This is a lovecrafty-gothic horror type thing, set in early 20th century America and centering on a rundown coastal town with dark secrets. The heroine, Sorrow, has come to Tidepool in order to discover what’s happened to her missing brother—although this isn’t much of a mystery to the reader because we find out in the prologue.

I wanted to like this more than, in practice, I did. It has lots of elements I usually find appealing—and there’s definitely a decent sense of atmosphere alongside some moments of pleasing creepiness—but the writing and the characterisation ultimately fell pretty flat to me. The brother is kind of a lechy dick for the two seconds he’s on page, so it was hard to care that he was eaten by sea monsters (not a spoiler, he’s eaten by sea monsters literally in the prologue), even if he was an important to Sorrow. As for Sorrow herself, she’s got that independent heroine vibe going, but I never really felt I knew who she was. The secondary characters, similarly, had a sketched quality to them that never quite let them feel like individuals.

By far the most interesting character is the antagonist, Mrs Oliver—but, with only one chapter from her POV, I personally felt there wasn’t enough of her. I think she’s meant to be a dark reflection of Sorrow but the only reason I think this is because she literally gives the “we are not so unalike, you and I” speech near the end of the book. She also has faint queer vibes, although they ultimately manifest in her having dubiously consensual sex with her abusive husband and then murdering him in a scene that I found somewhat uncomfortable. And not in the “ooh, I’m out of my comfort zone” sense so much as the “I don’t quite understand what you’re trying to say with this” sense.

I also felt the middle section of the book degenerated the oddest quadrille around whether the heroine was going to leave Tidepool. I suspect this is an integral problem to what you might call place-based horror: you keep having to address the question of why the protagonist just doesn’t get the fuck out of there. The problem here was that the book kept addressing it, and then addressing it some more, with various characters apparently rolling a dice every morning to decide whether they were going to demand she leave or insist she stay. For me, the issue here wasn’t so much that the heroine doesn’t leave—with this kind of story, one suspends disbelief around such ideas. It was on-going hokey-cokey around it that made it feel like a distraction from the … you know. The actual story of whatever creepy shit was going down in Tidepool, and the degree its denizens were complicit in it.

And while the final reckoning in Tidepool felt both inevitable and darkly satisfying, this was not, in the end, the conclusion of the story. We move forward in time, jumping perspectives between Sorrow herself, Sorrow’s father, and Mrs Oliver’s weird brother. I think this was meant to give the events at Tidepool an impact beyond a single place and time, except it didn’t fully work for me. Not least because the very final chapter includes a trans woman named Natalie whose sole narrative purpose seems to involve being misgendered by some dickheads. Again, this is complicated—and it is definitely not my place to pass judgement on the representation of marginalised groups to which I do not belong—but I don’t think anyone is served by this particular inclusion since Natalie’s transness is less about her than about the cis-gaze of both the aforementioned dickheads and indeed (rightly or wrongly) the narrative.

Anyway, Tidepool didn’t end up working for me. But it’s certainly an engaging, atmospheric read, especially for fans of gothic-Lovecraftian horror.

Tidepool doesn’t quite make a proper stand in for a beach trip, because despite it being a small coastal town, it’s about as uninviting as they come. By design. The locals don’t want you visiting and uncovering their dark secrets. The town is drab and reeks of seafood that’s gone off with an underlying base note of fear. And yet, one young man sees a business opportunity there, a chance to make Tidepool into a new Ocean City or maybe even some day Atlantic City.
Ambitious. Deadly so. The young man checks in, never checks out. And soon enough his adoring and now anxious younger sister comes looking for him. She isn’t going to like what she’ll find. In fact, she will be forever changed by it. And you know why?
Because something lives beneath the sea, something hungry, something that must be fed at all costs. Yeah, it’s that kind of a story and it has those tenacled Lovecraftian connotations.
So it’s fun, in a way doomed towns provide a gloomy atmospheric kind of fun. Tidepool traps its visitors like a nightmare, it won’t them gone but also doesn’t really want them to leave.
There’s some plot confusion here, because the locals, especially the sheriff, oddly oscillate between expelling the newcomers and locking them in. It isn’t the ambivalent thing about the narrative, there are also some questionable actions undertaken by the leads, but one must remember a. they are very young, the main protagonist is just 21 and b. they are not very worldly and that it’s over a century ago.
Also, if you name your main character Sorrow, you can’t really respect her to come to a happy end. It’s a Chekhov's gun of a moniker.
Overall, it’s a pretty good gothic tale. It has a lot of gothic clichés (pale people in black living in a mansion and all that) and works them nicely. It’s also ever so slightly underbaked, too lite tonally, occasionally veering into the light when it should resolutely stay in the shadows. The ending is a fine example of that. It’s like the mood is almost…tantalizingly almost…right. Which is, I suppose, another way of saying the book and the author show lots of promise and need to mind the estrogen and sunshine infusion in the text, if it’s meant to be a work of dark psychological genre fiction. The narrative is at times ever so slightly, very slightly amateurish, but well on the way to becoming professional in quality. Pretty entertaining, overall though. Tenacles and all. Thanks Netgalley.

This is a Gothic fantasy by new author Nicole Willson. I was intrigued by both the setting (the Eastern Shore of Maryland and Virginia in the US) and the time period (1911), and liked the synopsis blurb so I requested an advance reader copy of it. This is the author's first book and it shows a bit, I think. Overall, I liked the storyline and the creepy seaside town vibe, as well as the main character of Sorrow Hamilton. There are definitely Crimson Peak and House of Salt and Sorrow aspects in this book so if you enjoyed either/both of those, you'll probably like this one too.

The book was a quick read and while sometimes with fantasy-type novels I wish there had been a bit more editing for this standalone book I actually felt it read more like a novella. I could have done with more of everything, although I liked what I did get to read. The town of Tidepool has the feel of somewhere time has passed by, but I would have liked for a bit more comparison with the how the outside world has moved on into the early 20th century. There's a brief mention of the Great War, but it wasn't mentioned again and I think could have had a stronger meaning attached to it. The book is told from a few different perspectives - Sorrow's, of course, as the main character, but also two residents of the town, Ada Oliver and her brother, Quintin. Both the Oliver's have secrets and a secret past that are touched on in the dialogue, as well as some flashback-type chapters, but I would have loved more of the past history of both of them. The other character who seemed less well-developed than I wanted was Charlie, a friend and business partner of Sorrow's missing brother, Henry, who comes to find Sorrow in Tidepool after she's gone searching for her brother. A bit more of a back story on his relationship with Henry and how he knows the family would have been a nice addition.

I'm giving this one 3-3/4 out of 5 stars. I enjoyed reading it but wished for a bit more substance to the story. A good first effort and I'll look for others by this author in the future.

Thanks to NetGalley and The Parliament House Press for an advance reader copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. All opinions expressed here are my own.

Thank you to NetGalley and Independent Publishers Group for the e-ARC!

"she had to wonder: if God existed, could He intervene in a town like this?"

One day on a routine business trip Henry Hamilton goes missing. His sister, Sorrow, immediately begins a desperate search for him that leads her to Tidepool, an oceanside town with grim secrets and a hatred for prying outsiders.

I loved the premise of this book and thought this would become a favourite of mine but some things don't work out. The story is good but after 3 chapters I was sure I could guess how this book would end. That just isn't something I want in horror. To be fair, I don't think this book ever intended to focus on the horror but the hopelessness and desperation of an outsider trying to make sense of an unfathomable loss.

That's not to say Tidepool wasn't well-written; it was just a bit too predictable. Another thing that irked me was the indecisiveness of Sorrow and her friend. Their plans sawaw so much it got frustrating.

For example:
In one chapter Sorrow wanted to leave but Charles didn't. One page later he finally agreed but she changed her mind and wanted to stay...this exact fight happened several times.

Also, without spoiling anything, Ada's POV was the best part of this book. I loved it and I loved her reasoning even if she was wrong.

<i>"I always hated being by the water, even before I drowned in 1851."</i>

Tidepool takes place in a coastal city in 1913 where mysterious things occur. When her brother goes missing, Sorrow Hamilton (yes, that's her name) goes to the town to try and find him and well ... she finds some other things.

The book certainly starts off strong, it has a very captivating first chapter and the premise of a creepy "fishy" story. I liked the setting and how tangible the whole atmosphere is and I really like the couple of chapters that were set in the past to provide some sort of backstory. It's quick to read and captivating enough to keep you going. However, I felt the book shows its hand pretty early on and then really struggles with finding its voice and committing to it.

The characters and the dialogues all felt very flat to me. Sorrow is a 21 year old who sounds a lot like a teenager and doesn't really have a whole lot of personality, to be honest. I was disappointed that a book centered around two core sibling relationships is so quick to brush over both of these bonds and offers only a surface-level view of it all. Sorrow disobeys her father and travels to Tidepool to find her brother but when she gets her answers, she shows almost no emotion? Her discovery has almost no psychological effect on her (unless you count the very last few pages which ... more on that later). A lot of the drama felt manufactured, the characters have to leave town but then, for some random reason, they decide to stay or they decide to do something else first that prevents them from leaving town or, ... the main goal is always to leave town and I understand that in classic storytelling the whole structure tells you to present the characters with obstacle after obstacle but these obstacles are supposed to increase in intensity and to kind of make sense; here, most of it really feels unnatural.

Another issue I had with the story was that, as I mentioned, it reveals the mystery really early on (we know part of it by the end of the very short first chapter and the rest that is revealed pretty soon after is not that much of a question mark). The main plot here is to see if Sorrow leaves town as we know the whole town mystery before she knows (and she finds out most of it pretty soon, as I said). Since we've seen the "monster" at the start, the story loses this element of suspense and wonder which I think that, such a unique type of monster, could have been a huge asset to use.

Lastly, I may be nitpicking now but the story ends a good 50-60 pages before the actual end. There's not much to keep reading for and yet there are chapters after chapters of epilogue that really could have been simplified or just foregone altogether.

Overall, I liked the premise and I think there was a lot of potential here but, ultimately, I see this mostly as a 2.5 star read. It's good enough but it could have been so much better.

<i>Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an e-ARC of this book</i>

Many thanks to the publisher and to NetGalley for this ARC!

Tidepool is a gothic horror novel following Sorrow Hamilton, a wayward young woman who defies her father and travels to the seaside town of Tidepool after her brother, Henry, fails to return from a trip there. The instant she arrives in Tidepool, Sorrow feels uneasy, and the residents of the town are unusually cagey about answering any of her questions about Henry. Sorrow sets about uncovering the mystery of her brother's whereabouts, and ends up discovering much more than she bargained for.

I could not stop reading this book. I just had to know what would happen next. It was creepy, atmospheric, and delightfully dark. Tidepool is full of twists and scares and just when I thought I knew who was who and who was what, I was thrown all over again. I enjoyed Sorrow as a character, and found her to be a very realistic heroine. I also particularly loved the way the backstory and the legend of the Lords was woven into the novel. All in all I thoroughly recommend this read!

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Tidepool by Nicole Willson is an amazing work of gothic horror that will appeal to fans of Crimson Peak and The Shape of Water. This early 20th-century story revolves around Sorrow Hamilton, a brave and headstrong young woman who goes to the mysterious town of Tidepool after her brother Henry goes missing there. She has to find out what happened to him while dealing with the town's rude and infuriating residents, who seem to all have something to hide. Then, dead mangled bodies turn up on the beach that look like they've been eaten by monsters. Is the town of TIdepool all it seems? Where is her brother? And will Sorrow make it out alive?

Here is an excerpt from Chapter 1, which is from Henry's perspective:

"Tidepool looked like the kind of place where people went to die, not to live.
After less than a day there, Henry Hamilton had seen enough...
The town was all wooden buildings that had long since warped in the town's pervasive dampness, topped by metal signs corroded from exposure to the salty air. Loose shutters banged in the breeze as Henry passed. Even the beach, which Charlie claimed would be Tidepool's main attraction, was marred by the rotted hulk of a sailboat and bloated seabird corpses washing ashore. The ramshackle stores lining the muddy main street looked like they might collapse into splinters and planks if Henry gave them a good swift kick.
He was starting to want to.
The pervasive odors of salt water and fish wasted off the nearby ocean, but another smell lurked underneath those, something even less pleasant. Henry couldn't identify it, but it reminded him somewhat of the stench of a dead animal rotting in the woods."

After I read that excerpt, I knew that i was in a for a wild ride. As you can see from the except, the prose is gorgeous, and I felt like I had really been transported back to 1913. It's a testament to the author's skill that I didn't feel like I was reading a book in 2021. I did take off 1 star because I had to push through some parts of the novel. I know I shouldn't have expected a "fantasy," but the way that obstacles kept popping up that prevented Sorrow from achieving her goals really got on my nerves. Overall, Tidepool is gothic horror novel set by the seaside with plenty of mystery, action, and gore. It will appeal to fans of Lovecraft and Guillermo del Toro's movies. If you're intrigued by the excerpt above, or if you're a fan of gothic horror, then I recommend that you check out this book when it comes out in August!

When Sorrow Hamilton's brother goes missing after a visit to small town of Tidepool, she, against her father's wishes, ventures there alone to investigate. Sorrow soon finds that there is something not quite right about Tidepool, and as her feeling of unease progresses, it begs the question; will she make it out of Tidepool whole?
The luscious worldbuilding and intelligent and likeable characters make reading Tidepool feel somewhat akin to eating a bag of candy at a bus stop; enjoyable, but over far too quickly.

Content Warning: Graphic Suicide Mention, Gore, Violence
ARC Provided by the publisher, all thoughts and opinions are my own.

I'm not really sure what I expected from this title but I don't think this was it- in a good way. This is strictly a horror story in the tradition of Poe. Our narrator is closely involved at all the pivotal moments and while you would be forgiven for thinking there's a mystery, really it was more of a discovery. Tidepool is an unusual town with a few unusual people- and a lot of really normal ones- but an awful lot of out-of-towners wash up on the beach and our main character, Sorrow, is looking for her brother and hoping he won't be the next one.

There are a few plot holes in our ending but it still works and a few days after finishing I find myself thinking of it at random times. Pretty good overall, I'm not sorry I read it and I'll be looking for the author in the future.

Thanks to Netgalley for giving me the opportunity to access this title in exchange for an honest review.

Do not go to Tidepool. Unless you want hungry ocean gods to feast on you. As a fan of sinister seasides and Lovecraftian overtones, I had a blast reading Tidepool.

Sorrow Hamilton loves her brother Henry. When he goes missing, she follows him to Tidepool, the last place he visited before disappearing. The small shoreline city seems boring and its residents backward-thinking. Just when Sorrow wants to leave, a body washes up on the beach. From there, things only get worse.

Once I started it, I couldn't put the book down. With twists and scares aplenty, Tidepool won me over with its creepy atmosphere, well-rounded characters, and compelling mystery.

ARC through NetGalley

A mysterious town, an intrepid young heroine, and a historical setting. It’s Gothic, it’s supernatural, it is Tidepool.

An enjoyable, yet quick read. I do wish more of the legend was expounded on but I liked that the mystery wasn’t dragged out for the sake of it.

At times it read like a YA novel in the simple to follow plot - which I really loved but it was pretty violent, which I liked. It just needed more fleshing out with the characters.

Our heroine, Sorrow is exactly who I would be in a horror so I appreciated her real ness. Brave but intelligent, she was far more wiser than her counterparts.

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC!

I did enjoy this story, and I found it entertaining and easy to follow. However, I found the characters lacking in depth, and their inability to finalize decisions a little off-putting. The majority of the story consists of characters not really being able to make up their minds about what actions they want to take (I.e. Character 1: “Let’s not stay.” Character 2: “No we should stay” Character 1: “No, I can’t stay a moment longer “ Character 2: “Ok, let’s not stay.” Character 1: “No, actually let’s stay, so I can have a question answered.”) Scenarios such as this happened throughout the entire story and it got slightly frustrating because not a single character was firm in their convictions, and the indecision and back-and-forth kind of put a damper on the tale. Otherwise, the story was good, original (which is always a plus) and not too shabby for a first novel. I intend on keeping up with this author and am excited to see how her writing evolves over time.

'Tidepool' is a dark, dank, deathly story about fate, truth, and human relationships. The story is set in Tidepool, a mysterious oceanside town harbouring deadly secrets beneath its ominous waters. After her brother goes missing on a business trip, Sorrow Hamilton ventures out to the eerie town where secrets alive and dead bind and menace her to its terrifying curse. A sinister woman dressed in black and macabre things that wash ashore haunt and horrify Sorrow until she is able to uncover the true goings on of the creepy town.

Atmospheric, tantalizing, and suspenseful, 'Tidepool' is dark gothic fantasy at its finest. The author Nicole Willson’s evocative writing creates a sense of doom and gloom that will keep readers on the edge of their seats. Willson’s dark elegant characterization and vintage horror inspiration, stains every page of this engrossing tale.

I look forward to reading more from the author.