Liked the idea of the plot. Could have been better with the characters other than the narrator having more personality. The description of being able to see the witches through the possessed person was interesting. 

This book had the potential to be incredible, but the last 30 percent undid a lot of that.

Let's start with what I liked about it. I absolutely loved the writing and the atmosphere. With her words, Ernshaw crafts a town that is dreary yet alive. For better or worse. While reading, I could feel the veil of darkness, death, and hatred fall upon me as certainly as it did the town of Sparrow. The secrets and mysteries of Sparrow haunted me to solve them just as they did Bo.

I haven't read many YA novels for the last few years, mostly because many of those I tried felt excessively young to me in their writing. The curse of getting older, I guess. The Wicked Deep didn't have that problem. Not because it dealt with mature themes--though it certainly did--but because of how it was written.

But what problems did this novel have?

Well, for starters, the romance in this novel is very much an insta-love. It's among the better cases of this trite trope, but I still didn't like it. Our heroine, Penny, and her beu Bo have known each other for mere weeks. At first, it was okay because Ernshaw wasn't making them wax poetry about each other. She didn't (initially) make it, in her writing, into life-altering, all-consuming emotions, which is the worst part about insta-love in my mind. Yet.

By the end of these weeks, they speak of love, love strong enough to

break a 200-year-old curse, to cure a vengeful spirit from her desire for revenge, to tether a boy to a bleak small town for life

. And that's where this romance broke apart for me because I didn't believe that.

But there were worse things I didn't believe by the end of this book. In the spirit of full disclosure, I spoiled myself on a significant twist relatively early on, which gave me the pleasure of noticing many of the clues Ernshaw had woven in while reading. This part was highly enjoyable. However, I didn't really know how this twist was going to be written, and in the end, I don't think it was written well.

For this twist to work, this book needed to have been written in third person POV. But it wasn't, making it contrived.

If Hazel had been our main character for the majority of our story, why is she pretending in her head to be someone else? It makes no sense that her thoughts would hide her identity just for the sake of a shocking reveal. It would make no sense for her to talk as Penny while being fully aware of being Hazal.

I had thought that perhaps we would find out that Penny and Hazel had merged three years ago, that she never returned to the sea when she was supposed to, and that Hazel was present—but certainly not at the helm the whole time—resulting in this beautiful mix of subconscious thoughts and clues throughout Penny's narrative. That would have been brilliant.

But once the truth —

that Hazal had been our MC almost all along

— was revealed, everything suddenly felt so forced and contrived.

I guess Ernshaw tried to address it somewhat, but I'm sorry. No amount of

"I tend to have a hard time separating myself from my host"

nonsense could excuse this.

Why weren't we seeing her freaking out upon learning she had killed his brother? Why was she talking about the Swan Sisters — about Hazal — not as her sisters and herself in her own mind? Why was she hiding the fact she had killed Penny's father... all in her own head!

It simply doesn't make sense.

While this was my major qualm with the novel, I did have several smaller ones by the end that would've felt less critical if I hadn't been so disappointed by the twist. For example, for a book all about a cursed town that even ventures into the past's POV, we get shockingly little about the curse. How did it happen? Why did it manifest as it did?

I mean, were the sisters forced to kill, which is what the story alluded to, and if so - why? Why does it break the way it did?

We also learn little about the sisters and their bond. We are told that they were very devoted to each other in life, but we see a completely different image of them in the present Sparrow. What led to this fracture between them? Many things are shallowly explored, if at all.

That said, I did enjoy this novel, and I am certainly interested in reading more from Ernshaw. 

3.5 ⭐ CW: death, death of a parent, underage drinking 

The Wicked Deep is a YA contemporary fantasy that is like Hocus Pocus meets Practical Magic, but in Oregon. This is the second book by this author I've read, and although it was beautifully written and atmospheric, I think I preferred Winterwood more. 

We follow Penny Talbot, a girl who lives on an island with a lighthouse off the coast of Sparrow, Oregon. Sparrow has a tradition every summer called the Swan Season, based on the story of three sisters who were sentenced to drowning for being witches two hundred years ago. Every June 1st, mysterious singing comes from the harbor until three girls are possessed by the sisters, and then boys start drowning. 

This is a story about love and revenge. It started out as just a ghost story with some witch hunt elements, but quickly turned into a love story with an undercurrent of revenge. I liked the concept, but I found myself bored with the romance, and I wanted more from the sisters and their need for revenge. I thought it was a bit too simple that they just kept killing boys for two hundred years because they were drowned. 

It just missed the mark a bit for me, but I think those that enjoy romance with a dash of supernatural elements would like this.

Holy cow. I couldn’t put this book down. Finished it in one day. Excellent storytelling that leaves you captivated from start to finish. 

Would read again. Will be purchasing. A very cozy witchy book (has a lot of death without being gruesome). 

really good! definitely did not expect that plot twist.
i think i would have liked to see a bit more of the swan sisters' past, especially hazel

This book was so atmospheric! It's the perfect witchy autumn read and I loved it.