I Needed a Good Shark Attack...

 

TITLE: From Below

AUTHOR: Darcy Coates

PUBLISHER: Poison Pen Press

PUBLISHING DATE: June 7, 2022

PAGES: 469   

SOURCE: Library

FROM GOODREADS: No light. No air. No escape. Hundreds of feet beneath the ocean's surface, a graveyard waits... 

Years ago, the SS Arcadia vanished without a trace during a routine voyage. Though a strange, garbled emergency message was broadcast, neither the ship nor any of its crew could be found. Sixty years later, its wreck has finally been discovered more than three hundred miles from its intended course...a silent graveyard deep beneath the ocean's surface, eagerly waiting for the first sign of life. 

Cove and her dive team have been granted permission to explore the Arcadia's rusting hull. Their purpose is straightforward: examine the wreck, film everything, and, if possible, uncover how and why the supposedly unsinkable ship vanished. 

But the Arcadia has not yet had its fill of death, and something dark and hungry watches from below. With limited oxygen and the ship slowly closing in around them, Cove and her team will have to fight their way free of the unspeakable horror now desperate to claim them. 

Because once they're trapped beneath the ocean's waves, there's no going back.

MY THOUGHTS: I read this for an upcoming on-line horror book club and have had some experience with the author in the past, so I was pretty excited.  I have very mixed feelings about this book and while I was initially very glad that I had the extra motivation to pick it up, I'm even happier that I managed to finish it.

In the 1920's the Arcadia vanished without a trace. In current day, a few new artifacts have surfaced and they've assisted in pinpointing its location.  Cove has established a crew to go out and investigate the ruins, filming it for an upcoming docuseries.  (Can I insert a side note about the name Cove - I hated it.  Not so much the name itself but that we have a deep diver named Cove.  To me that's like having someone stuck in an avalanche named Snowy, but I digress). The crew plans on going down on three different days.  Due to the depths of the sink, it is basically preserved in a part of the ocean that has little oxygen and cannot support sea life very well.  My first indicator that I wasn't getting any shark action.  The crew ends up finding out that most of the passengers and crews have weathered their watery graves really well - perhaps too well.  The crew keeps disturbing things and those who died on the Arcadia aren't happy about it.  Will Cove and her crew make it out alive or will they join the others?

This book really had a great claustrophobic atmosphere. Coates does a great job making the reader feel like they are deep diving along with Cove, Aiden, Hestie, Vanna and Roy.  And I loved a few of the characters a lot.  Aiden is young and inexperienced and probably shouldn't even be diving but he was endearing and one of my faves.  Roy is a smart-mouthed adventurist who would be fun to have on any trip. The wild card in the book is Vanna.  Early on one of the non-diving crew members discovers a diary with some pretty shady entries so Coates plants a seed pretty early on that Vanna may have some ulterior motives for her trip.  Also, every once in while there would be a chapter counting down the days to the Arcadia sinking. These historical additions really helped the reader understand what might have happened on the ship. 

Now for what didn't work for me - you knew it was coming right?  This book is close to 500 pages long and in my opinion, could have cut out about 150 of them or so.  The first 150 pages were pretty interesting and really set the scene, the middle 200 dragged on and on and left me swearing the book was actually growing the more I read, and finally the last 75 pages or so were pretty action packed and very interesting.  The middle 200 pages could have really used some shark or creature action in my book.

So overall, reading this wasn't a bad experience and I wanted more from the story or less pages. Or maybe even both.  I don't mind Coates' writing and there are a few more books by her sitting on my TBR. She is great at creating atmospheric tales and this one wasn't a complete bust.  Did I mention it needed fewer pages?

MY RATING: 3 PAWS