Luck of the Titanic by Stacey Lee

The biracial heroine of Luck of the Titanic sees dreams fulfilled just before disaster strikes, in this romantic thriller.

Luck of the Titanic by Stacey Lee. Penguin/Putnam, 2021, 380 pages.

Reading Level: Teen, ages 12-15

Recommended for: ages 13-16

Valora Luck hasn’t seen her brother Jamie for two years, since he left their London home to follow a seagoing career. Now it’s time to reunite. Their Chinese father is dead—from drink, but equally from despair. Since emigrating to England none of his dreams have panned out, or not since his marriage to the twins’ English mother, also deceased. But Valora is determined that one dream will succeed: she and her brother will become the acrobatic team their father trained them to be. All she has to do is track him down and recruit him to her plan. The first part is easy: Valora’s employer, the late Mrs. Amberly Sloan, had before her unfortunate demise booked passage on the very same ship where Jamie is working as a stoker. It’s the new White Star liner Titanic.

Val almost doesn’t get on: hasn’t she heard of the Chinese Exclusion Act, whereby America will no longer accept immigrants from China? Actually no, but she has more than one trick up her sleeve. In short order she’s ensconced in a deluxe suite traveling under Mrs. Sloan’s name. With the help of Charlotte Fine, an aspiring young fashion designer, Val is also swanning about the decks in Charlotte’s stunning Asian-inspired frocks. But there’s work to be done, namely establishing contact with Jamie, talking him into her showbiz scheme, gaining an audience with a circus entrepreneur, making friends and enemies among the eight Chinese crewmen, and above all avoiding detection. Then comes the fatal night of April 14.

Titanic fans will revel in an abundance of detail and lore, romance fans will find plenty of intrigue, historical fiction fans will have little to complain of. Stacey Lee is the rare historical-fiction writer who finds the past interesting for its own sake, not for staging fantasies or preaching contemporary values. That said, I didn’t enjoy this novel as much as Under a Painted Sky and The Downstairs Girl. The plot seemed too crowded for secondary characters to develop fully, and there seemed to be a little more cursing (of the milder variety). But Lee’s agile writing style is as much on display as ever, and so is the wry wit of the first-person protagonist. She also doesn’t slight religion, though Val syncretizes her mother’s Christianity and her father’s Taoism. Both play a part in the surprising conclusion.

Consideration:

• Charlotte Fine, the aspiring designer, indicates she is “not interested in men,” implying she is romantically interested in women. This is more of a passing reference that doesn’t figure in the plot.  
• As indicated above, some cursing, mostly the d– word. Valora substitutes “for cod’s sake” for misusing God’s name, but a few other characters don’t.

Overall Rating: 3.75 (out of 5)

• Worldview/moral value: 3.5
• Artistic/literary value: 4

Read more about our ratings here.

Also at Redeemed Reader:

• Reviews: Prairie Lotus, by Linda Sue Park, features another half-Asian female protagonist. Also see our review of Yellow Butterfly, by Thannha Lai.
• Resource: Those Love Stories We Loved: The Redeemed Reader team compare their favorite romances from the childhood with their current preferences.
• Reflection: Anti-Asian racism plays a part in all of Stacey Lee’s historical novels. What do we do about the unconscious racism in beloved children’s classics? See Janie’s thoughts.

We are participants in the Amazon LLC affiliate program; purchases you make through affiliate links like the one below may earn us a commission. Read more here.