Soooooooooooooooooooooooooooo good.

Full review closer to pub date! ( )

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With such an interesting cover and synopsis, I was super intrigued about Fear the Drowning Deep by Sarah Glenn Marsh, and decided to give it a try. I’m happy I did. It was a strong YA fantasy book that had good, strong characters, and interesting lore behind it.

Bridey and her family were really fantastic and reminded me a bit of the girls from Little Women, allowed to be strong and free willed in a time where perhaps they were expected to be a bit more demure. Bridey herself was a lovely character that was strong in both her fears and then overcoming them. What Sarah Glenn Marsh really did well, for me at least, was in keeping Bridey’s reaction to finding out the truth about Fynn realistic. There are so many other YA books that would have romanticized that revelation, but Marsh kept it true to life and I absolutely love her for doing that. It would have been completely out of character for Bridey to simply accept Fynn instantly.

Marsh also perfectly encapsulates what small town life is like where everyone is involved in everyone else’s business. Everyone knows about Fynn being taken in by Bridey’s family and word is just continually spread about every time piece of gossip that can be found, included that of the “old witch” Morag, who is such a sympathetic character towards the end (though I really like her from the start).

The mythology and fantasy of Fear the Drowning Deep by Sarah Glenn Marsh is incredibly solid. The pacing is fantastic, never do you feel it go too fast or move too slowly. Build-up to relationships is good and so is the climax and ending (which had me sad, happy, and hopeful at the same time). If you’re a fan of historical YA with a bit of romance and mythology/supernatural, this is definitely a winner for you!

// I received this title for free in exchange for an honest review // ( )

This book was set in 1913 in the Isle of Manx. It was the lure of myth that drew me in. While I was reading it, I was drawn in. However, much like the books in the Twilight Saga, afterwards I was left feeling a little uncomfortable.

Why would a young girl not question why she was falling for a young man with no past? Even worse, why was her family just fine with it? The monsters in the story were from myth, but a very dark place in myth.

For the most part, the writing was good, atmospheric and dark when it needed to be. The main problem I had were several times when women characters were addressed as "Ms." That totally threw me out of the time period.

I think I would suggest this to fans of the Twilight Saga of for fans of dark fantasy; just don't think too deeply about it. ( )

This was a really good read combining suspense, fantasy, and legend to spin a truly unique story of the struggle of one woman against not just the sea, but things of the deep that most people can't see or don't believe in. Bridey knows something is wrong but no one will believe her and so she has simply decided not to go near the sea. But then a stranger, the loss of some close friends, and finally a missing sister drive her to do what she thought unthinkable - go to sea to defend her friends, her family and her home. This is a story of intense courage, of loss, and of finding life again in the midst of death. In facing her fears Bridey finds her life and her home again - despite whatever else may have been lost. A wonderful tale. ( )

So look, on paper this, to me, sounded like a straight up thriller with a supernatural twist to it. That’s why I’m reviewing this book that is, in actuality, pretty much just a straight up fantasy. Sorry, Serena, this is my genre today! That being said, there are definitely a number of strange and creepy things that really added to the potential of “Fear the Drowning Deep”. A witch’s apprentice? Murdered girls? ANCIENT EVIL IN THE WATER? Sign me up!

But sadly, while I was all in and totally stoked, when I got to it, it didn’t quite live up to what I hoped it would. I think that what tripped this book up for me were a couple of things. One, my expectations were not met, and while that’s not the book’s fault, it nonetheless made it so I was setting myself up for a fall. The second thing is that it fell into too many traps of the fantasy romance YA genre, which I have become less and less forgiving of as time has gone on. You combine these two things, and then throw in a description that really played up more of a horror thriller angle than it was, and well, we’re bound to have some problems.

But hey, let’s start off with the things that I DID like about this story before we get into the negatives. First of all, I enjoyed the setting of this book, taking place on the Isle of Man in 1913. I don’t know much about the Isle of Man outside of the fact that the Bee Gees were from there, so seeing it in a historical setting with some of the mythology from the area were fun themes to explore. Bridey was an alright protagonist. I liked that she was a responsible teenager of her time, and while sometimes her aspirations kind of treaded towards the less pragmatic and more fanciful, by 1913 I think this is a more acceptable mentality for a teenage girl to have. I also really liked the storyline involving her and Morag, the island ‘witch’ whom Bridley apprentices for, just as her mother did when she was a girl. The parts of the story where Bridley was learning how to find ingredients for medicine, charms, and protection, were very intriguing to me, and I liked Morag’s role in the story as the misunderstood outsider. True, it got a bit aggravating when Bridley would dismiss Morag’s advice or warnings as superstitions or useless, because she has spent her whole life believing her to be some kind of witch! I have a hard time believing that she’d be so dense or haughty that she’d just toss this woman’s opinions out the window! It didn’t feel like it matched Bridley’s character, and that got a bit annoying.

I also liked the take and portrayals of various mythological creatures that you may not see as much in fantasy stories. Sure, we’ve all seen our fair share of dragons, vampires, and ghosts, but in this book we get sea serpents, Little Fellas, and fossegrims. Marsh has taken some long neglected mythologies and has given them a fresh perspective, and I think that this book could easily encourage interested parties to take a gander at these stories when they may not have otherwise.

However, a big strike against this book, for me, is that once again, we are met with the Dreaded Love Triangle. THIS time it’s between Bridley, her childhood friend Lugh, and the mysterious visitor Fynn, who washes up on shore one day with no memory of who he is or how he got there. Boy, a girl is torn between her true blue best friend and a strange and enigmatic newcomer. I sure haven’t read anything like THAT before. This is only compounded by the fact that a day before Fynn showed up, Bridley had been kissed by Lugh, and she had really quite liked it. But the moment that Fynn arrives, Lugh is completely out of her thoughts. It’s one thing if she was always a bit ambivalent about her feelings for him. It’s tired and worn out, but at least it’s realistic. Because MAN did she shift on a dime without any second thoughts. Plus, we got a ridiculous scene in which Finn and Lugh start fighting each other over her, and everyone felt a bit out of character all just for the drama. Lugh just didn’t feel like a character who even needed to be there, in all honesty. There was plenty of dramatics without Bridley having to be in the middle of a fight between the two stereotypes of romantic entanglements.

This book definitely had some things going for it, but overall “Fear the Drowning Deep” found itself in a couple of ruts that it never really pulled itself from. I really enjoyed the mythology aspect and the witch aspect, but there were too many well worn ideas that weren’t really reinvented to make it a complete stand out. Come for the mythos, try and tolerate the repetitiveness. ( )