My rating: 5 of 5 stars


The Second Mrs. Astor is a deeply moving love story, a beautifully written saga which sweeps the reader through from the initial meeting of John Jacob Astor and Madeleine Talmage Force to their wedding and onwards to the ill-fated voyage on the Titanic.

Ms Abe creates a fascinating imagining of the relationship between divorcee Jack and seventeen year old Madeleine from their first meeting and her lyrical manner of writing had me drawn back to 1911/1912 giving insight into how things might have happened between them. Kudos to the author for drawing such a richly nuanced picture of how life was in the gilded age.

I have to confess one thing – and it is a pretty big thing – I read the book through to when they boarded the Titanic and skimmed through the rest. This in no way has anything to do with the writing – it’s my own extensive knowledge of what happened on the Titanic which made me take this particular path, but I would thoroughly recommend readers investigate this book for themselves.



View all my reviews