The Wicked Deep

December 1, 2017

Gr 9 Up-A wickedly chilling debut about ghosts, witches, love, and revenge. Each summer, the small Oregon town of Sparrow celebrates Swan season, a month where tourists flock to the town believing that the spirits of three witches inhabit the bodies of local girls and drown young men. The deaths are all too real, even if the ghosts may not be, and it's a season that Penny Talbot would much rather avoid, particularly since her father's disappearance. But when a handsome stranger shows up in town with secrets of his own, Penny is drawn into a centuries-old revenge in order to protect him. Ernshaw reels in readers as expertly as her ghostly witches draw their unsuspecting victims into the sea. Chapters illuminating the history of Swan season and the town of Sparrow are interspersed with Penny's story, effectively providing necessary exposition and weaving the tense atmosphere that invades Sparrow like a heavy fog. When the drowning begins, readers, much like the townspeople will start to question characters' motives as the hunt for the Swan sisters unfolds and Penny races against time to protect her new beau. The summer solstice brings a haunting and bittersweet conclusion to events that may leave some readers wanting more. Moments of cliched writing, including food-dependent descriptions of characters of color, mar an otherwise strong debut. VERDICT Fans of ghostly romance such as Kendare Blake's Anna Dressed in Blood will find much to love in this eerie but less action-packed mystery.-Mimi Powell, Library Systems and Services, Kissimmee, FL

Copyright 2017 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 15, 2018
A teen finds love and danger in a cursed Pacific coast town.Two hundred years ago, the townsfolk of all-white Sparrow, Oregon, found the three beautiful Swan sisters guilty of witchcraft and executed them by drowning. Ever since, the town has suffered through Swan season: on June 1, the vengeful sisters return from their watery graves to possess the bodies of local girls and lure boys to watery deaths. In response to the inevitability of the three to six deaths each June, the locals have built traditions, even celebrations, around it, and morbid, thrill-seeking tourists come to see the curse in action. Penny Talbot lives on the lighthouse island just off the coast, and she might stay forever in order to care for her mother, who had a breakdown after Penny's father vanished years ago. The day before Swan season, a cute boy comes into town seeking work and a place to stay. Even though Penny knows he's hiding something, she's attracted to him and wants to protect him from the murderous curse. Some readers won't like how quickly they fall deeply in love, but the characters' chemistry and connection anchor the mystery and give them a reason to fight against the curse. Penny's first-person narration is interspersed with third-person snippets of the sisters' history, effective for pacing and provoking curiosity in this stand-alone.Readers will drown in this finely crafted, atmospheric book. (Paranormal romance. 14-18)

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March 12, 2018
This lyrical and foreboding debut takes place in the long-cursed coastal town of Sparrow, Ore., where, in 1822, the townspeople condemned the three Swan sisters for being witches and drowned them in the harbor. Every June 1st, the sisters return, staying until midnight of the summer solstice, stealing the bodies of three girls, and then enticing boys into the water to drown. In the present day, 17-year-old Penny Talbot usually avoids the eerie Swan season kick-off party, but this year, her best friend convinces her to go. There, she meets Bo Carter and eventually offers to let him stay and work on Lumiere Island, a decaying place where she and her mom live, where he might be safe. Death lurks everywhere, though, as the Swan sisters begin their yearly revenge killings. Effective flashback chapters reveal the sisters' backstory, and while perceptive readers may anticipate the story's outcomes, Ernshaw creates an intriguing reality in which the supernatural coexists with the mundane elements of small-town life. Balancing delicate emotion and authentic suspense, the hypnotic prose pulls readers into the question of how, or if, the curse of the sisters can be broken. Ages 14-up.

December 1, 2017
Grades 9-12 The tiny town of Sparrow, Oregon, has been haunted for 200 years by the three Swan sisters, sentenced to death for witchcraft and drowned in the harbor. Every year on June 1, during the annual Swan Festival, their spirits return to the bodies of three living teen girls, who each lure a teen boy out to the harbor and drown him. The vengeful Swan sisters, having exacted another year of retribution, then disappear on the solstice. Seventeen-year-old Penny Talbot's father is missing (presumed dead), and Penny, who lives alone with her half-crazed mother on Lumiere Island, is shy and withdrawn. Enter Bo Carter, who arrives in town just as the Swan Festival starts and who has a secret mission: to avenge his brother's death during the last festival. Magic-realism fans will appreciate how Ernshaw uses the Swan sisters' history to ground magic happenings in the reality of small-town life. Although those real-life details ironically cause the story to falter, the conclusion builds to a complex and sweetly satisfying ending.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)

July 1, 2018
Isolated seventeen-year-old Penny Talbot lives in a small, seaside Oregon town haunted by the executions of three sisters accused of witchcraft centuries ago: every year since they drowned, the sisters' spirits exact revenge by luring teen boys to their watery graves. Can Penny save enigmatic newcomer Bo? Ignore the soggy premise and embrace Ernshaw's plush, eerie prose and taut Gothic mystery.

(Copyright 2018 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)