The frogs are chirping as the sun sets, casting a pink glow across the sky. I paddle my kayak slowly, watching the mangroves on either side. Occasionally I spot the headlights of a car as it goes down the road to my right.
Those are the first two sentences from chapter twenty-one of “The Girl Beneath the Sea.”
Blurb: Coming from scandalous Florida treasure hunters and drug smugglers, Sloan McPherson is forging her own path, for herself and for her daughter, out from under her family’s shadow. An auxiliary officer for Lauderdale Shores PD, she’s the go-to diver for evidence recovery. Then Sloan finds a fresh kill floating in a canal—a woman whose murky history collides with Sloan’s. Their troubling ties are making Sloan less a potential witness than a suspect. And her colleagues aren’t the only ones following every move she makes. So is the killer.
Stalked by an assassin, pitted against a ruthless cartel searching for a lost fortune, and under watch within her ranks, Sloan has only one ally: the legendary DEA agent who put Sloan’s uncle behind bars. He knows just how deep corruption runs—and the kind of danger Sloan is in. To stay alive, Sloan must stay one step ahead of her enemies—both known and unknown—and a growing conspiracy designed to pull her under.
My thoughts so far:
Interesting character. Sloan is a tough-as-nails character and I liked her immediately. She has an off again, on again, boyfriend slash baby daddy that she loves but for some reason yet unknown, she doesn’t feel worthy of his love. She has a daughter who is a spitfire and basically a miniature version of Sloan and again, I just like that character arc. I like women who are strong, know their mind and aren’t afraid to get a little bloody. Sloan has a really interesting job, she’s the go-to diver for evidence recovery – meaning, she dives into murky waters and searches for crime-scene evidence and often finds dead bodies in those searches. The book opens with her diving to find some archeological tidbits for her professor and when she hears an ominous splash, she just assumes it’s an alligator and she draws her knife in preparation. She doesn’t panic, she doesn’t squeal like a girl and try and get out, she just braces herself for battle.
I love her job. I don’t recall ever following a character with that type of job before and I’m looking forward to seeing what other treasures she finds throughout the story.
I’m at the part where she discovers money has been missing and/or been stolen from the mob and somehow they think she had something to do with it. They are now starting to hunt her. I also find the legendary DEA agent that turned her uncle in sort of being her unofficial bodyguard an interesting aspect of the story and I’m looking forward to seeing how that relationship pans out.
Run, which is Sloan’s love interest, sort of, has a hot temper and it’s been foreshadowed that he might end up doing something off the cuff that could potentially help, or hurt, Sloan. We’re still in the early stages of the story but basically, we’re trying to figure out who killed Samantha, the girl that made the splash in the water at the beginning of the story. (Spoiler alert: It wasn’t an alligator). I’m about 35% of the way through the story and I like it so far.
Write From Karen 