I loved this book and will be adding to it as one of the books of the year. An amazing tale of superstition mixed with a great story and intriguing characters. Loved the ending

Katsu casts her spell by weaving together the timelines of the sinking of the Titanic and the explosion of sister ship Britannic. There are ghostly goings-on, séances, marital strife, and the clash of class on the Titanic. All of which foreshadow the tragedy. The action on the Britannic provides closure to the mysterious occurrences. Despite some unresolved plot points, this is a haunting, paranormal novel that captures that cold, visceral feeling of impending danger and the terror of sinking ships.

What if the sinking of the Titanic was not down to human error but down to another unworldy force? This is the very question that Alma Katsu puts to us in 'The Deep'. If you are into Titanic history you will be aware of the supposed 'Titanic curse' that has been discussed for many years and that is why I did not hesitate in requesting this book when it came up on Netgalley.

Set aboard the famous Titanic and her sister ship Britannic we meet the mysterious Annie Hebbley who has taken on the role of a stewardess aboard the ill-fated Titanic and a nurse on the Britannic. Quickly the Titanic's maiden voyage is met with a series of strange going-ons and some its most famous passengers can feel a sinister presence haunting the ship. Significantly the book uses real life passengers from the Titanic such as John Jacob Astor, WT Stead, Benjamin Guggenheim and Lady Duff Gordon to help the story flow. The reader encounters seances, deaths, drugs and eerie presences as the story develops but how is Annie Hebbley involved? Why is she drawn to first class passenger Mark Fletcher and his baby Ondine?

As the book progresses we start to see little clues thrown in as to why Annie is important to this story and it is only on the Britannic that we learn the real truth of Annie's past. However, I did find myself a little confused towards the end of the book and had to reread several pages to get the full jist of what was happening.

I would recommend this book if you like a little eeriness in your books.

*3.5 stars *

Stories surrounding the sinking of the Titanic on her maiden voyage seem to have an eternal draw, and this one is no different. What does make this one slightly different from the rest however, is the fact that it weaves within it’s storyline, a touch of the paranormal.



Using dual timelines, we follow Annie Hebbley, a stewardess serving the wealthiest passengers onboard the Titanic in 1912. Annie is fortunate enough to survive this great tragedy, and we follow her escapades some four years later as a nurse on Titanic’s sister ship Britannic, which had been refitted as a hospital ship during WW1.

Annie had spent the intervening four years institutionalised in a Liverpool asylum, and we discover that she has many demons, both real and imagined.

The storyline is both compelling and dramatic, but I felt a little disappointed with the paranormal side of it - it just wasn’t as creepy as I was expecting it to be. Nevertheless it was interesting to see just how popular the occult was as a pastime amongst the very wealthy during this period in history. Lots of characters are showcased, both real and fictional, though I’m not sure I really connected with any of them. Despite these issues, I did enjoy the storyline overall, but with some reservations.

This is a great book. Very well written and wonderful characters. The ending is also fantastic, it ties everything together.

Excellent. Heartbreaking story very clever is it or isn’t it type story. Loved the supporting characters, all in all a great read.

Gripping, creepy, an enjoyable roller coaster of a ride and a curse on board SS.Titanic - what more could you want!

As a proud card carrying member of the Titanic nerd club, mixing a haunting element into it was almost too much for my geekdom to take....in the good way! This was a great read and the setting and characters worked for me in every way. Two thumbs way up.

I failed to finish "The Deep" giving up at 48%, this was very disappointing as I loved "The Hunger". The problem is that the author tries to use the trick which worked so effectively in the previous book here; effectively trying to build a supernatural angle into the Titanic story, as she did with the Donmar Disappearance in "The Hunger". But it just does not work; the dialogue is stilted, characters are dull and I found the whole plot uninvolving and boring. I will be amazed if this book repeats the success of "The Hunger".

Something is haunting the Titanic.

1916. Annie Hebbley, having spent the past years in a mental facility, decides that it's time to move on from the Titanic tragedy that has been haunting her. She boards the sister ship, Britannic, as a nurse, in an attempt to move on with her life. But life on the Britannic keeps reminding her of a dark past. It keeps bringing back to her memories of the Titanic. And the dark fate that haunted the great ship day before it met its demise.

1912. As passengers start boarding the Titanic, stewardess Annie Hebbley comes face to face with Mark Fletcher. Why does it feel like she knows this man very well? And what is this connection she feels with another man's baby?

As a stewardess for the first-class passengers, Annie will meet many of them - like renowned millionaires Madeleine Astor and Benjamin Guggenheim. And all of them feel that something strange is happening on board the Titanic. As days go by, everyone gets more agitated by the hour. Are they all losing their minds?

The Deep is an attempt to a haunting of the most notorious sinking in naval history: the Titanic. Moving back and forth in time between the two ships known as 'sister vessels' - the Titanic and the Britannic - Alma Katsu creates pieces for a puzzle that the reader is asked to solve.

The story is narrated by many different people, and seen from different perspectives. Everyone has a different point of view, but they all agree on one thing: something is very wrong with the ship. It almost feels like a haunting.

The Deep has an attention-grasping concept. The narrations is very good, and the plot moves quite slowly, but surely towards a peak that the reader probably doesn't expect. At times, toward the end, it felt like the explanation behind it all wasn't particularly convincing; like some pieces of Katsu's puzzle didn't fit in 100% with each other. But in its majority, it was smartly constructed, with well-built characters, and an unexpected ending.

A recommended read for fans of the supernatural, and strongly recommended for fans of the story of Titanic.

My thanks to NetGalley and publisher Random House UK - Transworld Publishers, for the ARC.
I found this story to be intriguing and absorbing, excepting I found it rather confusing at times, as the author has seemed to interject some supernatural/folk-lore element into the stories unfolding.
For those familiar with the last Titanic film (DiCaprio et al), and the previous films and documentaries of the ship's fateful maiden voyage, you cannot help but draw comparisons and parallels to those representations and accounts. The story presented is part fact/part fiction, bringing together 1912 on the Titanic and 1916 on the sister ship, Britannic, converted to a hospital ship in the Mediterranean.
The links between the two voyages are Annie Hebbley and her best friend Violet, together with Mark and Caroline Fletcher and their baby Ondine.
Annie, with Violet, was stewardess aboard the Titanic. A sense of unease clouded the lives of the passengers. From the moment Annie sets eyes on Mark Fletcher there is a connection; she knows him, she fantasises about him, they are meant to be together.
She becomes a heroine, saving Ondine from a potential watery grave.
Four years later, having spent that time in an asylum in Liverpool, Annie receives letters from Violet imploring her to work with her on the Britannic. Annie isn't mentally incapacitated and is willingly released to join the ship. One of the wounded soldiers she recognises as Mark Fletcher and her emotions get the better of her - with devastating consequences.

Is Annie really the stewardess from the Titanic or had she walked into the sea years before?

There's quite a bit of surrealism going on and you have to draw your own conclusions. I found the writing style to be rather convoluted and the narrative to be unnecessarily lengthy in some places with no real consequence leading from it.

Interesting - you decide.
2.5 stars really.

The fact that I don't know many actual facts about The Titanic's passengers meant that this book missed the mark for me sadly. It was an interesting story but I prefer my horror stories with a few more chills. I did like the paranormal/folklore twist.

Not for me I’m afraid. The writing was clunky and had an odd tone, and the plot was confusing and hard to follow. As for the supposing spine chilling nature of the story, it just never appeared and all attempts at horror felt quite flat for me.

DNF 60%

I'm not entirely sure why this book has been categorised as a 'horror'. Maybe I went in expecting a more 'adult' read, and so I was a wee bit disappointed by its Scooby-Doo type of mystery. All of its so called 'horror' elements felt either forced or unintentionally funny.
I think that one of the reasons why I was unable to connect or take the characters and their story seriously is the writing style. I'm unsure whether Katsu was intentionally trying to emulate certain books from the period in which her book is set in (mostly the 1910s) but rather than faithfully evoking that time it comes across as being a clumsy pastiche.
The two timelines aren't weaved together very well so that there seemed to an imbalance between the 'past' and the 'present'. The characters on the Titanic seemed very thinly drawn: the women and their husbands were all same-y. I knew that our 'protagonist' was interested in one couple but that's about the only thing that stood out about them.
This book tries to create suspense by having characters shiver or breathe...which yeah, doesn't do much for me. I thought the story could have benefited from a more mature and creepy atmosphere...sadly the story sets a rather cheesy, and therefore not very scary, tone which seemed more suited to early Gothic fiction (such The Castle of Otranto or in novels by Ann Radcliffe).
The story was silly and melodramatic, the writing mostly consisted of frivolous descriptions and an abundance of short sentences which tried, and failed, to create some tension (“They shake. His hand is not large but no small. His grip is warm but formal. His movements are precise.”), and the characters were both forgettable and unconvincing.
I tried to finish this (especially since this is an arc so I felt some sort of misguided sense of duty) but I just could not bring myself to read any more of it...part of me wonders how it got published in the first place.
Here are a few examples of why I didn't find the writing all that...great:

➜ “The night the great ship went down is, of course, cut into her memory with the prismatic perfection of solid ice.”

➜ “She took a breath. She might be frightened, but she felt in her bones: this moment, this ship, was her destiny.”

➜ “She can feel herself in the water once more, wrapped in it succumbing to it, called by it, by some force she didn't know yet recognize intimately. Some voice calling her home.”

➜ “He stood up a bit taller. He weren't scared of these ladies. (I'm unsure whether the 'weren't' was a mistake or if it was intentional).”

➜ “He shivered. Would she follow them until the bitter end?”

➜ “Maddy looks down at the cold, dark sea. Into the fathomless abyss. It was a long, long way down.”

➜ “[T]he joy went out of her, like a soul departing the body.”

A creepy tale about a haunting on the titanic. Quite interesting and believable. I loved it thjs take on it. Highly recommended to history and paranormal lovers

Having read The Hunger, I was interested to see how Alma Katsu continued her vibe of horror into The Deep, a re-telling of the story of the Titanic. Flitting between 1916 and the fateful maiden voyage of the Titanic, Katsu digs deep into tension and fear to present her unique brand of historical fiction. I love the smooth pace of the writing, the deep intimacy of the visual descriptions and the characterisations of the people who stayed with me long after I put the book down.

I'm always a bit of a sucker for stories about the Titanic. They're always thinking of new stories as to why it might have ended up the disaster it did and this book goes that bit further and involves things of the supernatural variety.

Annie Hebbley is a Titanic survivor but is now locked up in a Liverpool asylum but recovers to go onboard the Titanic's sister ship the Britannic, now serving as a hospital ship. There she encounters the wounded Mark Fletcher who she recognizes from the titanic. Strange perhaps, but then things get more curious still...

There'a mix of real and fictional characters here which blends to make a fascinating read. The Titanic's
rich list such as Madeleine Astor and Benjamin Guggenheim star as do the other, less human shall we say, beings on or around the ship. What is going on on that ship and why did it sink? What did the people see before the ship hit the ice? There's enough of the supernatural chills to make you shiver from the very start and it adds to the overfamiliar story of the ship by adding an exciting new dimension. Of course you have to suspend your sense of disbelief somewhat...or do you?

The stories of the Titanic and the Britannic are well documented and this two ships were very unlucky as it turned out. There is also the case of one woman having been on both ships and involved in an accident on a third who I read about and though strange things do happen!

Bizarre story but another one for Titanic 'fans'
.

Like her previous best selling work The Hunger Alma Katsu combines historical fiction with the supernatural to provide an account of why The Titanic's maiden voyage was always doomed. There is no doubt that much historical research would have gone into this work as fact mingles with fiction and the reader gets an understanding of what it would have been like being on board the illustrious ocean liner.

The story begins in 1916 with Annie Hebbley a Titanic survivor incarcerated in a Liverpool asylum but soon to be released to take on a position as a nurse on the Titanic's sister ship the Britannic, now serving as a hospital ship. There she encounters the wounded Mark Fletcher another Titanic survivor who's paths had previously crossed on both the Titanic and perhaps more sinisterly elsewhere. Through past narratives the story however
fantastical and horrifying it seems at first sight is revealed.

This is well written with a number of sub plots and interesting characters both fictional and fact based including Madeleine Astor and Benjamin Guggenheim. The supernatural element is always present with a sense of unease and disquiet prevalent. I finished the book in two days which is always a sign of engagement and as the book progressed and the supernatural element became more pronounced one or two chills could be felt along the spine. If you are either a lover of either historical fiction or the supernatural then this could be for you.

After loving her [book:The Hunger|38092115], I had such high hopes for this but sadly it doesn't live up to that earlier book for me. Katsu's writing is still fluent and involving and this starts off well as Annie, an Irish girl and survivor of the Titanic, takes a job as a nurse on the Titanic's sister ship, now a hospital ship in 1916.

The narrative flits between the two voyages both of which, as we know from history, end up disastrously. I expected more of the creeping terror of The Hunger but there are no shivers here despite much talk of spirits, demons, silkies, sirens and a folkloric sea-witch.

The Titanic story focuses on the elite passengers: Guggenheim, Duff-Cooper, Astor; the 1916 story starts off with war-time detail then seems to forget about it... the final 'twist' made me, I confess, roll my eyes a bit.

I'd still say that Katsu's prose is a step up on many commercial writers but I expected more creepiness from this. The historical evocation works well but I just wasn't convinced by Annie's tale.

I’m a sucker for stories set around Titanic and this one was a creepy good tale, seamlessly blending fact and fiction, atmospheric and often very disturbing.

The research is impeccable, Alma Katsu giving you a real feel for both of these doomed ships, into that she throws an eclectic mix of characters both real and imagined. Throw in some ghostly goings on, huge insight into the trauma of war and disaster, plus an eerie obsessive central theme and you have a real winner.

The writing is superb, involving and genuinely absorbing the reader into the thrills and perils of ocean travel of the time where something unnatural lurks there in The Deep…

Very good indeed. Another to watch in 2020. Highly Recommended.