Eight miles underwater with nowhere to run should have been my absolute nightmare. The Deep has such a good setup: a mysterious plague destroying humanity, a potential miracle cure at the bottom of the ocean, and a research station that suddenly stops communicating with the surface. There were parts of this that genuinely creeped me the fuck out. I just wish the entire book had worked for me as much as the concept did.

Luke travels to the bottom of the Mariana Trench after contact is lost with the underwater research station where his brother is working. The scientists down there have been studying something called ambrosia, a strange substance that might be humanity's only chance of curing the ’Gets, a disease that slowly causes people to forget everything until their bodies eventually forget how to function.

That premise immediately got me.

The underwater setting was easily my favorite part. There is something terrifying about being that far below the surface, surrounded by complete darkness and an amount of pressure that would instantly kill you if anything went wrong. The station feels incredibly isolated, and Cutter does a really good job of making it feel like there is absolutely nowhere safe to go.

And when the horror works, it WORKS. There are some deeply disturbing images in this book, especially once Luke starts questioning what he's seeing and whether he can trust his own mind. The combination of body horror, isolation, hallucinations, and whatever the hell is lurking down there creates some genuinely nasty moments.

But I kept waiting for everything to come together in a way that completely grabbed me, and it never quite happened.

The ’Gets was actually one of the most interesting parts of the premise for me, but once Luke reaches the station, that larger story mostly becomes background noise. I wanted more connection between what was happening on the surface, the ambrosia, and everything happening below it.

There were also stretches where the constant nightmare imagery started losing some of its effect on me. Instead of becoming more scared, I occasionally felt like I was just moving from one horrible vision to another while waiting for the story to move forward.

I didn't dislike this at all. The atmosphere is oppressive, the body horror is disgusting, and the idea of being trapped eight miles beneath the ocean with something you don't understand is horrifying. I just loved the premise more than I loved where the story ultimately took it.