The Depths

The Depths is Nicole Lesperance's YA psychological horror, set on Eulalie Island, a private Caribbean island. Addie was an elite free-diver until an accident left her dead for eight and a half minutes. Now she is recovering, and her mother has brought her along on her honeymoon, which means two weeks trapped somewhere beautiful with nothing to do.

The island does not behave. White flowers turn pink and then darker. The birds sound like they are saying her name. Rooms and caves push feelings on her, euphoria in one place and dread in another, and a boy she meets on the beach tells her the island loves her. Addie starts digging into the island's history and finds two sisters who died there centuries ago.

Lesperance keeps the reader on the same knife-edge as Addie: everything she sees can be read as the island, or as a brain that was starved of oxygen for eight and a half minutes. The book stays with that ambiguity for a long time before it commits.