The Unsinkable Greta James is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2022 by Jennifer E. Smith, Inc.
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
BALLANTINE and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
Hardback ISBN 9780593358276
Ebook ISBN 9780593358283
International edition ISBN 9780593499092
randomhousebooks.com
Book design by Dana Leigh Blanchette, adapted for ebook
Cover design: Elena Giavaldi
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Epigraph
Before
Chapter One
Saturday
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Sunday
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Monday
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Tuesday
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Wednesday
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Thursday
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Friday
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Saturday
Chapter Thirty-two
Sunday
Chapter Thirty-three
After
Chapter Thirty-four
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Also by Jennifer E. Smith
About the Author
We set out to be wrecked.
—J. M. BARRIE,
The Boy Castaways of Black Lake Island
Chapter One
Greta is standing at the window of a hotel in West Hollywood when her brother calls for the third time that day. Across the street, there’s a billboard with a sleek white yacht surrounded by turquoise water, an ad for a new kind of beer, and something about it—that feeling of being adrift—makes it easier to say no when she finally picks up the phone.
“Come on,” Asher says. “It’s only a week.”
“A week on a boat.”
“It’s a ship,” he corrects.
“It’s the last thing I need right now,” Greta says, turning from the window, where the light outside is dreamy and pink. She’s just come from a photo shoot for the cover of her second album, which has been pushed to July. If it were up to Greta, she would’ve moved it back even further, but apparently, that’s no longer an option. Instead, she’d been summoned to Los Angeles to spend three days in a warehouse surrounded by flashing cameras and frowning studio execs in suits and sneakers, the pressure to get this right all over their faces.
It’s been two months since she last performed live—not since the week after her mother died, when she fell apart onstage—but everything else has continued to march ahead, the business part of things still grinding forward mostly without her.
On the desk, next to the hotel stationery, there’s a plate of chocolates with a note from the hotel manager that says, We’re so happy you’re with us. Automatically, Greta thinks of her mom, who no longer is, whose absence feels so breathtakingly final that even this is enough to make her heart drop.