Review--Those We Drown by Amy Goldsmith

 

An ocean-drenched, atmospheric horror debut! Liv's best friend disappears on their first night aboard their dream semester-at-sea program—but is he really sick, like everyone says, or is something darker lurking beneath the water?

It should have been the trip of a lifetime.

When Liv lands an all-expenses-paid opportunity to study aboard luxury cruise ship The Eos for a semester, she can’t believe her luck. Especially since it will offer her the chance to spend time with Will, her ex–best friend, who’s barely spoken to her since the night their friendship changed forever.

But as soon as she steps on board, Liv realizes just how far in over her head she is. With Will, with the rest of the Seamester students—including the brittle and beautiful Constantine, who may be hiding his own ties to The Eos—and most of all, with the Sirens, three glamorous and mysterious influencers who seem to have the run of the ship.

Liv quickly discovers that the only reason she was invited to join the trip is because another girl disappeared shortly after enrolling—and no one seems to know what happened to her. When further disappearances rock the ship and strange creatures begin haunting Liv's dreams, she wonders: Is The Eos hiding a dark secret in its watery depths?

The truth will come at a price . . . only, how much is Liv willing to pay?

 

I finally picked up Amy Goldsmith's debut, Those We Drown and I have to say it was quite chilling! This perfectly blended thriller and twisted in a bit of Greek mythology as well! It made for a compelling mystery! I did not want to put it down most of the time, but since I work full time, I naturally did have to! Lol.

Liv is excited to learn that she won a scholarship with Seamester, along with her best friend, Will. They are to travel to different places and see incredible sights and maybe do some educational learning. All of which will look great when they apply to university soon. It's the trip of a lifetime! Even though things have been "weird" between her and Will, Liv is hoping this trip can also cement the friendship they once had.

Upon arrival, Liv learns just what kind of group she's dealing with, the rich and elite high society kind of class, whereas Liv is what you would call average; middle class; normal. She also learns that ever so popular influencers, the Sirens, are also aboard the cruise and she makes a not so great first impression with one of them.

The first night on the ship, disaster strikes. Liv imbibes in a bit of alcohol and when she tries to talk to Will who's also indulging a little too much, they have end up in a huge and very public fight...much to the Sirens' delight. When she goes to make amends the next morning, she can't find him anywhere. She soon learns that he is in solitary confinement in the infirmary having caught a very contagious and serious virus.

But Liv isn't convinced. When all she wants to do is see him and see that he's okay, she is denied at every turn. He teacher doesn't care to help, the staff aboard the cruise doesn't care to help, her fellow Seamester students don't really seem to care either. Liv is convinced the Sirens, or at least one of them, has something to do with Will's condition since she last saw him with one of them, but no one seems to want to believe her "outrageous" claims.

This book was pretty different than what I expected! It was pretty chilling in a sort of Hitchcock way where one person keeps trying to tell others something is wrong with this cruise, and they all laugh her off or think she's going crazy or something when in fact Liv is likely the only sane one on the ship!

Even when other students and passengers start to go missing one by one, still no one seems to care about their disappearances or they write it off as something else. Trying to figure out who all is involved with the shady business is a whole other story that's for sure! I enjoyed how Goldsmith even had us questioning Liv's own sanity! I mean, it's a rare treat to have an unreliable narrator and I loved how Goldsmith executed this!

There are hints of romance as well, just to add some spice to the mix! Liv flirts with one of the other students. Constantine, quite a bit. There's also some hidden tension going on between her and Will, despite his absence. There's hints of a history there, and while we do get some sort of peek at what that was, I feel like we might be missing some details as well. It's hard to say really, but I felt like more happened after "the event" that we weren't really privy to that led to their somewhat distance between each other. It's hard to describe.

There were some pretty spooky moments between this one too! This all leads up to a somewhat startling and maybe a little shocking reveal! There's buildup to the reveal, so it wasn't quite as shocking as I suspected, although I was still a little lost on some of the details as to the what was happening and why. I can't get into specifics obviously, but there are some details that weren't made clear and I was left scratching my head a bit. Lol. Even with the somewhat surprising ending we got which left us with more questions...those I expected really. Weird, I know! I'm not opposed to being left with some questions but when some other "reveals" were happening, I didn't quite catch all the whys and hows of it. But I suppose that too was supposed to be left a mystery.

In the end, I was still quite entertained with Those We Drown! For her debut, Goldsmith wrote a fantastically chilling tale wrapped in mystery! If you're a fan of chilling reads mixed with a bit of mythology, then I highly recommend this one to you!

Overall Rating 4/5 stars