Review: Fateful
So as you’ve probably figured out already, I absolutely love historicals – it has to be set in Victorian-ish times though. But although the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 was not set in Victorian times, it is fairly similar and I still enjoyed that aspect. The writing style in the novel Fateful by Claudia Gray wasn’t too bad and I didn’t find any particular problems with the world-building. It was the story-line and the character building that really got me.
Okay, so what drew me in first was the historical context of the novel. I was a bit hesitant when I read the blurb and found out it was a supernatural book incorporating werewolves, but I decided to give it a go anyway. I enjoyed reading about the Titanic and the time period of 1912, but I didn’t enjoy the storyline as much. I think my kind-of-dislike of the storyline had to do with the characters and their development as well as just the fact that the novel wasn’t all that exciting. I felt that the story moved way too fast, and the characters lacked depth.
I’m going to start with Tess Davies, who was a ladies maid to a wealthy-ish family who boarded the Titanic. She wasn’t treated very well by the family but she still did her job and dealt with it. She was strong in the fact that she was willing to put up with their nastiness because she was determined to save all the money she earned in order to leave them. I kind of found Tess as a character a bit, easy, so to speak. She was so infatuated with Alec and fell in love with him so quickly and easily, and also quickly and readily accepted the reality of werewolves. She had a back story with her sister but it kind of didn’t relate to anything at all, and I feel that it wasn’t really needed in the story.
And onto the hot male of the story: Alexander Marlow, better known as Alec, resident werewolf. I kind of felt weird imagining him with curly hair, but I don’t know what that has to do with anything, haha. I kind of don’t know how to describe him, (again) I didn’t feel much depth. He did try to keep Tess safe from Mikhail, and to try and avoid the Brotherhood which he did end up joining and in the end, miraculously saved him from death.
I also found some irk with the historical part of the novel, like the language used, I felt that it wasn’t up to scratch for the time period – words such as “chuck”. Also, with how quickly Tess and Alec fell ‘in love’ with each other: in this time period, I believe that relationships between first class men (usually) and servants, was pretty rare. It could just be my opinion though and not really be true at all.
Overall, I enjoyed the historical part, but he storyline and such were a little less than average.
