THE DEPTHS

A tropical paradise is haunted by a dangerous secret.

After elite athlete Addie’s horrific free-diving accident—she’s dead for eight and a half minutes—her mother brings Addie along on her honeymoon so Addie won’t be alone as her injured lungs recover. Their destination’s Eulalie Island, a private Caribbean island. Apart from the island’s caretakers (and their two sons), they have the island to themselves. So why does it sound like the birds are calling Addie’s name—and who’s the giggling child she keeps hearing? As more strange things happen—the white flowers turn pink and then darken, vines behave strangely—Addie digs deeper into the history of the island, from its 1700s castaway namesake to a doomed Bostonian family from 1843. (The brutal colonialism of the region is mentioned, but Eulalie explicitly has no history of Indigenous peoples or European settlement.) Addie grows closer to the son of one of the caretakers and is introduced to a deep freshwater sinkhole where she feels no pain and can hold her breath long enough to free dive again. But being favored by the island and its supernatural inhabitants proves dangerous to more than just Addie. The tropical setting is refreshing for its Victorian ghost-story vibe, the characters are likable, and the story’s mystery threads weave together into a delightfully eerie tapestry. Characters default to White.

Readers will dive in so deep they might forget to come up for air.