Welcome to the cursed town of Sparrow…
Where, two centuries ago, three sisters were sentenced to death for witchery. Stones were tied to their ankles and they were drowned in the deep waters surrounding the town.
Now, for a brief time each summer, the sisters return, stealing the bodies of three weak-hearted girls so that they may seek their revenge, luring boys into the harbor and pulling them under.
Like many locals, seventeen-year-old Penny Talbot has accepted the fate of the town. But this year, on the eve of the sisters’ return, a boy named Bo Carter arrives; unaware of the danger he has just stumbled into.
Mistrust and lies spread quickly through the salty, rain-soaked streets. The townspeople turn against one another. Penny and Bo suspect each other of hiding secrets. And death comes swiftly to those who cannot resist the call of the sisters.
But only Penny sees what others cannot. And she will be forced to choose: save Bo, or save herself.

If you’re looking for a short-ish, cute but ominous book that will chill you out yet melt you inside, shock you and make you wonder - you have come to the right place. I’ve genuinely enjoyed this read, and I don’t even know why exactly. I don’t know if it’s the cute and messy romance intertwined with so, so many out-of-the-nowhere-but-still-make-sense mindblowing plot twists, or probably the thing that got me hooked is amazing storytelling with folklore elements that slowly, but surely lulls its readers into a fascinating world of paranormal fantasy.

The Wicked Deep is a story of an old town on the eastern coast – Sparrow. Sparrow would be nothing more than just another small town if it weren’t for the Swan season – a period between June 1st and the summer solstice when tourists swarm in to witness the vicious drowning of teenage boys. As the legend goes, two hundred years ago three sisters were killed in Sparrow. Marguerite, Aurora, and Hazel Swan were charged with being witches and thrown in the sea with stones around their feet. Ever since, they come back every and possess a body, one girl each, so they can lure young boys and drown them into the see. That way, they can make the town pay for what it did to them a long time ago.

This story is pretty romance-oriented and most of the things that happen are connected to both mc and the love interest, but it doesn’t matter because the mystery and intrigue intertwined with slow-burning love story make an unstoppable combination of folklore inspired suspense. The way I’d describe is as a dark modern fairy tale, love against vengeance and sea against the land, with sprinkles of my beloved mystery and crime-solving elements. It’s an infinite train of angst and fluff that I just had to get aboard on.

The thing about the “mysteriousness” of this book, is that to the good half of it, I had no idea what was the truth. Like do we believe in the Swan sisters now or do we still try to find a logical explanation for the drowning and try to find a serial killer who is behind two hundred years of murders? From the beginning the stories of Penny and Bo, as well as the Swan season are wrapped in a veil of unknowns and mystery, leaving the reader to reassess every single thing he thought he knew about them. To the end of it, everything turned practically upside-down and I had no idea what was what, but that’s the thing that made it so amazing. I had so many questions and pieces of the story that just didn’t fit anywhere, and, to be honest, I thought Ernshaw would make that fatal mistake in forgetting to make a closure on all problems she opened, but she didn’t – she wrapped the story loud and clear, like a happy little burrito of fairytales.

Even though I didn’t find any particular interest in the characters, I can see how amazingly developed they’ve actually been. Bo is a kind of cliché, but still a solid love interest with a complicated story. *spoilerish* Oh, but Penny Talbot/ Hazel is an entirely different thing to talk about. I don’t know about the other readers, but that plot twist with Penny actually being Hazel shocked me to the core. I was really surprised and genuinely loved everything that happened from that point forward. Like the complexity of their situation and the way it was resolved was amazing and twisted. So, thank you, Hazel, for being such a damaged lovable amazing weirdo.