Title: Curious Tides (Drowned Gods #1)
Author: Pascale Lacelle
Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books
Source: Publisher
Format: Hardcover
Release Date: October 3, 2023
Rating: ★★★★
Goodreads Synopsis:
Ninth House meets A Deadly Education in this gorgeous dark academia fantasy following a teen mage who must unravel the truth behind the secret society that may have been involved in her classmates’ deaths.
Emory might be a student at the prestigious Aldryn College for Lunar Magics, but her healing abilities have always been mediocre at best—until a treacherous night in the Dovermere sea caves leaves a group of her classmates dead and her as the only survivor. Now Emory is plagued by strange, impossible powers that no healer should possess.
Powers that would ruin her life if the wrong person were to discover them.
To gain control of these new abilities, Emory enlists the help of the school’s most reclusive student, Baz—a boy already well-versed in the deadly nature of darker magic, whose sister happened to be one of the drowned students and Emory’s best friend. Determined to find the truth behind the drownings and the cult-like secret society she’s convinced her classmates were involved in, Emory is faced with even more questions when the supposedly drowned students start washing ashore— alive —only for them each immediately to die horrible, magical deaths.
And Emory is not the only one seeking answers. When her new magic captures the society’s attention, she finds herself drawn into their world of privilege and power, all while wondering if the truth she’s searching for might lead her right back to Dovermere…to face the fate she was never meant to escape.
Review:
Emory has healing magic, but she isn’t at the best student at Aldryn College for Lunar Magic. After Emory was the only survivor when her best friend, Romie, and seven other students died at Dovermere caves, her magic has changed. She gets help from Bas, her best friend’s brother, to learn her new magic. Both Emory and Bas are looking for answers as to why Romie was in the caves and how Emory gained new powers. Her powers catch the attention of a cult-like society at the school, so Emory joins them to get answers, but she’s led back to Dovermere, where it all began.
This story had rich, detailed world building. The magic that everyone possessed was determined by the moon when they were born. Their magic was strongest when that form of the moon was in the sky. It was a complex magic system so that world building took up a lot of the first half of the book. There were some great surprising twists near the end of the story. I can’t wait to read more books in this world!
Curious Tides is a great dark academia story!
Thank you Simon Teen and Simon and Schuster Canada for providing copies of this book!
Content warnings: parental abandonment, imprisonment, death, blood
Have you read Curious Tides? What did you think of it?
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