Book Review: The Dressmaker by Kate Alcott

 In the book The Dressmaker by Kate Alcott, we start with a young girl who envisions herself as a dressmaker making an incredibly bold and confident move in leaving her position as a servant to make a better life for herself.  Through a stroke of seemingly good luck she finds herself at the shipyard right before the unsinkable ship Titanic sets sail and even luckier she runs into a clothing designer that just happens to be in need of an employer.  What could possibly go wrong?     From the time she set foot on the Titanic, I was waiting for it to sink and that anticipation made the chapters building up to the sinking a drudgingly slow read. However, once the sinking started the plot kicked in and this book became a fast read.   The dressmaker lives the panic onboard the Titanic as so many people faced their mortality.  This young girl experiences the heartache of sitting in a lifeboat while people cried out for help in the freezing water.   With the protagonist, you experience the surreal rescue and days following the rescue

The book walks  the reader through the incredible weeks and months following the disaster as the Dressmaker is able to experience and observe the frenzy of the press and an ensuing witch hunt as the general population worked to make sense of the tragedy and place blame upon those culpable.    It was an eye opening view of the pain and heartache that continued in the following weeks and months of the sinking of the Titanic.

The book was well written and a fun read.   There was a love interest, some angst with the employer, and of course the overwhelming tragedy of the Titanic.   While I thought that the protagonist handled the sinking a little too blithely, she was still a loveable character and one that I was wishing the best for.    The book could have ended with a little more about the Dressmaker with a bit more about her story, but maybe that will be a sequel.  Overall, the book was a great read.

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