The Music of the Deep

I just celebrated my birthday at the end of May, and I got a few books as gifts from my sister. One of them was The Music of the Deep by Elizabeth Hall. It’s primarily set in Washington’s San Juan Islands (which I know very well), though on a made up island with a haunting reputation. This looked different from what I usually read, and I was excited to dive in for my first book of June.

The Music of the Deep by Elizabeth Hall
Audience	Adult
Genre	Drama; Suspense
Setting	Washington
Number of Pages	287
Format I Read	Paperback
Original Publication Date	April 17, 2018

Official Summary

Fleeing an abusive marriage and tormented by her past, Alexandra Turner finds solace in a small coastal town on Puget Sound and a job with a local marine biologist studying orcas.

After befriending a group of locals, Alex learns that she has moved to a place that has a reputation of being the “most haunted town in Washington.” Such superstitions would be easy to dismiss…if Alex wasn’t already on edge.

Haunted by shreds of memories of her days with her husband, Alex can’t keep from looking over her shoulder. As unexplained sounds and scents accumulate and unnerving forces seem to take hold, Alex is beginning to believe that she’s not escaping her ghosts, after all. In fact, she might finally be inviting them in.

Review

The Music of the Deep initially drew me in for its heartbreaking beginning. Alex is in an abusive marriage in every sense of the word. Daniel is physically, psychologically, emotionally, and verbally abusive, and when she flees from their home in New Mexico to the Pacific Northwest, she fears what he will do if he finds her. It was painful to read about, and I felt for Alex.

She ends up living with an older marine biologist studying orcas in the San Juan Islands in Washington (albeit in the made up town of Copper Cove). Alex helps with her notes, but she also makes new friends in town. She joins a Spinsters group, which brings a sense of levity to an otherwise serious novel. To be honest, I wish they weren’t quite so funny all the time; they often broke the mood.

Copper Cove is purported to be the most haunted town in Washington, but that never really goes anywhere. I was hoping for a more ghostly atmosphere, for something spooky, but the only scary thing about this book is the looming threat of Alex’s abusive ex finding her.

There are also a lot of characters, each with their own (rather unnecessary) backstories. It took away from Alex’s story, which should have been more than enough to carry the whole novel. Adding to the lack of follow-through, a sort of mystery surrounding some characters is introduced late in the novel, but it also doesn’t go anywhere. It remains unsolved, doesn’t connect to anything, and feels like another loose thread that the book should have either closed or not introduced at all.

Final Thoughts

While there is much I liked about The Music of the Deep—its portrayal of an abusive marriage; the San Juan Islands; healing animals—it also didn’t hit the mark a lot of the time. It wasn’t focused enough, and it didn’t follow through on certain elements it set up, like the “most haunted town” setting or the introduction of new storylines. If it was tightened up to be more about Alex and leaned further into the spooky atmosphere, this would have been a more impactful novel.