Imagine a ghost story featuring creepy Victorian era ghost girls with tragic backstories and a barrage of supernatural goings-on to torment the main character, except instead of taking place in a spooky old mansion or a crumbling castle, it’s set on a tropical island with beautiful aquamarine beaches, palm trees, and colorful flowers. That’s The Depths, and the juxtaposition of the creepy ghost girls and scary happenings with the vibrant, lush island setting was a really captivating choice that I enjoyed. It was like taking two types of scary stories and blending them into one, and I really liked it.
For further context: The Depths follows Addie, a teenager who has been roped into accompanying her mother and new stepfather on their honeymoon to a remote tropical island. It’s so remote that the only people there are Addie and her parents and the family responsible for acting as caretakers for the island—oh, right, and all the ghosts.
Addie has recently suffered an accident while freediving, a sport she was a fierce competitor in prior to this, which actually left her dead for eight and a half minutes before being revived, resulting in one of the best opening lines I’ve read in a while:
“There’s a video of me dying on the Internet, and I can’t stop watching it.”
As a product of her brush with death and resulting injuries, her mom insists she come along with them to the island on their honeymoon so that they can keep an eye on her as she recovers and her lungs start to slowly heal. But once there, Addie finds herself often wandering alone and drawn to the water, which results in her having lots of individual experiences that were not exactly on the vacation itinerary—hide and seek with a mischievous, very corpse-like little ghost girl, sleepwalking through the tropical jungle, and encountering a mysterious but beautiful young man on the beach one night while she’s swimming alone in the ocean. The young man begins to take her on further explorations of the island into areas she would never otherwise have seen—deep caves, beautiful waters that seem to have healing properties, spooky altar-like stone structures. But the more time she spends on the island, the more strange things keep happening. The ghosts seem to become more and more attached to Addie, and at times it’s almost as if the island itself is reacting to her, and Addie has no idea what she’s really stumbled into and how complicated—and terrifying—this vacation is about to get.
Y’all already know, I love a good ghost story, so I had a lot of fun reading this one, and reading about the ghosts and Addie’s mission to unravel the story behind the ghost girls and how they came to be here. There’s plenty of spooky imagery throughout, like the little ghost girl being covered by spiders or the crumbling remains of the house they once lived in, tucked away deep within the island.
I also enjoyed the setting and like I said, the juxtaposition of a spooky Victorian ghost story taking place in such a setting. It’s a bit of a departure from what we usually see, which I always like. Moreso than that though, this book is the perfect example of a novel where the setting is as much a character as the people, and Lesperance did a great job of bringing the island to life. At times it had a toned down reminiscence of works like Annihilation—the way the island makes the humans a part of it—and The Ruins, with the way the vines and plants seem to not only be alive and acting of their own accord, but also with the plants and flower mimicking human voices and laughter.
Something unexpected that I really liked about the book were actually the freediving scenes. I hadn’t given too much thought to freediving in general before reading this, but it was really interesting to read about, and not just as a sport and how it contributes to Addie’s backstory and persosnality. The depictions of the various diving scenes throughout the book were actually kind of dreamy and beautiful, and I thought they were very well written. I was surprised by how much I liked that part of the story.
Overall, the only thing I don’t like about this book is that it wasn’t a summer release, because this would have been a perfect summer vibe read. But as it is, it releases September 13th, so it will be just in time for spooky season and if you’re looking for a ghost girl book to add to your TBR, this is it.
Thank you to Penguin Teen for the e-ARC. Don’t forget to check this one out when it comes out in just a couple short weeks!