Honestly, when I started reading this book, I did not expect it to have supernatural and otherworldly elements. Maybe it’s because I’m so bad about just picking a book for its cover (sue me), or that I’m ALSO really horrible at reading blurbs. Regardless, what I expected to read was not this, but that’s not a bad thing at all. 

So, I love scuba diving. I can’t say that I’ve done it more than a handful of times, but it’s really so beautiful and life changing as an experience. Not to mention humbling (one of my first experiences scuba diving was next to a goliath grouper) because you feel like the smallest fish in the sea. When I started reading this and get this friend group who are literally only worried about their next dive, I was thrilled. 

One of the very first things you learn about Phoebe is that she can find things and is called to the ocean by an unknown force. Not only that, but she’s super insecure because she feels like she can’t go to college (even though she has a scholarship) because she needs to stay home to take care of her Grams. The other four characters are Gabe and Will (twins with very different personalities, and Gabe is also part of a romantic subplot), Lani, and Isabel. You don’t learn a whole lot about them besides a few very superficial things (like that their parents are rich and Lani lost three fingers due to an accident you later learn about). As far as characters go, I really liked Phoebe and Gabe. Everyone else kind of just blurred except for the times when Will was annoying the heck out of me. The only ones who felt remotely fully developed were also Gabe and Phoebe. 

As far as plot goes, I thought this was very entertaining as a novel. You basically get this crazy underwater cave and unexplainable things start happening after that. You do get dual timelines with something that happened in the past with the Salt Squad. To be completely transparent, though, I didn’t like the chapters about what happened in the past. Yes, they give you a lot of personality info about the characters before they go through some rather traumatic experiences in the present, but they just weren’t… necessary I guess. I didn’t feel like I needed to know all of the info from the past, so I never felt like actually reading those chapters even if I did slog through them. 

My favorite part about reading this book, though, is probably the scuba diving and the immersive way Rachel Reiss writes. Her writing is literally GORGEOUS. You can definitely tell that she has done her fair share of scuba diving because the way that she describes it will put you directly into the characters’ shoes. Not to mention, once you got to halfway through the book, there was a sense of urgency to the storytelling, and, if I would have had the time, I would have finished reading it in one sitting. 

Overall, I really enjoyed this novel. It does have an open ending, so that’s something to keep in mind if you don’t like those types of endings. I thought it was really fitting and matched the book well. Other than that, I did like Gabe and Phoebe, but most other characters felt one-dimensional. Lastly, the writing style and immersive language made the whole novel worthwhile in my opinion. 4/5 stars! A huge thanks to the publishers and NetGalley for providing an eARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review!

Source: Advanced Reader Copy on NetGalley

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