Luck of the Titanic by Stacey Lee tells the story of Valora and Jamie Luck. They are British-Chinese twin acrobats travelling on the Titanic. Longing to be reunited with her brother, Valora smuggles herself onto the Titanic, where Jamie is with fellow Chinese laborers in the third class. Valora’s quick thinking lands her in the first class accommodations. She plans to convince Jamie to rejoin her in the acrobatic life, as she has learned that a part-owner of the Ringling Brothers Circus is also on board and could be their ticket into America. Jamie resists Valora’s idea because he has different plans for his life. Soon, that is the least of their problems as the Titanic is sinking and the twins and their friends must try to survive.

I really enjoyed this book. Stacey Lee has written a heart-wrenching and moving book of family, love, and survival.

I really struggled with this book. I usually love books about the Titanic, and while I applaud Lee for her clearly excellent research (I swear she must have had a diagram of the Titanic at her desk while she was writing), the story really dragged for me. I found it hard to be invested in the family drama when I knew that the inevitable climax would not be around whether or not the characters were accepted into the circus, but the sinking of the ship and all of the tragedy that came with it.

I was so excited when I heard about the book being a retelling of the Titanic. The story of the Titanic has always been something my family and I have been interested in, so I’m always looking for a story about it. This story was important because it brings attention to the stories of the Chinese passengers on the ship and what they went through. Although this story is fiction it still brings awareness to the topic that is much needed. I definitely learned a lot from this story. Unfortunately, I was a little bored until the sinking of the Titanic occurred. I wasn’t really interested in the love story, or the story about being acrobats. The ending definitely saved this book for me, especially the author’s note at the end. Of course I couldn’t help but think of the movie when reading this, but instead of being focused on a couple this story is focused on a set of twins, which I really liked. I also cried at the end, and if a book can bring emotion like that then I recommend it!

Highlights:
- The adventurous vibes throughout the book -- Valora being an acrobat, sneaking on board the ship, being in various kinds of disguise and having ambitious plans for the future
- The touching sibling relationship between Valora and Jamie, the heartaches that push them together and apart, and the found-family feels of the Chinese passengers on the Titanic
- There's a nice contrast between the extravagance in first class, where Valora is in disguise, vs third class amongst the other Chinese passengers
- Appreciated the personal exploration of the impact of the Chinese Exclusion Act in the US which prevents Valora or the other Chinese passengers from easily entering

(see my Goodreads review for thoughts on the ending)

An historical fiction novel focalised through Titanic’s Chinese passengers? Yes please! Luck of the Titanic was such a refreshing take on the story we know so well because it was told through the eyes of a passenger who did not belong to the onboard white majority. There were eight Chinese passengers on Titanic’s maiden voyage, and even though six survived the sinking, their stories have been overlooked in Titanic lore for far too long. There was meant to be a scene in James Cameron’s 1997 film that depicted a Chinese passenger being pulled from the water but it was deleted from the final project, thus not allowing this small group of passengers a place on the major platform the film garnered for Titanic’s memory. The scene is available on YouTube if you’re interested, and if you want to learn more about Titanic’s Chinese passengers I’d highly recommend looking into ‘The Six’ documentary; an upcoming film which I simply cannot wait to finally see!

The novel follows Valora Luck, your archetypal strong-willed seventeen-year-old YA protagonist, as she stows away on Titanic intending to convince her twin brother Jamie - who works as a fireman on the ship - to pursue careers in the circus together. Having grown up practising acrobatics with Jamie, she is certain that impressing an influential circus owner will be able to get them past the Chinese Exclusion Act into America to start their new life. I’d heard of the Chinese Exclusion Act before reading this novel but I knew next to nothing about it so I did a little research of my own to clarify my understanding. In short, the horrid act was introduced in 1882 to curb the influx of Chinese immigrants to the United States and by 1902 Chinese immigration to the US was made permanently illegal. Thus for Valora, her fate resides in the approval of the circus owner else she risks being turned back to her dismal life in England. Indeed, her simply being of Chinese descent aboard Titanic is enough to garner dislike and suspicion from the other characters during the novel.

I first want to mention how freaking gorgeous the cover of this novel is!! I’m a sucker for a pretty book cover, and this one contains some neat little details which I can’t wait to see when the book is physically printed. I especially love the silhouettes of the smokestacks on the right-hand side, because it is such a subtle allusion yet so effective. I don’t doubt that you would know immediately from looking at those shapes that it is meant to be Titanic.

I loved the band of characters around Valora, both the Chinese passengers she encounters in steerage as well as the acquaintances she makes during her ruse in First Class. As with many Titanic fiction novels, the author has utilised actual passengers and crew for Valora to interact with including Captain Smith, J. Bruce Ismay, and the Duff Gordons to name a few. Without going into too much detail (no spoilers here, I promise!) I did detect a hint of villainisation of the Duff Gordons during the sinking sequence. This could potentially be a play on the controversial rumour that Sir Cosmo paid each member of Lifeboat 1 £5 to not return and pick up survivors. Nevertheless, I think Stacey Lee did a fair job of portraying the historical figures without taking too much creative liberty on their characters. I’m also going to mention here, more out of my own obstinacy than anything else, that Second Class was once again omitted in a Titanic fiction novel… *sigh*

There are numerous instances in the novel which play on ideas of superstition and foreboding, giving the sense of modern hindsight into the looming disaster. This is a popular literary technique in Titanic fiction because it heightens the narrative tension and motivates us to continue reading to reach the ‘nitty-gritty’ of the sinking sequence, but one must be careful to remember that Titanic’s maiden voyage was, for all intents and purposes, an ordinary Atlantic crossing. Regardless of the folklore surrounding passengers’ premonitions of danger, there was simply nothing to signal that the voyage would bring about anything but a conclusion in New York.

One of my favourite parts of this novel was how subtly the iceberg collision played out, in that it was barely described. Unless you were deliberately paying attention for the moment of impact, you might have passed off the single-sentence mention as mere scene-setting which I for one thought was immensely clever. The characters do not become aware of the incident until they are told by a steward to go to the Boat Deck. This was effective in that it mirrors a common story told by survivors, particularly those from First Class, that they either didn’t feel the collision or felt such a light shudder that they shrugged it off. It was a neat little detail that I really liked.

Now I shan’t spoil the ending for you, but I will say that I’m conflicted about how abruptly the novel closed. It concluded as soon as the ship sank; no lifeboats, no Carpathia, no New York. I personally would have liked to have seen more of a resolution for the main characters because it felt a bit like their arcs were only just getting started. Then again, in a rather confronting way I think this alludes to the fate of Titanic’s victims, all of whom didn’t get to see those things either.

Overall, Luck of the Titanic is a fresh and engaging Titanic novel fiction that gives an insightful and respectful voice to a small group of her passengers who have been lost to time.

thank you to penguinteen and netgallery for the arc!

this was actually one of my most anticipated releases of this year and i was SO excited to get an arc.

overall, it was a gorgeous read and i was surprised to find that it was actually pretty funny! though i felt like it was a little longer than it needed to be, and dragged on a lot in the middle. there were too many side characters to keep track off, and a lot of side plots as well. the ending hit me like a ton of bricks, by far the best part. i would have liked a longer epilogue to tie up some more of the loose ends (of which i felt there were quite a few of), to perhaps explain a little more into the lives of the survivors and how exactly they got to the places they were at. i look forward to reading more of this author’s work.