The Page 69 Test: "The Vermilion Sea"

Monday, February 16, 2026

"The Vermilion Sea"

Megan Chance is the critically acclaimed, award-winning author of more than twenty novels, including Glamorous Notions, A Dangerous Education, A Splendid Ruin,

Bone River, and An Inconvenient Wife. She and her husband live in the Pacific Northwest.

Chance applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, The Vermilion Sea, and shared the following:

From page 69:
They assembled after dinner in the main saloon. Victorine asked Maud to light candles, which glowed on the hutch and the end tables. Maud and Pollan had moved what furniture wasn’t fastened down into a makeshift circle and drawn the curtains. The room, which Billie had found melancholy before, was even more so now. It might have been romantic with the candles, but instead it felt crowded, gloomy, and claustrophobic.

The wind had come up; the Eurybia rocked in the chop, making the pictures hung on cords and the drapes in the saloon swing in a nauseating way. Victorine ordered them all to their places. James and Oliver in the armchairs. Victorine in a dining room chair brought in specially so she could sit in the middle of the circle. Roland and Billie were seated together on the settee. Once they were all assembled, Victorine said, “Now we must all hold hands. No one can break the circle once it begins, do you understand?”

“I’ve done this a hundred times, darling,” James drawled.

“The instructions are for the others,” she said. “Maud, Pollan, keep an eye on the candles, please. I don’t want them rolling and catching something on fire.”

The two servants stood against the doorway to the dining room, trying to keep their balance against the jamb as the ship pitched. Victorine seemed to vibrate with enthusiasm. “Oh, I know he’s here—I think I can already feel him. Quickly now! Everyone—everyone take hands!”
Page 69 of The Vermilion Sea is the point where the creepiness that has to this point only been alluded to really begins. It is where Victorine Coustan Holloway, the wife of the owner of the Eurybia, has decided to hold a séance to contact her brother’s spirit. Her beloved brother committed suicide on the ship two years prior and she yearns to know the reasons why. From this point, the book moves from a pretty standard historical fiction tale about collecting marine specimens for the San Diego zoo into something more ominous and threatening.

So I would say that page 69 is pretty indicative of what the book really is. While it doesn’t show the extent of the horror that ensues, it is the starting point. In that way, it gives the reader a good idea of the overall mood of the book.