2.5 star rounded up to 3.

The Ship of Doom is a time-travel adventure where 3 children find themselves on board the Titanic.
They have been sent there by their family to bring back an invention - the wireless radio.

It was an action-packed middle grade but for me there were a few plot holes, a bit fact heavy here and there fore a middle grade - although I appreciate this can be a fun learning / fiction cross over if youngsters are learning about the Titanic at school, etc.
I really liked the historical figures mentioned - I felt that was a good additional element.

My favourite MG book of the summer by far. Absolutely brilliant novel. Loved the time travelling twist on a historical fiction book. Both me and 12 year old thoroughly enjoyed it. Very highly recommended

An exciting fast paced adventure swith TIME TRAVEL!! I really enjoyed this story and what a brilliant series starter

DNF around 40% - I'm sorry but I can't take any more of the horrific amounts of transphobia in this book, which is being marketed at children. The trans boy in this book, Aiden, is repeatedly dead named, had people insist he's a girl, and been called "funny in the head".

I really liked seeing the ripple effects of the children's actions, and also their response to it. It gives time travel real consequences, and also imposes limits on them to where they can and can't go.

For english in secondary school i did a project on the Titanic i had always been fascinated with the ship and how wonderful it looked, so when i saw the plot for this book i was ever so excited.
I really want to be apart of the Butterfly club and travel to different times and places.
Luna and her friends embark on an adventure to save a great invention. Fast paced and anticipation makes this such a great read.

“Watch out for the Watch.”

When Luna attends a meeting of her aunt’s Butterfly Club, she discovers the club’s true purpose: they’re time travellers who ‘borrow’ technology from the future to “bring progress forward.”

‘I must tell you that time travel is perfectly possible.’
‘But how?’
‘All in good time.’

Before she’s even got her head around the fact that time travel exists, Luna learns that she’s about to see the future for herself. Luna and her two travelling companions, Konstantin, an avid reader with a clockwork heart, and Aidan, who has a “brain like a machine”, are about to board the Time Train for their very first mission.

The trio are tasked with retrieving a very important item from Southampton in 1912. It’s on board an unsinkable ship.

This is a story of friendship and adventure, one where ordinary people can be heroes. Being true to yourself is valued and integrity is modelled by a number of characters.

There are also some characters whose motives are more self serving and there’s a decidedly dastardly character, who I’m keen to get to know better as the series progresses. I love a good villain.

I enjoyed seeing all of the ways that humans and machinery interact in this book. Besides the boy with a clockwork heart, there’s also a man with a pocket watch eye and something intriguing about Luna’s aunt.

‘Tiny, tiny changes can have huge consequences.’

Butterflies weave their way through the story, from the butterfly effect to butterfly kisses. There’s also a metaphor that helps explain something important about one of the characters. My personal favourite was the use of butterflies to describe colours, e.g., a “yellow gown the colour of an Eastern Tiger Swallowtail butterfly”.

While much of the story lined up with what I know of the Titanic’s voyage, there was one part of the story that didn’t match what I’d previously heard. When Luna sees the iceberg that sinks the Titanic, it is said to look as though it has been “lit from within” as a result of the moonlight. My understanding is that it was a moonless night when the Titanic sank.

As someone who has inhaled as many stories and movies about time travel as I can find, I questioned some of the ways time travel worked in this book.

Over the course of the book, Luna and her new friends travel to the same day on multiple occasions. Although they are in the same areas at the same time as they were previously and have conversations with the same people, their selves from the first time they lived that day are nowhere to be found. I kept thinking of Marty McFly watching the Delorean speeding through the Lone Pine Mall car park on its way to 1985 at the end of the first movie (and the times he has to avoid running into himself in 1985 in the second one).

There is a discussion about not being able to take someone back to a time when they were younger because of the potential timey wimey consequences of having two of the same person in the same time. Knowing that the person they were talking about was soon going to stop breathing permanently, I wondered why they couldn’t take them to a day in the future shortly after the date of their untimely death.

David Dean’s illustrations are stunning. I absolutely adored the clockwork butterfly.

I’ll be boarding the Time Train when my new friends travel to their second mission. Next stop: the Valley of the Kings.

‘When are you?’

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Welbeck Flame, an imprint of Welbeck Children’s Limited, for the opportunity to read this book.

This is a great series starter about time travel and its possible consequences. It's a fast paced adventure that absolutely did not go where I was expecting (that midpoint? I was expecting those events to come at the end of the book, for example.)

I've called it historical fantasy because of the time travel aspect, which is the only magical part of the whole book. Otherwise, the kids are on their own with their skills, wits, and a device that gives them advice from their friends at home.

I loved how so many historical details and oddities were taken from the Titanic's journey and woven into the story as the working of time travel agents. It's so cleverly done and makes it feel believable within the world itself. Without them, it probably wouldn't have worked half so well, because there are all these little signposts to things that are sort of vaguely know and gives it a cohesive feel.

I really liked seeing the ripple effects of the children's actions, and also their response to it. It gives time travel real consequences, and also imposes limits on them to where they can and can't go (so there's no big cop out of "why didn't they/their society just go back much earlier to fix x y and z?")

There's also an opponent in the time-travel world that they're up against, with hints that they are part of an organisation/plan that will eventually come up against the Butterfly Club. It's done in such a way that it doesn't undermine the tension of this book by focusing on setting up later ones. Instead, the opposing agent is a real obstacle to them, forcing them to think differently, and then promises continuity into the coming books.

I am looking forward to the next instalment in this series, which takes the children to the 1922 excavation of Tutankhamun's tomb.

Having read other (YA) things by MA Bennett I couldn't wait to see what they did with this Middle Grade offering. It turned out to be a rip-roaring adventure for sure, and one that I think will fascinate younger readers. With the taste of Historical Fiction and time travel this is an action packed journey and I flew through it.

It definitely feels like the first book in a series, and there is plenty of potential for further adventures. There are unfinished threads left to be explored, and I'll be sure to pick up book 2 to find out where things go next.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Welbeck Flame for the e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The Butterfly Club may look as though they are enamoured by butterflies with their displays and mini tattoos but be warned..this is no ordinary club. Luna has recently lost her dad and now lives with Aunt Grace, who shockingly for the time, has a small butterfly tattoo on her wrist. When Luna accompanies her aunt to her latest meeting of the club, she is shocked to discover several other truths, all of which impact her greatly.

“Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings set a tornado in Texas?” The butterfly effect looks at cause and effect in the greater scheme of life and as you read, you can see just how this would cause chaos or bring about historical changes. What if one tiny detail were altered…how would that affect history and people?

This book literally blew my mind…I was in the midst of a well known historical tragedy while three children tried several times to change the course of history. Time travel is real and Luna, Konstantin and Aidan all travel to 1912 on a ill-fated trans-Atlantic voyage.

Cleverly written with time travel woven into the frame of the story and with characters who leap off the page and feel so real, this is a mesmerising story. Adding to this the sense of urgency, and wanting to save new friends, the children will make impactful decisions, ones they may later regret.

With a villain, wearing a clock in one eye, intent on causing the disaster, and another time traveller trying to stop him, this really is a race against time.

I loved the historical elements and familiarity of the fated ship along with key historical figures playing their role. The end is just the beginning and I for one look forward to joining the butterfly club and travelling with them to different times and places.

This is a series to devour!!

I really enjoyed this book, a brilliant adventure story with history concepts thrown in, I found the Titanic being involved in the storyline very interesting. , looking forward to the next in the series.

We enjoyed this book, a bit of history tied up in a adventure, what's not to like ! Good conversation started with the younger members of the family and led into more research into the history of the Titanic, looking forward to the next in the series.

I raced through this book and absolutely loved the suspenseful twists that the characters (Luna, Konstantin and Aidan) meet whilst on their 'time-travel' mission.

Most of the action is set on board the doomed ship, Titanic so, as a modern reader, you are aware of what is to come in the first instance, ahead of the characters. The idea of time travel is an interesting one, as is the 'Butterfly Effect' which is also explored within the novel. Some of the little changes they make whilst trying to follow their time-thief' mission have huge consequences for the lives on the Titanic, and I liked how the characters demonstrated good morals in their approach to this. I particularly loved the consequences of the third trip back in time!

As a first book in a series, the story feels complete yet there are still plenty of 'what will happen next?' questions to answer to ensure readers will want to read the next book! I will certainly be one of them!

As the theme is the titanic, I see this book being an excellent class read for KS2 pupils.

There was also an interesting theme of 'living being true to yourself' and of a girl living as a boy. This theme was sensitively covered and would be a reassuring read for any reader experiencing similar feelings.

**Thanks to NetGalley, the publisher and author for the opportunity to read an advanced e-copy of this book. All opinions are my own **

I liked the idea for this novel, but I felt that something was lacking. The characters felt quite one dimensional and made some decisions that felt very out of character. An exciting idea of travelling forward through time, but none of the time travel made any real sense, and the rules seemed to change every chapter or so. Overall I was sadly disappointed by this novel.

Wow. I have read a few books relating to the sinking of the Titanic but none of them have pulled me in quite as much as this one.. Absolutely brilliantly told so that any children (or adults!) reading it could see the impact small changes could have had on the outcome. This book will become a large part of any Titanic topics in upper primary school. An absolute mist have for any KS2 bookshelf.

Luna, Konstantin and Adrian are three children from Victorian London that have been enlisted by the exclusive and secret Butterfly Club. Their task: to be time-thiefs, to travel in time and to bring back scientific innovations to help progress in their own time. Their first journey through time takes them 20 years to the future. Their mission is to find an important treasure on an ocean liner en route from Southampton to New York. Are they going to succeed? Or are their actions going to have unintended consequences?

For the first part of the book or so, you as the reader know more than the characters about what is going to happen next: they are soon going to be in life-threatening danger. The suspense is nail biting: all the signs of imminent doom are there and I just wanted to shout at the gang to get off that ship as soon as possible!

I enjoyed reading this novel. It is a fabulous adventure with lots of suspense to keep you reading page after page. This is the first volume in a series and there are lots of unfinished threads to be explored in future instalments. Where (or should this be ‘when’) is Luna’s father? Is the Butterfly Club really a force for good? And who exactly is the very newest member of the Butterfly Club?

Thank you to NetGalley and Welbeck Publishing UK for the advanced reading copy.