Book Review: "The Devil's Shallows" by Debra Castaneda

 

Eight miles of mystery. One night of terror.

Residents trapped in a remote neighborhood confront the unimaginable in this horror novel from award-winning author Debra Castaneda.

The salt marsh at Devil’s Landing is home to a terrifying urban legend.

Adam Gray knows the old stories about the Slough Devil, the missing children, and the mutilated animals. But the naturalist and wilderness survival expert doesn’t believe in monsters. Not even when a tourist on his boat sees a strange creature in the tidal channel and captures it on video.

When Adam moves into a controversial housing development next to the marsh, shocking new evidence emerges, and it’s not long before he’s confronted with a series of horrifying and unexplained events.

It takes Christina, his feisty new neighbor, to get him to believe something lurks in the slough. Something disturbed by the new community.

When a massive storm maroons the residents, Adam and Christina find themselves trapped and tested in a fight for their lives. - from Booksirens.com

Thank you to Booksirens.com and the author for allowing me this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

*** Possible Spoilers Ahead ***

I wasn't able to sit down and get this review out right away, so some details may be lacking, but I will try to remember the best I can.

Originally I requested this story due to description sounded open and inviting - like was there a portal to a different place/time/world. The cover art left me wondering as well, as one can see what appears to be some blood, in a water shore type background. I was a litle surprsied at what happens, and though I felt a little cheated at the possible fantasy part of the story, I realized there was still plenty in stock for me.

I'm sure many of us have heard urban legends, and this story is somewhat situated around one - though I do not know if it is a "true urban legend" in our world. Our main character is one that has grown up in this area (I think it is like some smaller po-dunk in California). Many times one has heard parents  threatening the 'slough devil' that'll come and take them. The 'slough devil' lives out in the boonies near the tributary, in land most don't venture into. No one has seen them, though many claim they have, but have no proof.

So out story starts out with a new community being built a ways out of the local town, next to this tributary. Our main characters, Adam, who works as a tour guide on said tributary, and Christina, a once-been local news reporter, are both moving in as winners of some kind of lottery drawing for the limited available, lower income housing. The story is narrated through both of them, flipping between them every couple chapters. These two characters obviously like each other, and yet both have reservations about starting a relationship. Not my area of studied reading, so moving along.

One day, a tourist on the boat Adam drives, actually gets some video of the slough devil, which becomes a sensation and brings hundreds of people looking for it.  A kayaking trip up the tributary finds Adam and the group of residents from the new community facing the event of a slough devil killing one of their party. Somehow (I'm a bit foggy as to the exact event) it turns out that there are more than one slough devil, and they start becoming aggressive (perhaps because the community was built almost literally across the water from their home?). It all gets pretty intense as a nighttime attack of the devils find only three survivors from the new community.

I will admit, this one started kind of slow. As each of the two characters started their narration, giving the background basics of both, and why they were here in this area, it slowly picked up. By around the middle of the book, I wanted to find out what was actually going to happen. Castaneda has done a fine job of writing, describing the character's world, that I felt comforrtable with my mental image. Dialogue between characters, main or other, seemd a bit stilted - but I am not a social butterfly either, so maybe it is just me thinking it could be a little more ... something. Writing style was easy to read, and though there were warnings of profanity, violence and death, I thought they were not overly excessive.

Overall, I enjoyed this as a modern day kind of horror novel, with some good possible fantasy. There is a possible explaination to the slough devil, but as in many urban legends, who really knows how it came to be.

#Booksirens #TheDevilsShallows