Written Among The Stars

This book fascinated me when I read the synopsis and saw the cover. It looked like a whole new take on writing about the Titanic since it was mostly about this girl Tess Collins...not about the Titanic. She is a maid in Cherbourg and decides that she is going to get aboard the Titanic and start a new life in America as a seamstress. After running into the famous fashion designer Lady Lucile Duff Gordan, she is hired to be her maid aboard the ship. Tess accepts and looks forward to making her crossing on the ill-fated ship and starting a new future for herself.Unfortunately this book was not what I expected. It was supposed to be about Tess, and it was not. Tess was in the book very sparingly, most of the book was spent on the Titanic hearings and not on Tess or her story at all. And since Tess was the only character who I cared about and emotionally connected with, I found that I cared about the story less and less. I have read dozens upon dozens of books about the Titanic sinking and the hearings taht took place afterward. I wanted a book that was set against the same backdrop but that the ship not the focus, and I didn't get it. I kept finding myself nodding off waiting for the story to come back around to Tess. As a result her storyline was unfinished, unpolished, and rushed into a conclusion that just made it weird. The love triangle in this book, and I call it that very lightly, felt forced and not natural at all. I didn't particularly care for either of the men and couldn't see why Tess was mooning over them so much since she'd talked to each of them twice each for maybe 5 minutes total. I also kept wondering what happened to the social etiquette of the time? Tess was consistently spending time with these two men, alone and in private places. Where was the chaperone? Where was her concern for her image or her virtue? That was weird and I didn't like it. It was also rather creepy as one of the men described himself as too old for her (I believe he was in his forties and going grey) while Tess was most likely 18 or 19....yuck!Speaking of that, was Tess just completely oblivious to the distinctions in class in that time? Or perhaps the author was? She wasn't trying to rebel against her class or move into the higher class...she was just oblivious to all of it. That bothered me since she was raised in the lower class since birth, was in service, and yet acts like she has no idea what that means or how she is supposed to behave. It is not surprising to me at all that this author's main trade is as a reporter. The book read exactly like an article in a paper. It was very factually accurate, put together in a precise sequence of events, and it reported on the required details but there was no emotion to it at all. I couldn't care about any of the characters apart from Tess. I didn't even get emotional when the Titanic sank, which is a first for any of the movies or books I've seen and read.Speaking of the Titanic sinking, that part was the most flawed section of the whole book. It was tremendously rushed. I mean, that event is a goldmine for an author. The denial, the fear, the panic, the acceptance of the inevitable, the desperation to avoid death. We got none of that. It was literally only 5 pages long. We went from "don't worry, I'm sure nothing is wrong" to "OMG, the shipp is tipping and people are panicking" in about 3 paragraphs. I realize the ship sunk in just an hour or two, but we really couldn't get more than that? There was no mention of the fact that many lifeboats were sent off barely filled because nobody thought anything serious was happening. It went straight from nothing is wrong to panicking for your life way too quickly to be realistic. I absolutely hated that part of the book.The ending of this book was also a bit weird for me. It felt unfinished. The event at the end seemed out of place and since it wasn't really incorporated into the plot beforehand I didn't understand what the point of having it in there at all was. Instead, I would have rather left off where it was a few pages earlier when Tess visits the woodworking shop, that would have been a poignant ending.Overall, however, I liked the book alright. The story with Tess was very good and I loved those parts immensely. If we could have taken out all the in between bits this would be a 5 star.