The blurb made this out to be better than it was, and I pretty much lost interest once he got on board the ship. Looks like a YA book but I think it's for adults. Either way; meh. ( )

Not much of an action adventure story. The main theme of the story is about books and how meaningful they are for the quest for knowolged. The fact that the setting is on board the Titanic give it an action pack feel know that *spoiler alert* the Titanic sinks in the end.

What I find neat about the story is that the all the characters besides the girl are real people that board the Titanic. The book that everyone wants is the Essaies by Sir Francis Bacon who is a real person that wrote the Essaies. Here another reason to love Bacon, he came up with the scientific method. Gregory Mone base the story on Harry Widener send his book collection across the Atlantic and decided to keep a copy of the Essaies with him. Upon boarding the lifeboat Harry forgot his copy and went back to get it but, never return. Somehow a copy of the Essaies ended up in the Widener library at Harvard. Mone ask what if there a second copy?
( )

First of all I loved all the different point of views. The characters were very lovable. I really loved James; he seemed like a perfect big brother. Though there were a lot of names to remember in the first two chapters that it can get a little confusing.

The book is quite descriptive but it still left me thinking up my own idea of the setting. The Titanic is beautifully described.

The book didn't have the amount of suspense as I hoped. It was good, but it definitely didn't blow me away. I wish Greg could had played more with the secret. Go crazy! But everything was just so tone down. I want to feel the rush of fighting the bad guys, I want to feel the air burning in my lungs when the characters are running. I wanted more mind games, more betrayal, more mystery. A good example of a series that contained all that mentioned is the 39 Clues series. It is just a pleasure to read all the books.

When I was half way through the book, I kept on wondering what lay in the other half because I felt the first half was just introduction, nothing big happened. I though that Gregory stuffed the second half with the big secrets, but he didn't. Nothing really made me gasp with surprise. Plus I wanted Greg to talked about the poor passengers, and the trimmers. Greg, I think a good book will be a book on the trimmers :) And YA authors, maybe write one with romance in it. :P That I would love to read.

When I hit the 75% mark, the Titanic hit the iceberg. Only when the Titanic got hit did I felt an emotion. I panicked because of the dramatic irony in the book. I also almost tear up when I read about how hard working James was. I think I would love to have James as my boyfriend :p. Ok, back to the Titanic. So when the Titanic hit, it got a little bit more suspenseful but I was disappointed at the lack of imagination Greg had. The whole Titanic scene was almost the same as the movie Titanic with Leonardo DiCaprio, but even the movie had more action with Rose trying to save the locked up Jack.

I do have to say, the ending just made me cry! I wanted to save Titanic from sinking. I wanted to get a boat to save all the passengers. I want to swim to pick all of the poor souls out of the water, but I can't :'(.

The epilogue was beautifully written. I wanted to cry even more. :'(

If I read this book a few years ago I might had loved it but nowadays I find that there are way more amazing books.

Overall, the book was just a little disappointing, 3.5 out of 5. ( )