Historical fiction doesn't have enough of a lens on the experiences of BIPOC people but the rep we found in this book was painfully lackluster.

For a novel that seemed to market the diversity and individuality of the crew, it would’ve been leagues better if I had been able to tell who was who without the chapter titles.However, all it consisted of was Josefa randomly going up to the rest of the characters with seemingly no explanation and offering them the job, and them either agreeing to it immediately (? Every page of Adiba Jaigirdar’s A Million to One glitters like the Titanic itself, with all the exquisite tension of a first kiss—or an impossible heist. In addition, we only got a vague idea of what the characters’ roles were—the actress, the thief, the acrobat, and the forger—often with no context.

The majority of the novel ended up being a bunch of meaningless dithering about on the Titanic, which was intended to…build up the suspense, I supposed, but it felt like far too many pages of The Gang running around the ship, chatting with a boy or two, trying to throw the guards off their trail, and making no progress whatsoever. And Yuri is Adiba’s specialty, understanding all too well the power and beauty of female relationships, as friends, co-conspirators, or otherwise. Josefa can’t score it alone, so she enlists a team of girls with unique talents: Hinnah, a daring acrobat and contortionist; Violet, an actress and expert dissembler; and Emilie, an artist who can replicate any drawing by hand.Adiba Jaigirdar, author of one of TIME‘s Best YA books of all time and winner of the YA Book Prize 2022, gives Titanic an Ocean’s 8 makeover in this nail-biting heist set onboard the infamous ship. Despite their very different backgrounds, in a world of first-class passengers and suspicious crew members, the girls must work together to pull off the heist of their lives.