Well, well this is thrilling mash up of Woman in cabin 10 meets Titanic with Agatha Christie vibes ( it reminds me of Death on the Nile without its brilliant Belgian detective )

A glamorous historical fiction consists of class differences, raising of Nazism, hard competition at Broadway world, sex traffic of underaged girls, betrayal, cheating, racism, mansplaining mixed with gripping whodunnit mystery takes place in RMS Queen Mary. And of course beautiful forbidden romance was also thrown into equation.

Lena Aldridge, at the age of twenty six, mixed race girl who is a quiet fighter, slowly losing of her hope to have a brighter future as she barely lands on theater roles, singing at a night club her best friend’s scumbag husband is owned, having a relationship with a married man, living in a shoe box room in Soho.

The book opens she is on stage, singing when her boss/ her best friend’s husband Tommy Scarsdale dies in front her eyes. He’s poisoned and she might be involved with the murder.

Luckily Charlie Bacon: ex police officer, look alike Clark Gable with strange last name appears out of nowhere at the right name in the right place, making her an offer she cannot reject. He offers her to be a star in a Broadway play and she has to board on a ship to travel to big Apple in a few days later.

Lena has nothing to lose and this offer can save her from her biggest predicament ( a person of interest of a brutal crime)

During her journey, she finds herself at the same table within Abernathy family: ultra rich, sophisticated and also very dysfunctional family: each of them keeps terrible secrets and one of them is a killer who plans to put blame on Lena for his/ her own misdemeanors. But who and why?

I kept guessing the identity of culprit: it was not so foreseeable! Mostly I liked the characterization! Lena who is resilient, determined, doing her best to survive in jungle as a mixed race, penniless, hungry, ambitious girl with pure talent.

It’s such an exciting, riveting historical fiction meets thriller- whodunnit mystery that fully enjoyed and devoured in one sit that I highly recommend!

Special thanks to NetGalley and Berkley Publishing Group for sharing this digital reviewer copy with me in exchange my honest thoughts.

A singer becomes embroiled in a series of suspicious deaths in this enjoyable Jazz Age mystery set aboard an ocean liner.

After her boss dies in front of her while she’s singing in a seedy Soho nightclub, Lena Aldridge accepts a golden opportunity to travel to New York to star in a Broadway show. But once aboard the Queen Mary, the deaths continue, and Lena realizes she is being set up by someone with an unknown connection to her.

The mystery is in the “golden age” style, with the ship providing a confining milieu. There were times I felt Lena wasn’t asking the right questions, but overall her reactions were realistic under the circumstances.

Lena is an appealing character. She is mixed race and was raised by her Black father but now passes for white. In the course of the story, she reflects and reconsiders her situation, in part because of a relationship with a Black pianist on the ship. I liked the way the romance was handled. Likewise, the resolution to the mystery was unusual but ultimately fitting.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the review copy.