I thought she was antagonistic for no reason and this frustrated me to no end while reading the book.

The book is fast paced which I guess is normal for a ya book, but the writing was very simple and often times flat, and the events seemed so rushed that it felt mostly like a middle grade instead of a young adult book. You bet your ass it is, and this sadness is a dark cloud that hangs over the events of the book and feels almost inescapable, thanks in no small part to the book’s dedication, as Adiba nobly pays her respects to those souls, the ones we’ve lost the last few years. Emilie, a skilled painter and forger, is reluctant to take apart the Rubaiyat for profit but is swayed by the thought of using the money from selling the individual jewels to travel to Haiti, her birth country, and visit her deceased mother’s family. They spend multi billions of our money annually on schools, housing, social services, roads, environmental and public health, amongst many other day-to-day matters vital to us all.Any ignorance on the part of the crew and First-Class passengers is unsurprising however as it’s also true that Third-Class ticketholders were (are) usually billeted as immigrants, refugees, and refuse, reduced to dark complexed foreigners. Perfect for fans of Stalking Jack the Ripper and Girl in the Blue Coat, this high-seas heist from the author of The Henna Wars is an immersive story that makes readers forget one important detail — the ship sinks. Told by the four voices as time is ticked away in the chapter headings, we see the problems and the weaknesses that each girl brings to the team, as well as their amazing strengths.

The way she fitted into her work life with her work friends, and her family life with her sister and sister’s family – was lovely and completely believable. No, she’s out for the ultimate prize: the Rubiyat, a one of a kind book encrusted with gems that’s worth millions. Emilie was the outlier within this quartet but Josefa trusted her for her art talent (and very obviously implied feelings).In this audiobook, a thief, a charmer, a forger, and a contortionist all board the TITANIC in pursuit of a bejeweled book. The thing about A Million to One was that everything came down to the execution, and the execution failed miserably. Seeing Josefa at work as a thief was enjoyable to watch because she is so very light-fingered, she seems to be able to get away with any steal. A countdown in the chapter headings adds a sense of urgency—will the girls succeed before time runs out? It feels so rushed that it seemed like an excuse to cover up the fact that Josefa recruited the only three other girls she already knew.

Although aimed at young readers, I think this is more suited for 14 and above because there is a small amount of swearing and some challenging vocabulary. This book has sat on my bedside table for what I thought was months – but upon further investigation was actually years! Adiba Jaigirdar, author of one of Time's Best YA books of all time, gives Titanic an Ocean’s 8 makeover in this nail-biting heist set onboard the infamous ship.For all ebook purchases, you will be prompted to create an account or login with your existing HarperCollins username and password. But whether they are successful or not, their reliance on each other not only as cogs in Josefa’s scheme, but as sisters (figuratively speaking) is very much at the heart of this story. The new high stakes sapphic adventure from Adiba Jaigirdar, the author of Hani and Ishu's Guide to Fake Dating.

It wasn’t like A Million to One was so long that this part of the plot needed to be cut down for time—it’s barely over 300 pages. Now that I think about it, brown women were over-sexualized by white people in the most heinous ways so how does colonial slut-shaming differ from the slut-shaming Hinnah endured from her parents? Before I get to all my gripes, I will say that I loved, as with all of Jaigirdar’s novels, the amount of diversity. I was excited to see her take on a different genre, but to my disappointment, A Million to One read as a half-baked, flimsy excuse for a heist. Earlier it’s the shifting dynamics between the girls that build tension as brief chapters in alternating perspectives reveal conflicting interests, hidden motives, and mutual pining.I guess a positive of this book is that it reads fast, but in the process, everything blurs together and we just never really get to sit in each girl's head or learn their motivations beyond the money they hope to earn from this heist. And for the amount of opportunities that Jaigirdar had to develop these four characters, most of them were shockingly underdeveloped. I understand that there was a theme of parental neglect/death that each girl experienced but I gotta be honest, it was handled poorly. Enter Josefa, an up-until-now petty thief who’s as bold as them come, and who longs to be free of society’s promulgated rules. But while 50% of this cover is non-white, the makeup of the overall passenger list was a much, much lower number.