Er du okay, Fie? - Anika Eibe

Title:Er du okay, Fie? (Are You Okay, Fie?)
Author: Anika Eibe
Genre: YA
Rating: 2.5/5
# pages: 179
Date read: January 2019

Fie has everything - she is beautiful, gets good grades at school, and the boys are crazy about her.
From the outside, her life looks amazing.

But not everything is as perfect as it appears...


It was okay, but I'm not very likely to read any more books of this series.

Honestly - it was just too depressing!! I know that was pretty much the point, as this entire series is all about aiming the spotlight at taboos, and plotwise I think they handled that really well... but I'm just not there any longer. As a teen I'd probably have gobbled them all up in no time, but as an almost 40-year-old, I'd have to categorize this series as the type of YA where I'm just too far outside the target audience.

Into the Drowning Deep - Mira Grant

Title: Into the Drowning Deep
Author: Mira Grant
Genre: Horror
Rating: 4.5/5
# pages: 440
Date read: January 2019, March 2023

Seven years ago, the Atargatis set off on a voyage to the Mariana Trench to film a "mockumentary" bringing to life ancient sea creatures of legend. It was lost at sea with all hands. Some have called it a hoax; others have called it a maritime tragedy.

Now, a new crew has been assembled. But this time they're not out to entertain. Some seek to validate their life's work. Some seek the greatest hunt of all. Some seek the truth. But for the ambitious young scientist Victoria Stewart this is a voyage to uncover the fate of the sister she lost.

Whatever the truth may be, it will only be found below the waves.

But the secrets of the deep come with a price.


It lost it's last half-star it did take me awhile to get properly into it, but after one or two false starts, Mira Grant's magic drew me back in (the same magic that made me actually WANT to read about zombies :-O ) and I was hooked!

But of COURSE Mira Grant had to write about the kind of scary mermaids that nightmares are made of! At about 200 pages I seriously considered putting the book into the freezer for awhile. Don't think my Kindle would have taken too kindly to that though. I was glad to be reading it in the light of day - and on DRY LAND!!! It's absolutely fascinating that we know less about what happens just 1km underneath the surface of the sea, than we do thousands and thousands of km above it! And that makes this novel just that much more realistic than her zombie novels... and thus also that much more scary.

Not that I'm likely to be scared away from the sea because of this, mind you... but I'll perhaps think twice before I go diving in the Mariana Trench :-P

In the end, there were quite a few questions left unanswered, but I'm pretty sure that's to leave room for a sequel at some point. No cliff-hangers though - the main plot was nicely resolved.