This is not at all something I thought I would like. The cover is awesome. However, it is an underwater adventure and a dystopian retelling of TREASURE ISLAND. I hate everything in that sentence. And yet, I couldn't put it down!
The earth is under constant cloud cover and rain. Almost no one alive has ever seen the sun, unless they are filthy rich and can afford to climb Everest to get above the cloud cover. Arizona is barely above water and Jin and her little sister Thara, who run an inn, are on their own since their father's death in a diving accident. Both girls are excellent divers, but Thara is only 14 and Jin is very cagey about diving since she lost her dad.
But then Bhili enters their lives with a sweet little pile of gold coins that they definitely need to keep the inn afloat and Thara in school and they get caught up in a caper to salvage LOTS of those gold coins from beneath the sea in the ruins of Las Vegas. There is also Taim, Jin's ex, who is now in the Coasties who might not be trustworthy and Joao Silva, a disreputable pirate with a killer backstory.
The action is grippy, the stakes are high and despite the very satisfying ending, there is clearly a second volume in the making. Thiru makes a large cast of characters individually memorable and has a nice detail about salvage where works of art are mentioned in enough detail for the reader to investigate and find them online which adds a nice little enrichment activity. Some of the violence was a little too visceral for me, I'm a big baby about that sort of thing, but it mostly just reinforced my desire to never do a deep sea dive. If I'm being honest, there was never a chance anyway. I was very surprised at how much I enjoyed this book and I am eagerly looking forward to more.
(Read for MTCBA and it BETTER get nominated!)
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