The reason I'm giving this book five stars is because it was one of my all-time favorites when I was about twelve. Re-reading ten years later, I certainly see some flaws, but Deep sparked so much creativity within me as a child that I have to give it credit today.

What I Liked
Both protagonists are vivid and lovable. Birdie is a little whiny and spoiled ("I am so awesome!"), but she is bright with the colors of life and fight. The relationship she has with her parents is precious to read, as many YA novels make the parents basically nonexistent. Morgan's story is heartbreaking and empowering. This girl is fierce.

I love the narration in this book. "I imagined the Nu-Way teachers and Mrs. Kimball taking turns flyswatting at her honeybee spirit until it turned waspy and mean." Deep is written for the younger end of the YA spectrum, as Birdie is only thirteen. Birdie captures the spirit of a thirteen-year-old, and Morgan captures the spirit of the wild adventurer with an itching wanderlust, someone that every young reader has inside of them.

Nicholas is a fantastic villain. Handsome, cunning, ever-changing appearance, and even more rapidly changing moods. A book with striking similarity is Stolen by Lucy Christopher (a book that I did not like for its depiction of a sexy, mysterious, 100% sympathetic, self-sacrificing captor). Unlike Stolen, Deep offers an antagonist that is both compelling and chillingly ominous. His manipulation and mind games cause the reader to hate and love him at the same time, and Birdie's confusion is entirely understandable.

What I Didn't Like
I realize that this is closer to middle grade than young adult, but everything turned out

Spoiler

so darn perfectly. No PTSD for Birdie, after all of the horrendous trauma she's been through. No more asthma. Only fame, happiness, a publishing contract, and a brand new orange cell phone. No real contemplation about what happened to Nicholas and the other missing girls

.

Things weren't wrapped up quite as tightly as I would have liked. What about all of the other "princesses" Nicholas talked about? For that matter, what happened to Nicholas? What was his sentencing?

At times, Birdie's perky personality made me laugh. Other times, it made me roll my eyes and sigh. At one point, she and Morgan are struggling to escape an extremely harrowing, dangerous, and painful situation, and Birdie manages to do something she didn't think she could do, and she exclaimed, "I am so awesome!"

Spoiler

Meanwhile, she had just fallen next to a dead body, who was currently rotting below her as she climbed to the top of the well.