Dead Water is a slow burn folk horror with a great set up and good execution. The first half is all character development, which gave a great feel for the atmosphere of the island community, though I do wish it were a hundred or so pages shorter. I loved the idea of a Viking? backstory, but there just wasn’t enough detail within those italicized sections for me to understand it, so I was left with questions about the plot as a whole. Those gaps were the missing ingredient in the story for me. I enjoyed the writing, the characters, and the elements of horror. I liked Dead Water, but it fell short of what I was hoping for by the end which kept me from loving it.