I would describe this book as dark, witchy and atmospheric.

The prose is beautiful, every scenario is described in a way that the readers can see it in their mind. This makes you feel enchanted from the beggining, and I couldn´t stoped reading bacause of the need to know more and more about this world.

In this novel we have a small town where the witches rule and the sea is a monster hungry for blood. Every year a boy must be chosen as a sacrifice to “the dark tide” by the Witch Queen. And on St. Walpurga's Eve, Lina attend to the revel looking for his brother to save him. But things goes not as planned and Lina end making a dangerous deal to save the person she loves.

We follow the POV of two main characters: Eva, the Witch Queen, and Lina. Both are strong womens who protect the persons they love above all. I really liked to read from both perspectives, it made me connect more with Eva and Lina.

The plot has some topics already seen in YA fantasy and I´ve would liked to have some more pages to understand better everything about this world and the previous queens. Apart from that, I enjoyed the book a lot.

Thanks to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Fire for the ARC.

I was sold by the promise of it being a fairy tale, the wicked deep and witches. I saw Witches and Wicked Deep and instantly requested the e-ARC.

**Thank you Netgalley and Sourcebooks Fire for the e-ARC**
On St. Walpurga's Eve a young, innocent boy has to be lured into the tower to die in order to save the island. Lina Kirk's secret love Thomas is selected, but Lina doesn't want this to happen. She volunteers to go in his place. Once there, Lina meets the queen Eva. Eva saw her sister die to save the boy she loved, and wants to do everything that is possible to save the city. The two start to fall for each other.

I think that the world building was fantastic. It was so dark and visually beautiful. The whole description of the magical castle was great. The sea serpent was so interesting and I'm hoping it shows up in a sequel. I did have some questions about the world building, but it is the first in a series, thus I feel like it'll be answered in later books.

The writing is also beautiful. It draws you in and just paints everything so clear. If you like books with beautiful writing I highly recommend this to you.

I think this novel could've been a bit longer, because we would've got some more questions answered and some more development of Eva's sister. Overall, though I thought this book was great. Eva was interesting but I wish we got more backstory. Lina was fantastic though. She had a good heart and had a great arc.

Disclaimer: I have no idea what this story was based off of, but I'm going to be looking it up now.

4/5 stars.
I recommend this to fans of beautiful writing, fairy tale settings and witches. I think if you like House of Salt and Sorrows, you should pick it up. They both are dark, fairytale retellings and you can feel like you are right in the story, experiencing the story with them.

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This review is part of a blog tour with the publisher, it will be posted on my blog when the dates are rescheduled.

Why did no-one tell me this was a sapphic Tam Lin retelling?! I've been looking for something like this for years!

For generation's Lina's town have offered up one of their young men every year to become the Witch Queen's lover, so that she can sacrifice him to the sea, keeping their island afloat. But the last Witch Queen chose to sacrifice herself and save the boy, so now her sister Eva is queen. When Eva claims the boy Lina loves, the Lina offers herself instead.

It's a very dramatic, "I volunteer as tribute" type moment.

I really liked the relationship between Lina and her brother Finlay. As a sibling, it felt very real to me, very "no-one get to thrash you but me". It was nice to see a sibling relationship that's imperfect but not filled with jealousy or misunderstandings. Similarly, I really liked the dynamic between Lina and Eva, which starts out as antagonistic and very gradually -- in stops and starts and backsides -- evolves. I would have liked to see them interact just a little bit more though.

The Dark Tide is deliciously eerie and claustrophobic. There's a slow-building tension, an inevitable sense of looming disaster that closes in like Caldella's tide.

The premise of this book was really interesting at first but, it fell flat for me after the half way mark. It just seemed like the plot was changing over and over again and the characters became very annoying. The ending was just rushed.

This was such a magical read. I loved the magic and the LGBT characters. Can not wait to read the next. More, please!

If you like dusty libraries, gothic castles and witchy characters, you'll fall in love with The Dark Tide. It has an atmosphere that lures you in and haunts you the entire time you read it.

The story starts, like all good stories, with a prophecy. The basic gist of it is that once a year, the tide will swallow the city whole unless the Witch Queen sacrifices some she loves to the tide. So once a year, a village boy will be spirited away by the Witch Queen as her sacrifice. However, this year the victim chosen is the boy Lina Thomas is secretly in love with; to save him she offers herself to the witch queen as a sacrifice instead. Cue the sapphic-ness.

What I liked the most about this story was the progression of Lina and Eva's relationship. They started off antagonizing and challenging each other but gradually softened and started working together towards a common goal. The scenes of them researching in the library were some of my favorites. The story has a nice slow burn romance that progresses into these dramatic confrontational scenes at the end and UGH the pining. All of it just god-tier.

What really adds to all the interactions is how beautiful Alicia Jasinska's writing is. She's incredibly talented with the way she describes the settings around the characters and their internal monologue. You'll get these beautifully broody scenes with Eva as she's pacing the halls of this Gothic castle and then there are cozy scenes with Lina studying a book in the library dozing off to sleep as a fire roars. The story draws you in and soon you won't even realize you're reading because you feel like you're watching it play out.

The Dark Tide was truly a fantastic read and if you love all things goth and sapphic, I cannot stress enough how much you need to read this book.

This novel is one of the best I’ve read this year! The characters are so dynamic yet relatable. I loved the flow of the story. It held my attention the whole time.

"Betrayal cut so much deeper when you loved the hand that held the knife."

This book was a lyrically written and a beautifully told story. The plot was one you just don't see these days. Lina Kirk is pretty sure she loves Thomas Lin, the only boy to ever escape his fate of being sacrificed by a witch who loves him to save their island from the dark tide. She thinks she's in love partly because he carried her home from school the day her ankle was broken and partly because he escaped from the witches, even making their queen offer herself as sacrifice instead. But she won't tell him. However, it's almost time for a new sacrifice to save the island from drowning and Lina is confident it will be brother this year, so she hides him away. But Finley escapes and Lina elicits the help of Thomas to find him before it's too late. All seems to be going well and she's making progress winning Thomas over when the new witch queen takes her face and seduces Thomas once again, hoping it will stop the curse brought on the island when her sister, the previous queen, died two years ago. Lina refuses to settle for Thomas being stolen once again, as she sees it as her fault, so she forces Finley to help her get him back and they both travel to the witches' tower where they begin to realize there's more at stake than they originally thought.

I truly loved the plot of this story and felt that it had so many pieces at play, being moved around expertly in a chess match where no one can anticipate the end. I had no clue of what would happen next and just how thus book would conclude. Just when I thought I had it all figured out, Alicia would bring in something or bring up something from the past and I'd have to start my theories all over again. While the plot was refreshing, the magic system innovating, and the words just absolutely beautiful, the characters felt a little flat. I never found myself feeling the things they felt or wishing the best for all of them. I craved more kisses, but that was the least of my worries. Very rarely do I feel nothing for the characters. But, even in their saddest moments, I didn't have a spark of emotion towards them. I wanted to, trust me I did. I am thankful thought for such a great story to keep me engaged. Despite not feeling anything for them, I still wanted to know how their story would end.

I greatly enjoyed Alicia's way of writing. She used such descriptive and flowery language to describe settings, moments, feelings that helped me fall in love with this book. I anxiously awaited each new turn of phrase just to see how she would piece phrases together in this chapter or this moment. I truly hope you all enjoy this book as much as I did. I look forward to more from this author in the future.

The Dark Tide is a stunning fantasy YA debut from Australian author Alicia Jasinska and first in the self-titled series set on the moody atmospheric island city of Caldella.

Every year on the last night of winter during the celebration of St. Walpurga’s Eve, a Caldella native is selected by the Witch Queen to be sacrificed at the next full moon in order to keep the island safe from the tide that threatens to consume it and everyone living there. Two years ago, however, the previous Witch Queen Natalia made the shocking decision to sacrifice herself instead, leaving her sister Eva to rule in her place. After losing Natalia because she loved her chosen sacrifice Thomas Lin too much to let him die as planned, Eva literally removed her heart in order to keep herself safe from being hurt – but this interferes with the ritual, as the dark tide demands that the Witch Queen suffer through carrying it out.

It’s not a sacrifice if she doesn’t care.

Lina Kirk is overcome with anxiety that her handsome charismatic brother will be the next one chosen by the Witch Queen and in her efforts to keep him safe, she inadvertently draws Thomas Lin into Eva’s path. Viciously satisfied at the idea of completing the sacrifice he escaped at the cost of her sister’s life, Eva whisks him off to the Water Palace to await his execution. But she reckons without Lina’s reckless courage and stubborn determination to keep her loved ones safe as Lina storms the castle to confront Eva and passionately pleads to be taken as the sacrifice instead.

Why did some people not have the same love for themselves that they did for others?

There is so much to adore in this accomplished debut novel written in a compelling, lyrical style that effortlessly establishes a dark fairytale vibe. From the very first page, the reader is immersed in the magical plight affecting the residents of Caldella, which is brought vividly to life with its streets flooded by ink-black water lapping at the stairs of pastel town-houses, and grounded in the relatable fears of one of our heroines who is fiercely devoted to her brother and fears losing him to the Witch Queen.

Normally the latter would be the wicked villain who must be defeated at all costs, but in a delightful twist, The Dark Tide casts Queen Eva as another heroine. Being an equal protagonist means that her perspective isn’t automatically negated by being the villain and allows the author to delve into her amoral nature, contrasting it against Lina, who is the traditionally compassionate and morally virtuous character. YA fiction tends to romanticise self-sacrifice, especially in the name of true love, but Eva’s perspective casts a different light on that trope as we are privy to her ever-present grief over her sister’s death and the understandable bitterness at how Natalia chose to abandon her for someone she’d known for all of a month.

“No boy was worth my sister’s life. No boy is worth your life.”

Fans of the enemies-to-lovers trope will be ecstatic with this book as the author expertly weaves a gradual and convincingly hard-won bond between Eva and Lina in a beautiful, subtle romantic arc. A common pitfall with this trope is for one character to unrealistically compromise their beliefs or opinions in order to allow the romance to flourish, but both of our heroines have clear, defined goals and worldviews which they adhere to throughout the story, in spite of whatever tender feelings may be developing between them. The fact that this is the first book in the series helps since it meant the author could build up a slow-burn romance that will leave readers pining for more rather than rushing to cement an established relationship by the end of the book.

I really appreciated how the viewpoints of both heroines are respected and we’re shown how each of them is right from their individual perspective, no matter how starkly their opinions might clash with each other. Instead of a simplistic good-evil dichotomy, there is a lot of nuance and ambiguity built into the central conflict that provides food for thought and allows you to make up your own mind on which side you support. On one hand, it’s easy to sympathise with Lina’s outrage at the sacrifice conducted by the Witch Queen and how they use free magic as a lure to the townsfolk to join the celebrations, but Eva has an excellent point when she notes that it’s very convenient painting the witches as the villains when the rest of Caldella benefits from their ritual and doesn’t attempt to stop the annual festival where the sacrifice is chosen.

The island wasn’t just celebrating someone’s courage and sacrifice. It was celebrating murder. Glorifying death.

Why did they all go along with it? Was one life truly worth trading to keep thousands safe?

This world casually includes sexual diversity without any fanfare, which is just as it should be. There is background representation with Lina often mentioning her two mothers, and of course the main relationship that we’re rooting for is between Lina and Eva (there is no explicit mention of bisexuality, but Lina falls for both Thomas and Eva, so it’s implied). While the story doesn’t delve into this too much, characters are also racially diverse and follow different faiths – in case anyone is wondering why the residents of Caldella don’t simply leave their sinking home, it’s explained that it’s home to refugees who fled the mainland because of persecution for their beliefs or relationships, and the witches were forced to seek sanctuary away from mainlanders who would kill them for their abilities.

The Dark Tide offers an exciting and immersive story with a strong feminist slant that subverts common YA tropes and forges its own original path. The two heroines are well-rounded and each demonstrate believable strengths while grappling with their individual fears and pain, both sharing values like unwavering loyalty and strong familial bonds that make it easy to understand why they would be drawn to one another. Although there is a sequel to come, this is a self-contained story that will leave readers satisfied at the end instead of agitated by a painful cliff-hanger! I can’t wait to read more about Lina and Eva in future, and will be certain to re-read this beautiful story again to tide me over before the next release!

Thank you so much to net galley for sending me this book for review. First of all the cover is so pretty. I loved the characters and this book kept me at the edge of my seat. I really enjoyed this book and can’t wait for the next one!

This very much gave me reminiscence of Kendare Blake's Three Dark Crowns series! Evil queens, a cursed island, love unrequited. It was a very darkly fun read. I love the concept of unrequited love and learning that maybe the person that you love doesn't deserve your love. Lina is a brave and fierce character who leads with her love and emotions...and which does end up putting her in a pickle. The evolution in the perception of Queen Eva who you think is the Evil Queen but further along you see someone weighed with a legacy and a task of survival for her people. It was great to see both women realize the similarities between themselves and fall in love without intending to even like each other. This is a fantastical, darkly rich LGBT fantasy and its a great read for any teen/ young adult to read.

I want to thank NetGalley, SOURCEBOOKS Fire, and author Alicia Jasinska for providing me with an ARC of this novel.

Okay, listen: sea witches, magic, fantasy, monsters, LGBTQIA+, etc. YESS!! This book was everything I’ve ever wanted in a book smushed all together and it was just *sigh* wonderful. The world of Caldella was brought to life with beautiful descriptions and a gorgeous atmosphere. Queer witches, bi-sexual girls... I just have no words that are going to fully explain my love for this. It was a super-fast read (sad) and I WOULD LIKE MORE. This was a freaking delight.

Thank you again to those named above for the opportunity to read and review this ARC!

Sometimes you’re excited for a book and then it delivers everything you were excited about in a fast-paced, gorgeously written package. For me, The Dark Tide is that book.

Goth sea witches? We got ‘em. Flawed and interesting protagonists? Yup, got those too. Cursed islands and mysterious magic and monsters lurking in the deep? Check, check, check. And, most importantly, a WLW enemies to lovers romance, featuring a bi protagonist with love interests of multiple genders on page? Executed with flying colours.

Vivid descriptions bring the island of Caldella to life on the page, and hints of the world beyond build promise for the adventures in the next book in the series. Even if I don’t necessarily like all the primary characters in the book, I have strong opinions on them. (I love Eva, though, and if she wouldn’t curse me, I’d love to give her a hug or two.) And, in a turn of events I couldn’t be happier about, The Dark Tide ends with a complete story having been told; though there’s definitely setup for the next book, it avoids the brutal, plot-twisty cliffhanger common in a lot of YA books I’ve read recently.

For those readers who want an excellent LGBTQ romance set in a world dripping with dark, decadent magic, threaded with influence from beauty and the beast story archetypes, The Dark Tide is a perfect fit. I can’t wait to purchase and recommend this book.

Thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Fire for an advance copy in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

4/5 stars.

"A queen should answer to no one. Not the heavens, not the earth, not the sea. Especially not something so temperamental as the tide."

Each year, ocean surrounding island of Caldella demands a sacrifice. The sacrifice keeps the tides at bay and stops them from swallowing the island. Year after year, the Witch Queen tricks a young man into coming back to the Water Palace, until the year that Thomas Lin convinces the Witch Queen to let him go and sacrifice herself instead. Two years later, Lina Kirk is determined to keep her brother, Finley, from being chosen at this year's revel. She enlists the help of Thomas to find Finley and keep him safe, only for Thomas to once again we taken by the witch queen. Determined to save Thomas from the queen, Lina and Finley enter the Water Palace where Lina offers herself in exchange for Thomas' life.

This book was a wonderful, dark, and atmospheric. The chapters rotated between the perspective of Lina and the Witch Queen, Eva. The world building was super cool - a sinking city, witches escaping the mainland to escape persecution and mistreatment, and, of course, a love triangle. The way the witches created their magic, through bits of themselves and weaving witch ladders with strands of hair was a unique spin on typical novels involving witches and magic. It looks like this is the start of a series, which is awesome because I would love to read more about this world! This would be an excellent read for any one who enjoys young adult fantasy novels!

I just closed the cover of THE DARK TIDE and oooooh man, I don't have words yet. It's haunting and otherworldly and there are SO many things this book gets right. Aesthetically this book is gorgeous, starting with the cover and moving straight into the writing. I don’t mean to exaggerate when I say I. was. hooked. Right off the bat the writing is dark and atmospheric. I fell hard for this world and the writing, and that’s what kept me sitting until I read this book cover to cover. The magic and myths are so rich it sucked me straight into the story, almost feeling dreamlike. The pacing is really fast, and kept me on my toes the whole time.

The one thing that keeps me from shouting this book’s praises from the roof tops is the distance I felt with the characters. Now, it might just be a stylistic writing thing that I wasn’t able to connect with, but just when I was ready for that satisfying emotional punch… things just fell flat. With a story as rich as this, I wanted characters to love just as much. I was sympathetic towards the characters, but at times they felt so distant that I had a hard time becoming invested in them just when I wanted to. It’s a gorgeous and atmospheric story, and one I would absolutely recommend to other readers, but I think the lack of satisfying emotional payoff with the characters is the only thing that keeps me from wholeheartedly loving this book!

The Dark Tide is a deliciously dark YA fantasy set in a beautifully written, atmospheric world. Every year, the tide demands suffering to save Lina's island from flooding, and the witch queen must sacrifice someone she loves to feed the ravenous sea. Traditionally, it’s been a boy from the village, but this year, it’s a girl.

So here’s how story goes:

Girl likes boy who evaded being a sacrifice the year before when the then witch queen Natalia sacrificed herself. Girl finds out brother is at the choosing party. Girl asks boy to help her stop her brother. Boy gets taken as sacrifice – again – and she chases after boy with brother to rescue him. Girl trades her life for boy’s and her brother’s, and new witch queen agrees. Cue enemies to lovers, but only one party knows that they like girls.

Lina is the quintessential “off to save the princess” type, naïve in her unwavering loyalty to fight for those she loves. At times her decisions made me want to throttle her, but they fit her headstrong-into-danger persona. The star, for me, was the darkly written witch queen Eva, seeming cold and aloof, yet tortured by the loss of her sister Natalia, and steeped in regret for the family she couldn’t save. For someone who cast her heart into the sea, she felt so deeply, from the bitter lows of revenge to spite for her growing feelings for Lina.

This was a fast, easy read with beautiful descriptions and a dash of predictability I didn’t mind. Four stars because I will never get enough of queer witches and bisexual girls. More, please!

Thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Fire for an e-arc of this book in exchange for an honest review!

I was absolutely thrilled to get accepted for this! I love witch-y books and this sounded absolutely amazing. There is something to be said for good books that cater to your interests. Nothing is more disappointing than a book you were looking forward to not working for you. All this is to say The Dark Tide was a great read. I really enjoyed reading it, and it felt like the perfect atmospheric summer or fall read.

The Writing
The writing is very good in this book. Much of it is due to Jasinska’s ability to create a world that is so atmospheric. There were moments in this book that I think I gasped aloud at because the writing was beautiful. There was something lyrical about the book, and I can’t quite put into words how I felt about it because it felt magical, ethereal. I know I flew through this book, and the writing was part of that. It was smooth and flowing and I was drawn in. Suffice to say, the writing was splendid. I was engaged every moment of this book.

The Pacing
At first I was hesitant about the pacing, I think in some ways it was good, and other ways it fell apart just a little. The beginning was quite fast paced, and I was wondering what was going to happen the rest of the book if the main part of the plot was taking place at the very beginning. Suffice to say, after the first few chapters the book slowed down immensely, and it became a slower pace, much more drawn out. So the pacing was good for me, it just made me blink a minute because it ended up not being fast paced after the beginning. Although the slowness later in the book worked in their favor.

The Plot
Essentially Lina wants to save a person, and so she decides she’ll be the sacrifice this year. Enter Eva, the Witch Queen. Their island city is sinking, and the witches must sacrifice someone every year to keep the tides back. This is the plot of the book, and it does occur over the length of the book, both past sacrifices and what is going currently, however, it often doesn’t feel like it is the focus. In fact, it very much feels as if although the plot exists, it is there to further Eva and Lina’s romance. It is hard to explain the plot because I feel that the characters themselves are part of the narrative more than the plot.

The Characters
First off, I really like Lina and Eva. I like them, and they’re good characters. I will admit I wanted a bit more depth from them at times, a bit more than strong-willed Lina and cold Eva. Which is fine, because this is very much an enemy to lover type circumstance. And yet...I wanted more of that. The romance aspect doesn’t occur all that much to the end, it’s built up, but I don’t want to give too much more away about it. Suffice to say I wish we’d had more depth on it, more...something. I wanted to see growth from Lina and Eva, and I wanted to see more of them together.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of characters in this book, and again, I wish there was more to them! There were so many interesting ones, and I’m sad that we didn’t get to see more of them, more of them developing.

The Worldbuilding
I really loved the world that was built. I think that it was magical and atmospheric. I think that the magic was lovely and how the witches and their power worked was awesome. I very much enjoyed the way this world was built and I think it was fantastic.

Overall
This runs along similar lines to Shea Ernshaw’s The Wicked Deep and Winterwood. It is a slow paced book, building up to the end, very much character and atmosphere focused. Highly enjoyable and a delight to read.

This is such an interesting concept that I was quickly drawn to. I loved the backstory of Thomas and Eva’s sister, why Eva holds such a deep hatred for him. I also like the relationship between Lina and her brother. While, the book has fantastic world building and character development, I feel like the romance between Eva and Lina was slow. The enemies to lovers trope is, let’s say more enemies with UST to an unlabeled relationship. Their is much more of the book where the two girls are enemies than when they are lovers. I loved the rest of the pacing, but with the summary of The Dark Tide being a forbidden romance, I feel like there was too little of their buildup and relationship. That being said, I know this is the first book to a duology, so I hope we see more of them next book. Overall, this book was a great fantasy universe with low key romance that I know many younger adults will love! Enemies-to-Lovers, Magic, Forbidden Romance, LGBTQ+, unconscious attraction, and badass females, not to mention the crazy UST. Go preorder this book!

This was a fast-paced dark fantasy read with Beauty and the Beast vibes…. well, with a gorgeous Witch Queen as the “beast”. The story dives right into the action and does not let up until the very end. I enjoyed the concept of the world Jasinska set up, the way magic works and the idea of the island being a sanctuary where witches and humans escaped persecution from the mainlanders.

The book fell a little short for me due the lack of broader world building and predictability. I felt like I came into an already rolling storyline and while some background was filled in as we went, I was still left with a lot of questions. The way the story was set up also allowed you to predict characters actions and the overall outcome of the story but was still overall a good read.

Thank you to Sourcebooks Fire and NetGalley for a copy of The Dark Tide in exchange for honest opinion.

This was so atmospheric and gorgeously written. The prose seriously took my breath away, it just had the gorgeous descriptions I crave in books, and reminded me of Anna Marie McLemore's work. Like let's just introduce you to this witchy, sea wild tale, full of salt and blood and longing girls and aching boys, sacrifices and sinking islands, witches bitter with regret, and girls who want to save the world but ending just breaking everything.

I definitely fell a bit in love with the world. 😍 The whole premise is this island is sinking and the people rely on the witches to hold back the dark tide, but to do that -- the witch queen sacrifices a human boy each year. The tide's malicious pleasure is sated. Everyone else gets to live. But this year, the boy Lina has a crush on (Thomas Lin) is taken and she refuses to let him die. So she takes his place. And then uncovers dark secrets behind the ritual while she's caught up in the witches tower with the dark and bitter Eva, witch queen who infamously has no heart. This all just makes my bones weep with joy and it's a tale crafted with words that just capture imagination and enchant you.

Dark. Bitter. Lovely.

I did want a bit more from the characters though. I loved them! I just felt I barely knew anyone except Lina. She was headstrong, brave, typical Gryffindor who ran into trouble without ever thinking about it. But I just wanted things to get deeper. The plot hinged on Thomas Lin but I barley understood him as a person. And I LOVED EVA (omg she is an antisocial piece of black and bitter coffee) and wish we had more about her backstory too. Eva, Thomas and Natalia's story would have been amazing to know...I almost wish the book started there?

A beautiful tale, very ethereal and atmospheric. Queer and dark and whimsical.