Reviewed by Dan
TITLE: Ocean of Secrets
AUTHOR: Jerry Sacher
PUBLISHER: Dreamspinner Press
LENGTH: 198 Pages
RELEASE DATE: April 29, 2016
BLURB:
Andrew Elliot, the son of a Scottish nobleman, is being sent to America, accompanied by his fiancée and her brother. But Andrew’s engagement is not a love match. His family insists that he marries to “cure” him of his feelings for the son of the caretaker on his father’s estate.
Matthew Ahearn leaves Ireland to pursue his dream of becoming a Texas cowboy. In London, a brush with the law almost derails his plans, but Matthew perseveres and lands a job as a third-class steward on a ship bound for America.
Andrew’s and Matthew’s worlds collide as they—and their secrets—are brought together in the magic of an ocean voyage, one that will never be forgotten.
The year is 1912, and they are about to board RMS Titanic….
REVIEW:
I’m not sure how to review this one. I’ll start by saying that it read well, kept my attention, and I flew through it this morning. It is the first work I’ve read by this author but I grabbed the book as soon as I saw it, because honestly, I’ve been fascinated by the Titanic since I read “A Night To Remember” when I was a teenager. But I had a few issues…
Let me summarize the story, and see if you guess what I’m going to say at the end. Andrew Elliott was caught kissing a man on the family’s estate in Scotland. Before he knew it, he was home with his parents, engaged to a convenient female visitor, and along with her and her odd brother, he is to be sent off to America until the scandal dies down.
Matthew Ahern is a young man from Ireland, who has fallen on hard times. All he wants to do is to get a job on the new ship, Titanic, and get transportation to America, where he dreams of being a rancher.
Over the course of the voyage, the two men meet and share their secrets. It is difficult because Andrew is a First Class passenger, and Matthew is a steward in Third Class. Then we get to the “iceberg, dead ahead” point of the familiar story.
Overall, I would say that I liked the story. It started out with the main characters buildup background stories in the beginning and wrapped up with an acceptable ending. But here goes…there were quite a few issues that I had with the center of the book. Amongst other things which I won’t go into because I don’t want to do direct spoilers…we have a First Class passenger, a Third Class steward (instead of passenger), an unwanted fianceé, a bad guy with a gun (tied to the fianceé), Captain Smith admitting to a character that there is only less than an hour until the ship sinks, Mr. Andrews standing by the fireplace, the characters running through flooding halls to try to escape the sinking ship, and finally a character ending up on the RMS Carpathia in a borrowed coat with a name and photograph in the pocket (instead of a jewel). Do you see where I’m going here? In my opinion, if you took the James Cameron movie, stuck it in a blender, poured it out, changed the leads to a same sex couple and changed the ending, you would get this book.
Does that make it a bad thing? No. Like I said I enjoyed reading it. Based on the writing, I’m going to say the book would fall into our “Good/Average” category, but in addition, I’m adding in a sharp roll of my eyes at the similarities…
RATING: 
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