A Million to One

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I could vividly picture the glamour and wonder of the ship, but believe that was based on James Cameron's interpretation a couple of decades ago, not Jaigirdar's writing. Okay, to say Adiba uses dramatic irony effectively would be underselling dramatic irony as these characters and all else onboard are sailing (sorry) towards unknowable, and sadly avoidable, historical relevance.

Now, this doesn’t mean they are successful necessarily, the Titanic is a huge ship with so many moving pieces, not to mention security, there’s just no way to account for all of them, and the current owners of the Rubaiyat aren’t going to just let them have it.

You have to center that experience according to the setting and it's no surprise that the execution was lackluster given that Jaigirdar didn't even spend three pages giving us any setting description to work with. Before I get to all my gripes, I will say that I loved, as with all of Jaigirdar’s novels, the amount of diversity. It’s all aided by the chapter subheadings being a countdown to the ship’s sinking; it’s a literal ticking time bomb. She ran away from boarding school because she wanted freedom and whatever, but then turned around and started stealing from the very social class she originally hailed from. The majority of the novel ended up being a bunch of meaningless dithering about on the Titanic, which was intended to…build up the suspense, I supposed, but it felt like far too many pages of The Gang running around the ship, chatting with a boy or two, trying to throw the guards off their trail, and making no progress whatsoever.

This book has sat on my bedside table for what I thought was months – but upon further investigation was actually years! We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others.A catastrophe like the Titanic is fertile ground for moments of unrequited heroics, acts of sublime courage and grace as many on board were knowingly facing their final moments on this earth.

These four young women are so incredibly well-drawn that you’re rooting for them to succeed in crime.

Earlier it’s the shifting dynamics between the girls that build tension as brief chapters in alternating perspectives reveal conflicting interests, hidden motives, and mutual pining.