Title: Dive Smack
Genre: Young Adult Mystery/Thriller
Author: Demetra Brodsky
Publisher: TorTeen
Publication: June 19th 2018
I want to start off by saying that I don't know squat-diddly-squattypotty about swimming. I can't even swim; I just kind of flounder and then drown. So when I requested Dive Smack by Demetra Brodsky, I honestly didn't know what to expect. I knew it was a mystery/thriller but I had no idea how I was going to handle the whole swimming aspect. Lucky, the author explains everything in a way that makes it very easy to follow even if you are like me, and know NOTHING about swimming.
Theo is our main character. He is an amazing diver for his high school. He also happens to be an orphan. Theo’s parents both died in pretty tragic ways. His mother died in a fire, one that Theo feels responsible for. Then his father died of a heart attack while driving. Theo also feels sort of responsible for this because he thinks the heart attack was from the stress of losing his mother. But what happens when Theo’s fears might not just be fears. What happens when there is more to his parent's deaths than he thought?
I really love how the author made this book to be so much more than a thriller. She made Theo have this massive love for diving, even made his mother a diver, and she definitely did her research for the topic. The author didn’t just throw us into a world where we just had to figure out some big mystery. No, she made her character have a personality and likes/dislikes and that made the book seem more real because Theo felt real. Normally, we are just thrown into the middle of a characters life and we get to deal with what is currently happening, then we are done with that character. We get to know that character for a brief moment of their life so we get to know their personality for that moment and it might not be exactly who they are as a whole. I feel like, with Dive Smack, we got to know Theo as a whole, not just a momentary blip in time.
With getting to know Theo so well, that helped to make this story so much more believable, so much more realistic and those aspects made the thriller portion of the book all the more creepy and goosebump-inducing. I have read so many creepy/thriller/horror books in my life that when something can actually creep me out or give me goosebumps, it’s a gem of a story. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is exactly what Dive Smack is; a GEM of a story.
In the end, this was a fantastic debut novel. It was beautifully written and the story kept me engulfed. The characters were well fleshed out and the story was told in a way that made this thriller stand out a bit more than others. If you are looking to read some Young Adult Thrillers then I highly suggest adding this one to your list! I will also be listening to the audiobook once the book comes out so I can see if I would recommend it and will be updating this review after that.
