I did not find the story gripping enough to hold my attention and felt that I was wading through the book somewhat. While this is helpful in understanding the times, these could have been more concise and would not have slowed the pace as much.

Lena has always been able to ‘pass’ because she is so light skinned, but later when she sees Will again she trusts him a little more and owns her identity. Lena who is resilient, determined, doing her best to survive in jungle as a mixed race, penniless, hungry, ambitious girl with pure talent.

Once on board the Queen Mary in first class, Charlie manages to secure a place at the dinner table of a very wealthy family.

She has nothing to look forward to until a stranger offers her the chance of a lifetime: a starring role on Broadway and a first-class ticket on the Queen Mary bound for New York. There are three more things which I found extremely annoying: the first one is that the two main mysteries were linked, but the link was once again so dumb and unbelievable it made me roll my eyes; the second one is also due to this fact and it’s that the motive of the murderer was stupid and not well explained at all. Does this mean that she is a woman that does not have a good character or does this mean that she is a woman who dealt with living a double life and took whatever she could to get by? It’s not problematic per se (even if there was a bit of slut shaming in my opinion; I know it was set in the 1930s, but some comments could be avoided), but I believe it’s not worth your time.It doesn’t disappoint and really has the feel of an Agatha Christie novel and not just from the plot either, but the glamorous location, the wealthy passengers and the sumptuous descriptions of their clothes and jewellery. I had felt anonymous in the hubbub, trying to look as though I knew what I was doing, accidentally overtipping the porter who carried my solitary trunk. She also becomes the confidant of everyone associated with the Abernathys purely because she is both of the family (she sits at their table every night, along with Charlie Walker, who urges her to charm them) and not of their family. The ship brushed the waves aside as gracefully as the women of Hampstead danced their breaststroke across Kenwood Ladies' Pond.

Aside from the useless descriptions mentioned above, the dialogues were cringy and 100% unbelievable. The story features Lena Aldridge, a mixed-race singer, dancer, and actor whose theatre career hasn’t lived up to her expectations.

A young man, freshly graduated from boyhood, caught it in midair, and bowed as he handed it back to its blushing owner. It took a little for me to warm up to the story line, but as secrets unfold, you will quickly be turning the pages and enjoying the hustle and bustle. Lena has an interesting background, being a mixed-race woman who passes as white – something she is informed will be important to hide in the more colour conscious United States.

The novel opens with the death of a nightclub owner, and, within a short period, singer Lena Aldridge is aboard the Queen Mary, heading for New York. Lena, however, true to form, makes all of her decisions from a place of self-protection from the beginning of the book to the end. We can only imagine the taboo nature of a relationship between a black man and a white woman in the early 20th Century, a time when eugenics was gaining a foothold on both sides of the Atlantic.Eliza is Frank’s daughter, rather aloof at first and seemingly unaware that her husband is seducing Frank’s assistant Daisy when no one is looking. Lena is a sympathetic character, who has sacrificed the start of her own career to care for her father Alfie who has recently died after a long illness. While I enjoyed this read and I liked Lena a lot I can’t say I’ll be waiting anxiously for the next book.