ship going down (of course) and though is traumatized a bit from it, none of the characters who survived really suffer any post-traumatic affects. Really? After just a couple of weeks everyone is just fine?

About 35% into the book, all of a sudden a new character is introduced - who ends up being Lydia's friend Caroline's love interest. But he doesn't get introduced until after the ship goes down... Really, Lehman could have introduced him into the book much sooner in the book and it wouldn't have been so disruptive to the story.

And what's with everyone having telephones ? Really? How many people had telephones in 1912? very very few, that's how many, yet everyone seemed to have them, even a lawyer in the middle of Halifax.


And now, 40% or so into the book, all of a sudden the story is all about Caroline and the book gets very, very preachy. There were some minor Christian elements in the beginning (Lydia tells John she's pregnant and he tells her to read her bible), but they weren't a significant part of the story. Now the book changes entirely, again, and is a Christian storyline and the writing is completely different, with metaphors that don't make any sense.

The plot begins rushing - years past on a single page - which I was honestly grateful for because the book was so horribly bad, I just wanted it to be over - and of course, the moment comes when John's poem magically resurfaces and Lydia tells her husband the truth about their child and then Craven dies and the grandkid's all get married and they all live happily ever after.

i could spend weeks writing about how bad this book sucked.