Review: A Bridge Across the Ocean by Susan Meissner

A Bridge Across the Ocean

by Susan Meissner

Publisher: Berkley

Pages: 384

Format: ARC

Buy the Book: Amazon

Goodreads:  February, 1946. World War Two is over, but the recovery from the most intimate of its horrors has only just begun for Annaliese Lange, a German ballerina desperate to escape her past, and Simone Deveraux, the wronged daughter of a French Resistance spy.

Now the two women are joining hundreds of other European war brides aboard the renowned RMS Queen Mary to cross the Atlantic and be reunited with their American husbands. Their new lives in the United States brightly beckon until their tightly-held secrets are laid bare in their shared stateroom. When the voyage ends at New York Harbor, only one of them will disembark...

Present day. Facing a crossroads in her own life, Brette Caslake visits the famously haunted Queen Mary at the request of an old friend. What she finds will set her on a course to solve a seventy-year-old tragedy that will draw her into the heartaches and triumphs of the courageous war brides and will ultimately lead her to reconsider what she has to sacrifice to achieve her own deepest longings. 

Kritters Thoughts:  Let me start by saying I am a huge Susan Meissner fan and even after this read I will continue to read her, she is a star author when it comes to historical fiction and I haven't even finished all of her backlist.  When I was pitched this book, I didn't read the synopsis because I knew that I would love it and after starting the book I went back and re read it and was surprised that a big plot point wasn't even hinted at in the synopsis.  

So there are ghosts and characters who can talk with ghosts and I don't tend to read books with these in them, so I was sad when it started but pushed on because I love this author and the characters beyond their abilities were interesting.  And that is what I would say after I read the book, I loved the plot and the characters, I just kind of wish they didn't have special capabilities.  

As in most historical fiction and in this one, I learned things which I always love when reading this genre.  I was mostly clueless about the Queen Mary and its historical significance and love reading fiction to learn about new things.

So I am on the fence on this book.  There were some characteristics that I absolutely adored, but I just couldn't enjoy it fully with the ghosts and things wandering around.


Rating: definitely a good read, but can't read two in a row

Disclosure of Material Connection:  I received one copy of this book free of charge from Berkley NAL.  I was not required to write a positive review in exchange for receipt of the book; rather, the opinions expressed in this review are my own.