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Book Review: HAUNTING THE DEEP by Adriana Mather

Adriana Mather’s supernatural mystery, Haunting the Deep will keep you on the edge of your seat!

Haunting the Deep is a follow-up book to Adriana Mather’s How to Hang a Witch. In Haunting the Deep, we venture back to Salem where Samantha Mather is still emotionally recovering from the horrors of the witch trials she faced in the first book. Sam tries to put ghosts and magic behind her, but she gets pulled back in when she begins to have very real dreams about the Titanic. Sam fines herself a first-class passenger aboard the ship as if she belongs there. Everything is so familiar and yet she can’t figure out why it feels so wrong.

Not only does Sam have to deal with these dreams, but her school is adding the history of the Titanic to their curriculum to go along with the Titanic-themed spring dance. Oh yeah, and she’s seeing ghosts of Titanic passengers as well. When an unknown enemy pulling the strings starts to gift Sam with cursed Titanic objects, she can no longer ignore the fact that she needs magic to stop this. Sam must ally with the Descendants, the group of girls descended from the witches of Salem, and ghost friend Elijah to break the curse that takes her back to Titanic every time she falls asleep. It’s getting harder and harder to wake up and Sam may be doomed to go down with the ship.

Haunting the Deep is another great story from author, Adriana Mather. She weaves a fascinating story that incorporated real life history with supernatural elements. Mather has a very rich family history and I like how she integrates it into her books. She is descendant of Cotton Mather, a prominent figure in the Salem witch trials, which was her inspiration for How to Hang a Witch. She also discovered she had family aboard the Titanic who had miraculously all survived along with their dog. Her protagonist, Samantha Mather has the same family history, with a bit of magic thrown in.

In this book we get to see Sam’s relationship with her Dad, who in How to Hang a Witch spent the whole book in a coma. Sam and her dad have a very close relationship, but because Sam tries to protect her dad from the knowledge of the supernatural, it puts a real strain on that relationship. Of course that’s one of Sam’s character flaws. She keeps everyone at arm’s length and isn’t as open as she should be. You can really see it with her best friend, Jaxon.

Jaxon’s a really fun character and I wish we got to see more of him. For most of the book, he and Sam are not on good terms for spoilery reasons I won’t get into.  It’s important to the story, but it also means we miss out on such a great character. I definitely felt his loss in this book.

Another character I wish had more scenes and dialogue was Elijah, the very attractive 17th century ghost. He comes back to help Sam with this new curse, but for the most part he is in and out of scenes very quickly doing most of his helping off the page. I would have liked to see more development of his relationship with Sam.

One of the things I enjoyed was seeing Sam and the Descendants working together more. The first book had them as adversaries most of the time, working together sometimes grudgingly. They become quite close in this book, which is a better way to deal with the evil threatening them. And of course, Mrs. Meriwether is such a delightful character.

On the whole, Haunting the Deep was a very intriguing tale that held me quite captivated.  Although this is a paranormal story, with real history thrown in the mix, you just might learn something new. I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of this book, so definitely check it out.

RATING: 4 out of 5 Stars

Haunting the Deep is available October 3, 2017. Order it today on Amazon.

Haunting the Deep

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