Michelle Blanchard Ardillo

One of my husband’s nicknames for me is “dolphin girl.” I love the water. I love being in the water swimming laps or just relaxing. I love being on the water in a boat, a ship, a ferry, a cruiseliner, anything. And, somewhat contrary to all of that, I also have a slight obsession with the Titanic. I’ve read many books about the horror of the sinking of the unsinkable. Documentaries, movies, podcasts, you name it. So, this cover really shouted out to me. I was so happy when NetGalley gave me an ARC to read.

However, this book is not really about the Titanic. The protagonist Elinor does sail on the Titanic, and as evidenced by the title, she survives the tragic sinking. But this happens quite far into the book.

The first 1/3 to 1/2 of this book is about social class. In spite of the fact that untitled, “new money” from a self-made millionaire known as “the cotton king” saved the Winterton estate of Lord and Lady Storton, it is the fact that their new daughter-in-law is an untitled heiress of new money that they can’t accept her—unless she is willing to change everything about herself, her speech, her manners, her dress, and worse yet, distance herself from her beloved father.

The most crushing part of this book is the subplot of how Elinor’s young son, the future Lord Storton, is to be raised. This is more than Elinor can bear, and the repercussions of this knowledge change the course of her life and the life of her son Teddy, the future titled heir to the great Winterton and its estate.

This book is 384 pages. I think it could have been much shorter and as a result much stronger. The exposition, while interesting to fans of Downton Abbey and stories of the American heiresses, could have been tightened up so that the changes to come in Elinor’s life, which was the more exciting part of the story, comes sooner.

In fact, I highlighted the last sentence of Chapter 43,

I know you’re not who you say you are.

I actually gasped when I read it, and although this story took a long time to take off, I was all in from that point on. If Frances Quinn had been able to match that same drive and pacing from the beginning, it would have been such a better read for me.

I did love the relationships Elinor created for herself and for Teddy, the found family so to speak. She also used every ounce of her father’s genes to make the most of her life and to do the very best she could for Teddy.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for this ARC. Best wishes to Frances Quinn on this book and her future work as an author.