The atmosphere is amazing!! Definitely unique and the plot was fascinating! 

This book has some brilliant character development, solid atmosphere and a cool premise. But it has a lot of flaws and I feel it holds itself back in many ways.

The biggest example of this is the side plot/backstory that is in between just about every other chapter. This backstory contains no interesting/sympathetic characters, breaks up the pacing and tension, and just feels rather boring to read. I get why the backstory was there, but I honestly just found it took me out of the story a lot.

My second major criticism is that a lot of the plot is driven forward by the characters doing stupid things. I don't want to get into spoilers, but there's so many ways the characters could have avoided dangerous situation easily. This is especially frustrating as otherwise, I quite enjoyed the characters.

I think this books biggest strength is it's character development moments. They felt interesting and impactful, while making you care more about what they are going through. Sadly, there are not a ton of these moments, and instead you get the annoying stuff I mentioned earlier. The entire spooky ship plotline felt way less interesting then the characters personal stories.

Overall, if you can get through the kind of boring backstory sections and dumb character decisions I think it's worth a read. I think conclusion was done well and felt satisfying. Once you get past the backstory sections every other chapter, the book really picks up some steam.

I like horror set in confined spaces and expeditions, so that part was fun. I do have a few things that pissed me off:
1.

why the actual fuck did Aidan go back for the ring?? And lie about his oxygen every dive?? Mans should not have been there.  I think I might have preferred if he died, actually.

2. A lot of coincidental things saved a lot of people a lot of times,,,
3.

I don't love the cloth explanation, but I don't really know of one that I would have liked. I was wondering if they were hallucinating during the last couple dives or something like that.

Here we go with another highlight of 2024! I've already read Voices in the Snow by her and loved it. And yes, this book was that good too! I loved every page of it. The characters were so loveable and I really empathized with Aidan. He was my favorite character because I connected with him more than any other character in ALL the books I've read this year.

Also, the story was really cool. Great ideas, well executed. Compared to Voices in the Snow, it was a little quieter, less surprising twists, but it had such a creepy atmosphere the whole time. Also the narrative with the past and the present was really cool. Both timelines were special on their own, but they also worked really well together. Plus the ending was quite emotional for me. Really good ending.

Honestly, it's now one of my favorite books and it was just fun to read this book. Anytime again.

Super creepy. Hated it and loved it at the same time. 

From Below is set around a crew of underwater divers who explore a famously unsolved shipwreck that was recently found, as well as try to uncover the mystery of what actually happened.

The duel timeline was a key piece of this book it added so much to the story that I think the reader would have been lost without. We get the see the original crew in the days preceding the wreak. The duel timeline also adds even more questions onto the mystery while answering some questions we have in the present. 

I did have a little trouble following all the different POV's as it doesn't differentiate who is narrating be it the characters in the past or present. Almost all the characters where well fleshed out and had depth to them. They all had pasts and we get to learn a little about a few of the characters pasts and how it relates to the story.

I still have a ton of questions and I really thought the story would go a certain way multiple times but it didn't and it surprised me. I'm glad the story didn't go in the way I was thinking as it would have been cliché and overdone. 

The aspect of the secrets the Arcadia has hidden is wonderfully thought out and you can just tell how much research went into this book.

I did have issue with some of the characters choices and I felt the book was a little longer than it needed to be. But, overall the book was wonderful and I enjoyed it immensely.