THE DARK BENEATH THE ICE is a terrific, creepy story that poses many questions, one of which is: can an inner demon cause paranormal activity?

THE DARK BENEATH THE ICE is a fun-filled ghost story that covers all the possibilities - the occult, religion, psychological imbalance, inner demons, and yes, even ghosts.

If you like gasping aloud while reading, then dive into Amelinda Berube's fabulous debut novel.

The scariest element of this story was the examination of inner demons, because as a fully invested reader, you can't help but ask, "What parts of me have I been burying and denying? What would I be capable of if I truly accepted and loved myself? And on the flip-side, what am I capable of if I deny myself the love and acceptance I deserve despite my perceived shortcomings and flaws?"

We can't all be perfect ballerinas, but we can be the perfect individual we were created to be.

Some of my favorite lines from the book:

"It was quiet, but a comfortable quiet, a book-and-a-blanket quiet."

"We spent the second night on the beach watching a meteor shower. It was cloudless, moonless, the sky alive and infinite. Looking up into it made gravity seem precarious, like you could lose your grip on the world and tumble into the air."

I wanted to love this, but ultimately, it fell flat. Don't get me wrong, the potential is there, but I was left unsatisfied at the end. I would say I enjoyed it though.

**I was provided an ARC of this book by NetGalley and Sourcebooks Fire for my honest review. Many thanks to the publisher for this opportunity.

A very generous 3 stars.

I do not typically read YA paranormal books, but when I saw this one being marketed as "Paranormal Activity meets Black Swan," I had to give it a go. But I did not get what I expected.

Marianne's life has been turned upside down. Her parents are divorcing, her mom has checked herself in to a hospital, and she is staying with her aunt during all of this chaos. Suddenly, strange and unexplainable things are happening around her.

Marianne was a quite boring MC. She has no friends and she suddenly quit ballet. So forget the Black Swan comparison because this girl does not even dance anymore. The MC dances around the subject of why she quit, and then you find out what happened and it was such a let down. I felt the same about the reveal of the ghost at the end. We had twenty chapters of build up, and then the reveal is one big let down. I thought the end was the easy way out. There was so much potential for the ghost and where it came from.

I'm sure I would have loved this when I was a preteen, but this one was not for me. I devoured the first 75% of the book, then it suddenly felt like the story was just circling. It is a quick read though (I finished it within one day), and I pushed on hoping for a big pay off at the end. There were certain points where I did feel scared for the MC, and that is one reason I gave a generous 3 star rating to this book. The author creates a wonderfully scary atmosphere at the right moments, and I would read another one of her books.

4.5 stars. Reading this book was terrifying - I was having a full-blown meltdown while reading. This novel was so well-written, just building the fear and tension throughout, until the conclusion. A mix of Black Swan and Paranormal Activity is the perfect comparison, but I wish, and what I thought when I was getting into it, was that this was going to be more Paranormal Activity, with a side of Black Swan, instead of the other way around. That is on me - I was left so disappointed by the ending, but it was 100% because I misplaced my expectations (I was leaning too heavy on the "failed exorcism" part of the summary).

A+ for build of tension and fear, A+ for storytelling, A+ for including wlw characters (one confirmed lesbian, one still figuring out her label, one unconfirmed but suspected), C for follow through on the "failed exorcism" promise in the summary, and C for the ending (good, but not what I wanted, what I needed).

This is definitely more psychological thriller than horror, which was disappointing to me, despite my overall enjoyment. BUT this was an absolutely fantastic book and I still highly recommend it.

Received an Arc from sourcebooks,(thank you), I enjoyed this book, it held me right from the start and I had a hard time putting it down for sleep,(got up and read two more chapters), I am left a little confused by the ending, sort of working everything out in my head.
Deep down we can all understand struggling with our selves, it was a good way to bring it to light.

I was looking forward to this ghost tale especially since it's marketed as another Black Swan, but this was quite a disappointed. It started off intriguing and then the ghostly events started happening, and that was the whole story. Weird things happened every chapter multiple times and Marianne was terrified and Ron attempted to help her, but Marianne wanted to be secluded so the ghost couldn't hurt anyone. Each chapter repeated and there wasn't a real story outside of it. The characters were two-dimensional with no personality, like they were copy and pasted with different names and looks. The ending didn't make any sense and the details could have been reduced to make this novel half its current size.

Thanks Edelweiss and NetGalley for an ARC.

Thank you to Netgalley for the copy of this book to read & review

I loved this novel! It was so well written and it really held my interest. This was marketed as a cross between Paranormal Activity & Black Swan and in my opinion that is a perfect description.

Something is terribly wrong with Marianne or perhaps there is something very wrong that is following Marianne and is out to get her.. All Marianne knows is that he is in danger and her life is falling apart. She seems to be losing time and odd things happen while she is out.

I wouldn't say that this was extremely scary but then I did have a few moments where I was creeped out. I feel that Amelinda Bérubé did a fantastic job describing everything that was happening. I could picture the scenes completely. I could picture Aunt Jen's house as well as Marianne's home.

I feel like that novel did a wonderful job straddling the line between straight up horror and psychological horror. You could feel how scared Marianne was which is often something that I find is lacking with main characters in horror books. Often there will be ghosts or whatever and the main character is like "Hey, a ghost, will it hurt me or what?" It's like Duh! Yes!!! It is trying to hurt you girl!! Another thing I really loved about this novel was the LBGT representation in this book. There is a very sweet romance between two characters that I really enjoyed.

Excellent, thrilling book! So much suspense and honestly I'm still a bit confused by that ending, but it's not unpalatable. I found myself constantly having to pick up the book to find out what the mysterious entity is and what it wants. Loved the touch of romance as well. It was innocent and cute.

’m thinking between 3 and 4 Stars.

3.5 Stars
I DID RECIEVE A E-ARC FROM NETGALLEY FOR AN HONEST REVIEW.

This was a wonderfully weird story with horror, lgbt rep and anxiety rep. I enjoyed this story, it scared the crap out of me during some parts and pissed me off on a few others.

There isn’t much I can say without spoiling it but Marianne is haunted, she doesn’t know by what or what it wants but it’s out to destroy her and everything around her until it gets what it wants. Marianne is a character with extreme anxiety and it’s written to where you can tell for sure and feel the anxiety inside of her and I thought that was amazing. She also doesn’t know who she is yet or what she wants but she slowly figures it out during the story.

Ron was an amazing character. Vivid and kick ass. She took no shit and was loyal till the end. She showed Marianne who she was and who she wanted to be and I really enjoyed their relationship.
Marianne’s parents are weird in this story, it’s hard to explain and maybe that’s the point but I was struggling to get a grasp on her dad and what happened. Her mom was understandable and written with a story and a personality.

In the very beginning I came across a passage that really bothered me because The characters it was talking about we had not yet met and had no part of the story and honestly didn’t at all in the book. So basically two boys got suspended for online bullying and when they talk about it around school they claim a boy named Jeremy told on them and the passage says :
“It was Jeremy who told they said. You’d think he was some whiny little ninth grader instead of a senior. But it only made sense, others argued, since he was one of those special snowflakes in the so-called gay-straight alliance. Why did they have to be so In your face anyway, it was like nobody was allowed to have an opinion anymore. That was Jeremy all over, he took everything too seriously. No sense of humor. It’s not like they actually would have hurt him or anything, they protested and why did they have to share a locker room with him anyway, it wasn’t like they’d let guys use the same change room as girls. And guys like that, what they were into? That was just gross no offense or anything”

So as you can see. The passage itself is homophobic and I couldn’t tell if Marianne was thinking some of it or the bullies were or what? But it was just thrown in the story and I couldn’t figure out why. This was also before Marianne is ever written as gay or any sexuality actually so it almost made me put the book down in the third chapter?


Also Ron tells Marianne something very deep about herself and an old friend/ girl crush and then Marianne is thinking to herself how she should tell Ron about her story but then gets self conscious and doesn’t and then never does. So Ron opens up and tells you something secret but you don’t have to return it? Just wasn’t fair.

The ending also did not satisfy me at all. I was kind of left wondering and hanging. The haunted wasn’t what I expected but it made sense.

Overall decent book, good creep factor, nice relationships and characters. Just some parts were a little off for me.

I was given an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.

I love a good ghost story, but this one fell a little flat for me. The writing was descriptive, but didn't really pull me in or spook me. The premise seemed a bit silly, and I was disappointed in the "reveal". I probably would have loved this when I was a teenager, but the added teen lesbian relationship drama didn't really do it for me in this context. The book wasn't bad, and I read it rather quickly, but mostly to find out what was really going on with the main character.

Marianne has been having a tough time with the recent events of her parents starting the process of a divorce. Things are stressful enough for her, but she finds that she can't remember certain events. She's losing track of time, and it seems that things are happening around her while she believes she's in a dream. Is she just having bad anxiety due to the divorce, or could something more disturbing be in play?

This book is definitely a slow burn. The author does a fantastic job with setting up the plot and characters, giving great details and backstory that is beneficial, but not unnecessary. The author has such a unique writing style that, even when things feel to become really slow, the details we get make me keep going. The slowness of this book is absolutely necessary, as it adds to the effect later on in the book. This is a great example of a slow burn book.

Although I enjoyed the book, I do actually with that I felt a bit more for Marianne. I found myself a bit more intrigued in Ron, but it didn't deter me from enjoying the book. This is more a preference thing for me, so others may become more emotionally attached to Marianne than I did. Overall, I really enjoyed the book and recommend it. I think it's a great story for those who like slow burn books and are really interested in the details.

I received this as an ARC from NetGalley for free is exchange for my completely honest review.

From the beginning I thought this would be a 5 star read however half way through it became a bit boring. I kind of wished it was more psychological however it turned out to be paranormal which just didn't work for me.

The horror part was superb!
But the ending kind of ruin it... I was not expecting it. I am looking out for a real ghost. I mean she went to a psychic right?? and the psychic talked to it. I just don't get the ending... what really happens...

My original thoughts were: "Black Swan meets Paranormal Activity". Um, YES FUCKING PLEASE!

My final thoughts were: In theory the synopsis was entirely correct in pitching this book as an amalgamation of the two, but it was a far tamer combination than I had been ecpecting and this spoiled my overall enjoyment. No major flaws here, and a solid character and twisted story progression was to be found, this was purely a case of expectations too highly placed and this particular story being not exactly suited for my tastes. I can see this one garnering much high praise from others in the future, however, due to the poetic writing style and intense emotions it exuded.

*I got an ARC from publishers through NetGalley and this is my honest uninfluenced review*

Rating: 4 of 7; 4 of 5; 9 of 10

I think the most important thing I can say here is: this is a paranormal book. No kidding. I spent more then half of the book wondering if it was really a paranormal or just mental issue. In the beginning, there's a lot of descriptions, like, really a lot and I was pretty annoyed by it, but before 20% I realised it wasn't happening so constantly and it was easier then. Or maybe it was just because at this point I was totally hooked.
So, Marianne parents are getting a divorce. And like that wasn't hard enough for a teen, she starts to freak out. Time lapses, weird noises, things breaking. She is dispatched to her aunt's place, and after an episode in the class, she starts talking with this girl, Rhiannon (but she prefers Ron). Ron's mom is a psychic and after Marianne's not-so-helpful appointment, Ron decides to help Marianne by herself. Must say, it doesn't end very well, you know. Now Marianne is fighting with this thing that neither she or Ron actually knows what it is while it wants something from her. Something she stole from it.
You also get to see Marianne's feelings for Ron in a slow-burn, extremely cute and insecure realistic way that makes anything worth the time. The secondary characters are good, not too plain and not too deep that we can't even follow.
The whole book is written in a way that when you start to get your question straight, you won't wanna put it down. All you have to do is go through a confusing start, which, to be honestly honest, it's not so bad.

Ending: I'm starting to think that I'm the one who has a problem with endings, not the writers. I felt something was pretty rushed here. Since the second time she saw Ron's mother to the very end, I felt something was missing, but missing is not the right word. It's more like everything was tied too easily, which it's not actually a problem, but it annoys me.

Downsides: I was expecting more about she quitting dance and the breakdown after it, that way I feel that it wasn't such a big deal as I was made to think it was - especially cause it was apparently the breaking point - but honestly I felt like it was a normal-teen-rebellion.

Side note: There was a scene when Marianne is hearing like a hammer again and again and I was here, alone, at night, with a neighbour hamming some shit and honestly to god I thought I would lose my mind.

Tags: lgbtq+; unreliable narrator; horror; paranormal; debut; writer debut; ghost; slow burn romance; lesbians; gay girls; ya horror; suspense; mystery; mental health;

This was super creepy and suspenseful and wonderfully written! It was exciting and the world building was incredible. Definitely recommend.

Absolutely fantastic possession (ish) book! And great representation also.
Would recommend to read, especially around Halloween. I actually read this on Friday the 13th!

Creepy, atmospheric horror novel. Marianne was a compelling and unreliable narrator with her gaps in memory and lost time. The occult aspect was creepy. Apparently this is a cross between Black Swan and Paranormal Activity, as I have not seen either, I cannot speak to its accuracy or not. However, it's GOOD. I read it in two days.

This book was a unique read as you question everything up until you get to the end. You wonder is she really possessed or is there some darker psychological problems occurring. I was really blown away at the writing skills of this author and was totally shipping the two main characters the entire way. I would love to see maybe a spin off of this book or to see something from the moms perspective.5 stars from me!

The story started slow, but I kept reading and I am so glad I did. This was the best book I read it a really long time, I just wanted to keep reading it. I actually got a little scared reading it in bed at night with the lights off. The only reason I gave the book a four star was because I didn't really like the end of the book. I will leave it at that, so I don't give any spoilers.