[Lisa’s Review]: The Dark Tide by Alicia Jasinska

The Wicked Deep meets A Curse So Dark and Lonely in this gripping, dark fairy-tale fantasy about two girls who must choose between saving themselves, each other, or their sinking island city.

Every year on St. Walpurga's Eve, Caldella's Witch Queen lures a boy back to her palace. An innocent life to be sacrificed on the full moon to keep the island city from sinking.

Lina Kirk is convinced her brother is going to be taken this year. To save him, she enlists the help of Thomas Lin, the boy she secretly loves, and the only person to ever escape from the palace. But they draw the queen's attention, and Thomas is chosen as the sacrifice.

Queen Eva watched her sister die to save the boy she loved. Now as queen, she won't make the same mistake. She's willing to sacrifice anyone if it means saving herself and her city.

When Lina offers herself to the queen in exchange for Thomas's freedom, the two girls await the full moon together. But Lina is not at all what Eva expected, and the queen is nothing like Lina envisioned. Against their will, they find themselves falling for each other. As water floods Caldella's streets and the dark tide demands its sacrifice, they must choose who to save: themselves, each other, or the island city relying on them both.

I received this book for free from Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Here’s the thing: every once in a while, there’s a book that seemingly has everything you could ever wish for, and has all the promise in the world and yet for whatever reason, you can’t connect to the story and the characters in the way you wanted to or thought you would. And unfortunately, this exactly what happened to me with this Alicia Jasinska’s The Dark Tide. While the idea and the world behind the story are fascinating, the book ultimately did not win me over.

In the initial chapters, I was pretty overwhelmed. There’s no easing into the story; I felt like there was too much happening at once, and at the same time, I thought we weren’t really getting anywhere. The world-building, which was good for the most part, is what got me through these chapters. The whole island city set-up with the looming tide was intriguing and gave me serious Winterwood vibes – dark, magical, dramatic.

The book is definitely more plot-driven than character-driven, which is also one of the reasons it did not work for me because for me the characters are an essential part of the story. Your plot can be absolutely flawless, but if you don’t have an impressive set of characters to back it up I won’t love it. There’s not much to the characters really; there’s no real depth to them whatsoever. Eva did appeal to me more than any other character though. And she and Lina are the only ones who have a bit of character development. Halfway through, I wondered if I would even finish the book; there were so many puzzle pieces that I thought were missing, and simply got lost between everything else that was going on. The second half of the book was a bit better, but I still have so many questions. And I’m sad to say the romance element doesn’t deliver what the synopsis promised at all.

To sum it up, I loved the essence of the book, but there was so much unused potential, and it simply didn’t live up to my expectations. If the synopsis sounds good to you, though, give it a try. Maybe it works better for you than it did for me.

Lisa

Hi! I’m Lisa. I’m twenty-three, a college student and a book lover. I spend every free minute, and most of my lectures, reading all kinds of books, which is how I ended up here. While I particularly enjoy books of the young and new adult variety, I also love historical fiction, sci-fi, fantasy, paranormal, all things romance, and one or the other classic as well. If I’m not reading, I’m either working, sleeping, binge-watching my newest obsession on Netflix, or on my way to Starbucks, to satisfy my slight caffeine addiction.