Publisher: Ballantine

ISBN: 9780593358276

A singer on the cusp of the next big step in her career is forced to reset after an embarrassing incident on stage. In her week off, she must learn to connect with an emotionally distant parent and discover her love for music again if she wants to keep moving forward. Author Jennifer E. Smith’s latest book contains refreshing moments of clarity, but some scenes feel a little less developed in The Unsinkable Greta James.

Greta James has achieved her dream: she wanted to be a musician, and that’s exactly what she is. Known for her amazing guitar playing and her unique lyrics, Greta spent years honing her craft so she could reach this place. With her first album behind her and all of the excitement for her second album in the air, it would be easy to assume that Greta’s star has just begun its ascent.

That was before the video that went viral, of course. Not long after the death of her mother, Helen, Greta tries to perform at a concert and has a major breakdown. Her manager is mortified, her publicist is spending day and night doing damage control, and the record label has gotten skittish about what to do with the second album.

Greta just wants to crawl under a rock and stay there. Helen was her number one fan, traveling to her shows and holding up a homemade sign for Greta to see as she performed. The media loved her, and Greta is lost without her.

What’s worse is that her parents were supposed to spend their fortieth anniversary on a cruise. Helen and Greta’s father, Conrad, had planned a lovely vacation with two other couples for a week to the beautiful landscapes of Alaska. No one could have dreamed that Greta’s mom wouldn’t make it.

Conrad decides to go anyway, and Greta’s brother convinces her to go in Helen’s place. Greta would rather get a root canal without anesthesia, but she knows spending time with her father might help their fractured relationship. While Greta’s mom was her biggest supporter, Conrad didn’t approve of Greta’s profession. It didn’t help that her first hit single was about how they didn’t get along.

Helen was always the buffer between them, but now that she’s gone Greta and Conrad find themselves trying to figure out how to be father and daughter again. With nowhere else to go on the cruise ship, they learn that the best parts of their relationship with Helen haven’t gone anywhere. In fact, if they look hard enough, they’ll be able to see Helen there in spirit.

Author Jennifer E. Smith turns from YA novels to adult fiction in The Unsinkable Greta James, and for the most part the scenes work well. Greta shares some three-dimensional moments of clarity about her relationship with her parents and doesn’t just hate her father. When she finds herself attracted to a history professor traveling alone on the ship, Greta recognizes that this could be a one-week fling and that it might be a temporary fix for some very hard feelings.

Less satisfying are the moments between Greta and Conrad later in the book. Greta manages to make impressive emotional strides in her own mind and heart. The scenes with Conrad, by contrast, feel difficult and stilted. While this might be by design early on because of the past, at some point it feels like Greta has made more progress with her dad than he has with her. The end, then, is harder to accept given how distant Conrad has been for the majority of the novel.

The book definitely carries echoes of a YA novel with a similar texture and style, and some readers might find that some of Smith’s secondary characters approach the line of stock character rather than real people. Still, the novel is a fairly enjoyable, if mostly predictable, read all the same. I rate The Unsinkable Greta James as Bordering on Bookmarking it.