Graphic violence and bloody mayhem saturate this high-speed slasher story. However, the charming and incredibly shy Ollie, a white boy with hot-pink hair, a lip ring, and wanderlust, provides an excellent distraction from the horror and fear. As the only half–African-American and half–Native Hawaiian student in her school, she already stands out, but as the killing spree continues, the press descends, and rumors fly, Makani is increasingly nervous that her past will be exposed. She has developed a crush and made some friends, but a dark secret keeps her from truly opening up to those around her. Senior Makani Young has been living in corn-obsessed Nebraska for just a little over a year. Most freeze in fear, but a brave few try to stop the killings. Someone is murdering high school students. Author Mather’s ingredients make little sense, contrived in order to get Sam and readers onto the Titanic, but those who decide to hang their disbelief high will find that the scenes on the storied liner are effective in spite of the clumsy plotting.

And then there’s Matt, the new British student at school, whose cockney accent is reproduced with many distracting apostrophes. Elijah, the hot Puritan ghost Sam fell for in the previous book, has found a paranormal loophole and is now able to visit Sam again. BFF Jaxon suddenly starts acting distant, as if he’s bespelled, and her dad, concerned about the influence of witchcraft on Sam, suddenly threatens to move away from Salem.

A school project on the Titanic triggers a new round of paranormal distress, and Sam finds herself pulled back in time to the doomed ship via her connection to a distant relative who was a survivor. Her dad has recovered from his coma, her best friend, the town baker’s son, lives next door, and she’s found a community with the Descendants-young black-clad women descended from innocents accused of witchcraft during the Salem witch trials who, rather illogically, practice actual witchcraft. Cotton Mather’s umpty-great-granddaughters are back, this time with a Titanic mystery.įollowing the events of How to Hang a Witch (2016), narrator Sam Mather is settling into life in Salem, Massachusetts.

Haunting the Deep by Adriana Mather