Wartime intrigue spans the lives of three women—past and present—in this emotional novel from the acclaimed author of The Last Year of the War. February, 1946. World War Two is over, but the recovery from the most intimate of its horrors has only just begun for Annaliese Lange, a German ballerina desperate to escape her past, and Simone Deveraux, the wronged daughter of a French Résistance spy.
Now the two women are joining hundreds of other European war brides aboard the renowned RMS Queen Mary to cross the Atlantic and be reunited with their American husbands. Their new lives in the United States brightly beckon until their tightly-held secrets are laid bare in their shared stateroom. When the voyage ends at New York Harbor, only one of them will disembark...
Present day. Facing a crossroads in her own life, Brette Caslake visits the famously haunted Queen Mary at the request of an old friend. What she finds will set her on a course to solve a seventy-year-old tragedy that will draw her into the heartaches and triumphs of the courageous war brides—and will ultimately lead her to reconsider what she has to sacrifice to achieve her own deepest longings.
I enjoyed this, but was disappointed in that I don’t think it holds up to Meissner’s last book, [b:Secrets of a Charmed Life|22544024|Secrets of a Charmed Life|Susan Meissner|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1403809486s/22544024.jpg|41824847]. The mystery was really interesting, but 1) there’s an element of the supernatural that I just couldn’t buy into, and 2) the multiple perspectives with Annaliese, Simone, and Brette ended up making me feel distanced. I don’t think Meissner did a great job of developing a distinct voice for each character — to me, they all felt a little two-dimensional and it was hard to really get into their narratives for that reason. I’m not sure I’d recommend this, unless you’re an avid reader of historical fiction or you really really liked Meissner’s last book.
