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Into the Drowning Deep
UPDATE: Deal no longer valid
RECOMMENDED: Into the Drowning Deep by Mira Grant is $2.99! This book came out at the end of a November and is a Kindle Daily Deal. Please check out the rest of the deals, as there are some romances, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and many more great books. Elyse & I both enjoyed this book about murderous mermaids and we’re working on a joint review. My only complaint is the abruptness of the ending.
New York Times bestselling author Mira Grant, author of the renowned Newsflesh series, returns with a novel that takes us to a new world of ancient mysteries and mythological dangers come to life.
Seven years ago, the Atargatis set off on a voyage to the Mariana Trench to film a “mockumentary” bringing to life ancient sea creatures of legend. It was lost at sea with all hands. Some have called it a hoax; others have called it a maritime tragedy.
Now, a new crew has been assembled. But this time they’re not out to entertain. Some seek to validate their life’s work. Some seek the greatest hunt of all. Some seek the truth. But for the ambitious young scientist Victoria Stewart this is a voyage to uncover the fate of the sister she lost.
Whatever the truth may be, it will only be found below the waves.
But the secrets of the deep come with a price.
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A is for Alibi
A is for Alibi by Sue Grafton is $2.99! My mom was addicted to this series and I remember her collecting each book. She had the first few in paperback, so she would always wait for the paperback editions to come out. God forbid she had one in hardcover and the rest in softcover. These mysteries are huge favorites for some, but others found the books have to too much filler.
When Laurence Fife was murdered, few mourned his passing. A prominent divorce attorney with a reputation for single-minded ruthlessness on behalf of his clients, Fife was also rumored to be a dedicated philanderer. Plenty of people in the picturesque southern California town of Santa Teresa had a reason to want him dead. Including, thought the cops, his young and beautiful wife, Nikki. With motive, access, and opportunity, Nikki was their number-one suspect. The jury thought so, too.
Eight years later and out on parole, Niki Fife hires Kinsey Millhone to find out who really killed her late husband.
A trail that is eight years cold. A trail that reaches out to enfold a bitter, wealthy, and foul-mouthed old woman and a young boy, born deaf, whose memory cannot be trusted. A trail that leads to a lawyer defensively loyal to a dead partner–and disarmingly attractive to Millhone; to an ex-wife, brave, lucid, lovely–and still angry over Fife’s betrayal of her; to a not-so-young secretary with too high a salary for too few skills–and too many debts left owing: The trail twists to include them all, with Millhone following every turn until it finally twists back on itself and she finds herself face-to-face with a killer cunning enough to get away with murder.
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First Grave on the Right
RECOMMENDED: First Grave on the Right is the first book in Darynda Jones’ Charley Davidson series, and it’s $2.99! Here’s what Sarah had to say:
When I’ve been at conferences with Jones, readers and authors come up to her and tell her how much they love this series. This book won the Golden Heart in 2009, and the RITA for Best First Book in 2012. The heroine, Charley, is terrific. I listened to the audiobook performance by Lorelei King (after buying the Kindle copy on sale I was offered a discounted audio copy) and it was really good. I didn’t want to stop walking the dogs, that’s for sure.
Private investigator Charlotte Davidson was born with three things: looks; a healthy respect for the male anatomy; and the rather odd job title of grim reaper. Since the age of five, she has been helping the departed solve the mysteries of their deaths so they can cross over. Thus, when three lawyers from the same law firm are murdered, they come to her to find their killer.
In the meantime, Charley’s dealing with a being more powerful – and definitely sexier – than any spectre she’s ever come across before. With the help of a pain-in-the-ass skip tracer, a dead pubescent gangbanger named Angel, and a lifetime supply of sarcasm, Charley sets out to solve the highest profile case of the year and discovers that dodging bullets isn’t nearly as dangerous as falling in love.
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To Catch a Countess
To Catch a Countess by Patricia Grasso is 99c! This is the last book in the Douglas Trilogy, though each book focuses on a different Douglas sister. Readers mentioned how they enjoyed the emotions shared between the hero and heroine, though some took issues with the hero’s actions. It has a 3.9-star rating on GoodReads.
The most outrageous and reckless of the Douglas sisters, Victoria marries Alexander Emerson, the Earl of Winchester. She curbs her wild ways and tries to be a devoted wife. Everything would be perfect if not for her shameful secret. Victoria cannot read or write. She is determined to overcome her disability because she fears her sophisticated husband’s former mistresses will lure him away.
Alexander agreed to marry Victoria to right a grievous wrong that his late father perpetrated on the Douglas family. He soon realizes Victoria will make the perfect wife. Her sensual beauty and bright spirit captivate him. Could their marriage be a love match after all?
Ugly rumors and a malicious plot threaten to tear them apart. Can their marriage withstand the vicious ton? Will their love survive the scandal?
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I’m tempted by the Mira Grant, but I know my mom is giving it to me, in paperback, later this month.
The use of the word “disability” in reference to the heroine of To Catch a Countess being illiterate feels odd to me. Is she mentally disabled in such a way that means she cannot learn to read or write, or is she simply uneducated?
Those are two pretty different things. Maybe I’m being overly picky, but it seems a strange choice of words.
I just assumed that it indicated a learning disability (dyslexia, perhaps).
At first glance, the cover of To Catch A Countess looked like the woman is straddling a completely naked man with a Kim Kardashian booty (I thought the inside of her knee was the crease of his thigh!). :-O
@The Other Kate: LOL. It does! Partly because the skin tone on her arm and leg is the same as his so it blends together. Her back and shoulder are an entirely different color. How does one even get a tan like that?
The Countess and her Catcher both have a grey-ish skin tone. Zombie romance!
Eh, I couldn’t get into the sample I read of Into the Drowning Deep because I used to live on Guam – the island closest to the Marianas Trench – and the narrative seemed very unconnected the realities of life on there. We get a mention that one viewpoint character who’s documenting the misdeeds of a shallow celebrity on his yacht is from Guam, but we don’t learn anything about her life there or even if she is a Pacific Islander or not.
It feels like Mira Grant missed an opportunity to give the heroine, Tory, a connection to Guam. A lot of marine biologists come to the island to study the Trench; land-based biologists are also studying the environmental impacts of the invasive brown tree snake wiping out most of the island’s native birds. It would have been a small change for Grant to make Tory a grad student studying at the University of Guam, but I think it would have been an important one.
Grant could have also taken the opportunity to explore Pacific Island culture – specifically, the native Chamorro culture – and the social and environmental effects of colonialism on it. But no, it seems like a story with a natural connection to a Pacific island and a culture most people know little to nothing about has to deal pretty much exclusively with the problems of white Americans.
Maybe my impression is mistaken and there’s a lot more about Guam and its people in later parts of the book, but there’s nothing in the sample that leads me to believe that. Amanda and Elyse, I hope your review addresses this issue!
@MrsObedMarsh: Guam isn’t mentioned in the rest of the book, aside from the sample. And even that scene is extremely minor and never really gets mentioned again in the book. I think it serves to show that the mermaid attacks weren’t a one-off. A good percentage of the book takes place on a huge ship in the middle of the ocean with no landmasses nearby.
However, the cast does have more diversity than just Tory, a white Californian woman.
E: Oh yeah, and there’s even a colonial-era Chamorro legend about a mermaid!
Lazy, water-loving Sirena was cursed by her frustrated mother to turn into a fish for swimming in the Hagåtña River instead of doing her chores, But the girl’s godmother modified the curse so that the part of Sirena that belonged to her – the heart and the head – remained human. Thus, the next time Sirena entered the river, only her bottom half was transformed. But Sirena had to leave her family to live in the water, and her mother lamented the rash words that cost her her child. Therefore, we must all remember to watch what we say, especially about our children.
If Into the Drowning Deep doesn’t at least use that story somehow, I am going to be so pissed.
@Amanda: I just saw your comment about the book after posting about Sirena. That’s really too bad!
@MrsObedMarsh: In case you do or don’t want to be spoiled!
That being said, the presence of the mermaids in the book has been alluded to being around for thousands of years. Unfortunately, we don’t really get much in the way of an origin story. Where they came from, how they may have evolved, local legends in island communities, etc, isn’t discussed or explained, which was a bit of a bummer.
BUT! There may be a glimmer of hope (at least I personally hope) as Goodreads marks this book as the first in a series. There are still questions to be answered and I hope the series continues. Though I’m also pessimistic in that the “series” label may be due to Into the Drowning Deep having a prequel novella and not necessarily a follow up.
@Amanda: Thank you for the spoiler! Here’s some more information about the Sirena legend and its cultural significance, for anyone who is interested: http://www.guampedia.com/sirena/
Eloisa James’s latest Wilde on Love is $2.99 on Amazon.
Sorry…clumsy fingers…Eloisa’s book is Wilde in Love.
MrsObedMarsh! Thank you for sharing that mermaid legend! That is beautiful!
@Tam I would love a book that featured a dyslexic heroine, especially in a historical setting! If that’s what it is, I am 100% down. I was just side-eyeing the idea of a lack of education being equated with a disability.
@Claudia – Thank you so much! I think that story is really special. It’s a female-centered narrative (there are variations with male characters but all the characters in the most popular/influential version are all women), and – unusually, from a historical Western perspective – takes the position that harsh parental discipline is wrong. The story shows some of the ways Chamorro culture was changed by Spanish colonialism – the adoption of Catholicism and the concept of mermaids – and ways in which it didn’t.
@Rose Susan Wiggs’ Enchanted Afternoon also features a heroine (in 1890s America) who is dyslexic and never learned to read.
MrsObedMarsh, I’m another who used to live in Guam. I enjoyed reading your comments.
As a Mira Grant fan, I adored this book. It quite possibly may have been my top read of the year.
http://lisaslovesbooksofcourse.blogspot.com/2017/11/review-for-into-drowning-deep-by-mira.html
The opening paragraph of A is for Alibi is pretty much the definitive “Things You Should Never Do to Start a Story.”
And yet Y is for Ytterbium (or something legal instead of elemental) came out a few months ago. Must be doing something right.