The Glass Ocean

- Beatriz Williams & Lauren Willig & Karen White

Goodreads Book Blurb:

May 2013
Her finances are in dire straits and bestselling author Sarah Blake is struggling to find a big idea for her next book. Desperate, she breaks the one promise she made to her Alzheimer’s-stricken mother and opens an old chest that belonged to her great-grandfather, who died when the RMS Lusitania was sunk by a German U-Boat in 1915. What she discovers there could change history. Sarah embarks on an ambitious journey to England to enlist the help of John Langford, a recently disgraced Member of Parliament whose family archives might contain the only key to the long-ago catastrophe. . . .

April 1915
Southern belle Caroline Telfair Hochstetter’s marriage is in crisis. Her formerly attentive industrialist husband, Gilbert, has become remote, pre-occupied with business . . . and something else that she can’t quite put a finger on. She’s hoping a trip to London in Lusitania’s lavish first-class accommodations will help them reconnect—but she can’t ignore the spark she feels for her old friend, Robert Langford, who turns out to be on the same voyage. Feeling restless and longing for a different existence, Caroline is determined to stop being a bystander, and take charge of her own life. . . .

Tessa Fairweather is traveling second-class on the Lusitania, returning home to Devon. Or at least, that’s her story. Tessa has never left the United States and her English accent is a hasty fake. She’s really Tennessee Schaff, the daughter of a roving con man, and she can steal and forge just about anything. But she’s had enough. Her partner has promised that if they can pull off this one last heist aboard the Lusitania, they’ll finally leave the game behind. Tess desperately wants to believe that, but Tess has the uneasy feeling there’s something about this job that isn’t as it seems. . . .

As the Lusitania steams toward its fate, three women work against time to unravel a plot that will change the course of their own lives . . . and history itself.

Genres:

My Review:

meh, nothing special:
2.5/5

This was an easy, if repetitive, read. Most of the characters had the same conversations multiple times with no new developments. The Glass Ocean is one of those books that seems okay while you’re reading but lacks the complexity to linger afterwards.

The espionage angle wasn’t developed enough to feel it was truly part of the narrative. It was more a device to get these characters together but abandoned once the love stories took priority. And then the romantic relationships were rounded up too quickly in both the past and the present timelines.

Seriously – one misunderstanding, it blows everything up with no proof, logic, or conversation, they don’t speak for two years, and then everything is just… fine? Bullshit. Two weeks of light flirting does not create the foundation to survive two years of non-contact. And the past timeline is even worse. Dude leaves one woman’s bed, is rejected for a dying husband and settles for the girl who happens to be there. But this is some incredible love story?
The focus was too split; if the history was more interesting, the romantic relationships were actually developed, or the espionage angle was more central – the story would have felt more focused. But instead, the plot was convoluted and shallow. So, while the story was easy to read, there wasn’t enough there to make it worthwhile.

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