There are those that love the sea for the same reasons that many fear it, and many have written stories about it: the sheer expanse of it as well as the accompanying mystery. There might be joy found riding jet skis atop its surface and beauty seen only by diving down beneath its surface, but there are plenty of places that sunlight doesn’t touch. And that’s not even getting to what happens when you're left out at sea with no solid, familiar ground to be seen. That intrinsic terror one feels is what drives Amy Goldsmith’s young adult horror debut Those We Drown.
The story is told through the eyes of Liv, a girl who is going to spend a semester at sea with her best friend Will. The trip starts going wrong when Liv and Will have a big fight, and then Will suddenly disappears. Most of the other kids are not interested in Liv and the crew of the ship isn’t talking. Soon more people start disappearing and Liv not only has to find her best friend but to get help from someone not possibly involved in making sure those people stay lost.
The premise of this novel is intriguing because there’s a lot of horror to be squeezed out of isolation and Goldsmith does a great job of making Liv seem isolated. Not only because many of the people on the cruise don’t believe her wild stories but because she feels so out of place among kids whose parents are in a totally different tax bracket than hers. Liv is a whirlwind of emotions, flitting from reassured to panicked to self-conscious, but it doesn’t make her unlikable; it just makes her a more relatable heroine. There are many undersea horrors, along with the secrets the ships’ crew are keeping, but Goldsmith has created a story for young adults that’s perfect to devour while sitting in a deck chair on a presumably safe cruise ship.
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