Fateful by Claudia Gray is a romance about a ladies maid that encounters werewolves on the Titanic. Yup, werewolves on the Titanic. Tess is a ladies maid for a family that treats her badly. While traveling with her employer she meets and falls for a wealthy man who is revealed to be a werewolf who of course has a major problem to solve involving a group of evil werewolves who want to force him to join their clan. There is also lots of great intrigue involved with the family that Tess works with.
This book was a beautiful historical romance that was meshed with a weird paranormal element that didn't work for me. The paranormal bits made me roll my eyes and the ending made me literally laugh out loud it was so absurd (I'm going to pretend it ended a chapter earlier. However, the historical part and the characters and the setting were written beautifully and I really enjoyed reading the book and finished it very quickly. If instead of werewolves Tess was running from gangsters it would have been a perfect book, luckily the clunky paranormal elements didn't take away from the wonderful historical elements. I loved reading about the dresses and the politics between the ladies and the help and the first and third classes. There are some major Titanic movie parallels (high class vs low class, forbidden love) at least at the beginning until it settles into its own.
Appropriateness: There is a bit of sex in the book (which is described as tumbling on the bed and a comment on him taking care of her so she didn't get pregnant) and quite a bit of talk of unplanned pregnancies ruining lives. One of the characters is violently drunk throughout the book (and is viewed as a mess). Appropriateness: I would recommend this book to readers who enjoy historical romance 13+
