BOOK REVIEW: The Wicked Deep by Shea Ernshaw

Published March 6th 2018 by Simon Pulse
Young Adult Fiction / Fantasy / Witches
Hardcover, 308 pages

I already told you about my love for ghost stories. Another genre that I love also is "witch stories".

You certainly had a go at Deborah Harkness' trilogy "A Discovery of Witches" or Anne Rice's "The Witching Hours".

Here is a new book that is a mix of ghost and witch storytelling, now in a paperback edition and translated also in French: The Wicked Deep.

The Wicked Deep by Shea Ernshaw is a story of revenge, magic, and first love set along the beautiful and haunted coastal shores of Sparrow, Oregon.  In this town, three sisters accused of witchcraft place a curse upon its townspeople as they faced their death by drowning in the deep waters surrounding the town. 

Every summer, for a brief time, the sisters return to Sparrow, stealing the bodies of three girls so that they may seek their revenge, luring each a boy into the harbour and pulling them under.

Like many locals, seventeen-year-old Penny Talbot has accepted the fate of the town.

She lives with her mother on Lumiere Island in a lighthouse. She takes a skiff rather than a car to go to High School and she hides to everyone the fact that she can see ghosts. So, every year she knows exactly whose girl's body the sisters are using to take revenge but she cannot explain that to others, not even her own mother.

But this year, on the eve of the sisters’ return, a boy named Bo Carter arrives; unaware of the danger he has just stumbled into.

Mistrust and lies spread quickly through the salty, rain-soaked town and inhabitants. The townspeople turn against one another when the first drowning happens. Penny and Bo suspect each other of hiding secrets. And death comes swiftly to those who cannot resist the call of the sisters.

She will have to choose between her love for Bo and her own life.

The book alternates its story chapters with interior pages that reveal the fate of the Swan Sisters and their "reasons" beyond the curse, creating this enchanting, yet haunting, story of love and revenge. 

The feeling of imminent danger looms across the pages, and you will quickly find yourself trying to find secrets and lies. The relationship between Penny and Bo is more than threatened and the absence of Penny's father is explained through the pages. 

This is the kind of story that you find yourself swept away in. I finished the book in a weekend and only because I wanted it to last a little bit longer. 

The writing brings to life a haunting story, makes you feel the salt and rain that seems to always fall on Sparrow. You will feel the loneliness of Penny and her mother, the need to anchor herself to someone in contrast to the island and its lighthouse which are close to the deep waters where the sisters hide.

It is a book to be recommended and not only for Young Adult Readers with its beautiful storytelling and twists.

Love,

Reading Freak.