Hocus Pocus meets modern paranormal romance? Not exactly, I'm afraid.
Debut author Shea Earnshaw definitely showed that she can pull the rug out from under your feet with this novel. However, I feel that detail came with a caveat - that being, the only reason I didn't see this twist coming was because up until that point, I was getting pretty bored with this story.
The Wicked Deep takes place in the fictional town of Sparrow, Oregon. Over two hundred years ago, three sisters were drowned in the sea, wrongfully accused of witchcraft. Every year thereafter, for one month, they return and take their vengeance on the town. The Swan Sisters Marguerite, Aurora, and Hazel steal the bodies of three local girls and use their womanly wiles to lure young men to their deaths in the sea, where their souls join the sisters in an eternal slumber. This year, a new boy blows into town under mysterious circumstances, and protagonist Penny Talbot is dedicated to protecting him at all costs to ensure he doesn't join the countless others who have perished before him.
Both Penny and Bo have secrets, however, and those secrets may destroy the love they've forged as the summer solstice, and Swan season, comes to a deadly conclusion.
Okay, from here on out, spoilers galore, so if you care about those things, GTFO.
What the actual fuck?
I almost need to reread this book to see how and when Earnshaw did the Penny/Hazel twist, though I'm pretty sure I already know where it happened. We were given hints, but they were either very clever or very lazy, and I'm not sure which makes me angrier. What the hell, Earnshaw? I'm mad at you because this book wasn't 100% good enough to do this to me, but you did it anyway. What did I ever do to you?
I think what makes me angry is that we never really got to know Penny, so we don't know if she and Bo really are good together, though I guess they are at the end of the novel. Actually, there's another thing that makes me angry: Bo is pretty much okay with being in love with the person that murdered his brother.
Had the murderer been Marguerite or Aurora, I feel like this romance would have been worth holding on to, but with Hazel being the killer and suddenly "growing a heart" I think this whole premise falls a little flat.
Earnshaw did do a really good job of painting a small coastal town though. I really liked the atmosphere that we experienced at the beginning of the novel, and I wish we'd gotten some maps or some modern media inserts of the town and imagery of the Swan sisters. I hope that future novels will have a bit more polish and a little more going on in the story. The romance by itself really wasn't enough to keep me intrigued. Still, I'm looking forward to new books from Shea Earnshaw, even though this book was a little bit of a letdown.
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