The sinking of the RMS Lusitania might not sound like a great setting for a sweeping historical adventure and romance, but I cut my young romance-loving teeth on the Titanic movie, and I am here to challenge your shipwreck tragedy notions.
As historical fiction The Glass Ocean works beautifully. It had espionage, intrigue, a love-triangle and a truly horrifying talent show. That said, my romance-reader heart wasn’t entirely satisfied with how the romance played out, and craved a little more substance in those particular subplots.
The Glass Ocean jumps between 2013 and 1915 and follows the lives of three women: Sarah Blake, Caroline Hochstetter, and Tess Fairweather. We open in 2013 with Sarah; she’s a writer whose most recent book has done well, but she needs new inspiration for her next work. Her mother is suffering from dementia and her nursing home bills are piling up, making it urgent that Sarah find a topic that will earn her a great advance. Sarah vaguely remembers her mother telling her about an ancestor who worked aboard the Lusitania and her research takes her to England and the estate of disgraced MP John Langford.
Langford’s family is tied into the Lusitania too. His ancestor, Robert, may or may not have been a spy. Robert’s father, who worked in British Naval Intelligence, committed suicide when he learned that Robert was aboard and that the ship sank. It’s a subject John has always wondered about, and Sarah convinces him to let her at his family records to determine if Robert was involved with either British or German Intelligence.
Sarah and John’s story was really the section of the novel that worked best for me. Give me a plucky American writer, a lovable curmudgeonly Brit, and a research project, and I’m in heaven. Sarah and John have this wonderfully snarky relationship and the will-they-won’t-they tension between the two had me yelling “Just kiss already!” at my book. The very end to their story fits the romance bill although it had me rolling my eyes at John for a moment.
When we aren’t with John and Sarah, the story takes us back to 1915 aboard the ill-fated Lusitania. Caroline Hochstetter is sailing to England with her industrialist husband, Gilbert. Gilbert is insistent that they bring along a rare piece of music he bought for Caroline as a wedding gift to sell to a prospective buyer in London. Caroline isn’t happy to be parted with the piece, and she’s troubled by Gilbert’s strange behavior. She suspects her husband has business dealings that involve him in the war, but she doesn’t know for which side.
Also aboard is Robert Langford, a friend of the Hochstetters’ who is sailing home to make peace with his long-estranged father. Robert has been hopelessly in love with Caroline since he first met her when she made her debut, and with Gilbert acting strange and frosty, Caroline is wondering if she married the wrong man. Also she has to perform in a truly horrid talent show–a brief moment of humor in a book that constantly has an air of suspense hanging over it.
But Robert is also intrigued by second-class passenger and artist Tess Fairweather. What he doesn’t know is that Tess and her sister are con artists and forgers, and that Tess’s job aboard the ship is to find that rare piece of music Caroline is traveling with and copy it for a German buyer.
The Tess/ Robert/ Caroline storyline was less satisfying for me, partially because I’ve never been a fan of love triangles. I also felt there was too much emotion and tension to be resolved in the short time span we get at sea. Robert has harbored feelings for Caroline for a very long time, and he’s finally presented with the chance to do something about them. Tess is falling for Robert, but at the same time is terrified at the intrigue her sister has involved her in. It’s a lot to believe that either of these pairings can find resolution with all of that hanging over them. Add to that the fact that we only know definitively that Robert survived (at least to till the end of the novel), and I wasn’t entirely engaged.
In terms of mystery, The Glass Ocean really hits its stride. Obviously we know the ship is torpedoed by a German U-boat, but the involvement of Robert, Gilbert, and Tess’s sister kept me in suspense until the end. Secrets unravel deliciously, both in the 1915 narrative and in Sarah and John’s research-as-foreplay scenes. The authors balanced the two time periods quite well, ensuring that each section got enough play and didn’t make the pacing stutter.
By the time I had answers to all my questions, I was satisfied with where both narratives took me, even if I struggled with the Caroline-Robert-Tess relationship.
Historical fiction is my jam. Historical fiction with a side of trans-Atlantic research flirting even more so. The Glass Ocean didn’t work perfectly for me, but it made me eager for another Williams/Willig/ White novel.
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I’ve been fascinated by the Lusitania since reading Agatha Christie’s “The Secret Adversary” in junior high (lo, these many decades ago). This one’s definitely going on my TBR list!
I’m torn about reading this. I love the idea of a glam mystery/romance aboard the Lusitania. It’s the modern bit where the plucky American raids the family records of the British guy—I gave up on Willig’s pink carnation series because I was so annoyed with the present day cutesy banter of the central couple. I was there for the historical romance and the clothes, not for the contemporary bits.
I scurried to my library catalog to see if they’d got the book, and was bemused to learn they have two different, unrelated novels called The Glass Ocean. The other one, from 2013, has a blurb that goes: “The newly orphaned daughter of a glassblower recounts the circumstances of her abandonment and her parents’ strained marriage in Victorian England, marked by her father’s efforts to render previously unseen sea creatures in glass.” In other words, may as well check ’em both out.
The business about the “rare piece of music” put me in mind of Harry Widener (namesake of Harvard’s library) returning from England to America with a newly acquired copy of Bacon’s Essays (pub. 1598), telling the bookseller “I think I’ll take that little Bacon with me in my pocket, and if I am shipwrecked it will go with me.” The ship he chose to take was the Titanic.
The book left much for me to ponder and question along the way before finally comprehending how
A real sleuthing adventure.
Is anyone else having trouble opening the spoiler?
@Michael I ~ I can’t read it either.
This is so weird – working on it.