The Depths
Kirk Kjeldsen
Grenzland Press
Fiction, Adventure/Thriller
Themes: Cross-Genre, Seafaring Tales, Thieves, Wilderness Tales
**
Description
After three miscarriages, Marah's marriage to Eden was near a breaking point, but a Malaysian scuba vacation might help them start over. Things take a nasty turn, however, when kidnappers grab them and haul them off to an uncharted island. Marah was always the shy one, the reluctant adventurer, but she's going to have to find her own strength if she's to have any hope of survival.
Review
The Depths is the written equivalent of those off-brand movies you sometimes find on TV on a Saturday afternoon. The characters are flat off-the-shelf plot enablers, the story nothing special, the dialog forgettable, and you honestly can't tell if it's been edited for broadcast or if it really was that bland originally, but it fills an empty house while waiting for something better to come on (and one can hope the checks didn't bounce, so at least someone got paid for making it.) Not much really happens (aside from the initial kidnapping and some generic roughing up), so mostly it's Marah in her own head rehashing her misery, her miscarriages, and her failed marriage. When she finally demonstrates some agency - at about 3/4 of the way through the book - it's so out of the blue it doesn't even seem in character, leading to a "surprise" plot twist that was telegraphed from the start. Then the story ends with a conclusion that dropped it below the Okay I nearly gave it. (No specific spoiler, but to be honest if you read the Description you can probably guess. Talk about a stale, stereotypical chestnut...) On the plus side, it reads fast. On the minus side, I was forgetting it even as I was turning pages. Next time a movie like this is on, I think I'll just pop in a DVD.