Reviews

Into the Drowning Deep by Mira Grant

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stepriot's review against another edition

3.0

This book should have been something I loved. It had all the right ingredients, plus sea monsters. Instead it was repetitive and most of the characters felt like caricature of archetypes. There was no one I was rooting for and no one I felt bad about losing. To top it off, it was predictable, which is alright as long as it is fun as well. This wasn't fun or novel in anyway. I gave it 3 stars because for me it fell flat, but I suspect expectation played a large part of that. Genuinely alien sea monsters would have been amazing and that's what I wanted. The monsters are not particularly alien, perhaps that has to do with the characters anthropomorphizing them.

kdahlo's review against another edition

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2.0

How much do you like mermaids? I like them a lot, and so I pulled myself through this book and now I'm done reading it. Even if you like mermaids as much as I do, I wouldn't recommend this book necessarily, since I did not really like it. Maybe it hurt that I'm a scientist (and in particular a graduate student) and this portrayal of science and academia was almost right, in a way where the missteps are needling and obnoxious. Like, if you had just talked to a few more people, done a touch more research, that could almost make sense kind of feeling.

The other problem was that the twists were not very surprising and it felt very formulaic. It reminded me a lot of reading Michael Crichton books as a teenager - sort of cool, but pretty flat.

Anyways, I almost gave up on it, but I just love mermaids. I hope I can find a better book about mermaids.

mengevik_reads's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

youmeandem's review against another edition

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3.0

this book fought a battle for my attention, and in the end it won by providing me with the sapphic romance i'd been hoping for since i first learned one of the protagonists went by "tory" instead of her full first name victoria.

which brings me to its opponent in the fight: the omniscient (ish) pov. while i understand the need for it, i wish it wouldn't have been the case. it took about 2/3 of the book for me to finally accept this about it, by which point i had also been heavily influenced by my love for olivia sanderson.

read this book if you want a horror where nearly every death will have you excited, but not as much as the few and far in between kisses between two women who are just really gay for each other amidst it all

jessica_sis23's review against another edition

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2.0

I loved this book at first. The author built the suspense fantastically, she described the horror scenes well and it was a great read. However, I feel like she should have gone a different direction with the twist and that it was an easy out. The end felt rushed.

rereader33's review against another edition

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2.0

Dropped at 20%.

Guys, I'm not here to learn about climate change. I'm not here to learn about the environment. I'm not here to become an amateur marine biologist. I am HERE to read a story about people getting attacked by mermaids in the Marina Trench, and apparently while that is supposedly the plot of the story, the story is taking its sweet old fucking time getting there. I am not saying that what I've read up until this point is bad, and you're free to rag on me for dropping it so early, but the fact of the matter is I'm not getting what I want. I'm being water boarded with info dump after FUCKING info dump and am surrounded by characters I either actively hate or couldn't give less of a fuck about. And that's not a good time, in my book.

Is this a bad novel? No. But it definitely disappointed me with what I read and I have no desire to finish reading it. Hate me all you want, but my time is too valuable to drag myself through pages and pages of bullshit. If you like, great. If you still want to read it, great. But I'm done and I have zero shame in calling it quits.