A Bridge Across the Ocean - Book Review

From the cover :

"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 Résistance spy.
 
Now the two women are joining hundreds of other European war brides aboard the renowned RMSQueen 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."

My thoughts :

I don't think I read the back cover very well because I wasn't quite expecting the mystical and supernatural aspect of A Bridge Across the Ocean by Susan Meissner. Last year, I read GI Brides by Duncan Barrett and Nuala Calvi that tells the true stories of several European women who married American soldiers and emigrated to American after the war. I started reading A Bridge Across the Ocean expecting a fictionalized version of that. However, I was pleasantly surprised. I enjoy a good ghost story.

Meissner's writing is lovely and engaging and I read the story of Annaliese and Simone very quickly. Though she is simultaneously telling the stories of several women, Meissner balances the stories and makes the transitions clear. The characters are imperfect women who have suffered so much at the hands of a brutal war and vicious people. Their hope for a better, safer, happier future is palpable within the pages and it is easy to root for them to achieve their dreams.

While far from being a spooky ghost story, A Bridge Across the Ocean does employ the other-worldly elements that set it apart from a typical historical fiction novel. It's fun and unconventional and I liked it. 

A Bridge Across the Ocean by Susan Meissner is published by Berkley and released on March 14, 2017. It is also a She Reads Spring 2017 Selection.

**I received a complimentary copy. This review reflects my honest opinion. No compensation was received.**