Luck of the Titanic by Stacey Lee

Another win for Stacey Lee! She makes the best characters and I loved all of Valora's schemes and the side details about the up and coming designer and the view of the different classes on the ship.

Really enjoyed reading this! Like many children of the 90s I feel like I know a lot about the Titanic experience but seeing it from the POV of a smart, class-shifting, biracial circus performer was definitely new. I appreciated the author's notes about the 8 known Chinese people who were on board the real Titanic, and I liked that this book didn't dwell too much on stuff most readers will already know about Titanic. Oh I loved the inclusion of a cool rich lesbian character! Always lovely to remind readers that LGBTQ+ people have always existed.

This is a great historical adventure story for Titanic fans (and who isn't a Titanic fan?)

My only criticism is the portrayal of CPR chest compression because it doesn't cause (or almost never causes) a person's heart to resume beating independently. It's a very common misconception that CPR has a higher success rate than it does. It's purpose is to prevent brain injury until help (a defibrillator) arrives. Usually the heart needs an electric jolt to restart. And the success rate of CPR with chest compression, breathing into the person, and using the defibrillator is sadly much lower than as shown in media

But I don't hold it against the author or editors, because it's such a common misconception that I only learned it by searching “CPR success rate” in a search engine on a whim.