Book Review: The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

Reviewed By: Harriet Klausner

The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea     Amazon US PB Amazon Canada PB
Beth Sherman
Class/Genre:   Mystery   Witchcraft   Woman Main Character
Series: Jersey Beach # 4
Avon, May 2001, $5.99, 288 pp.

Oceanside Heights is a small resort town founded by Methodist ministers on the Jersey shore. It is a place to organize camp meetings by the ocean. Paradise still lives here as people from around the world visit "God's Own Acre" to heal and find God's words. In spite of its Edenesque reputation, the town retains its sense of family even if this summer events will prove that feeling of security is false.

Some of the town's teens form a witch's coven. Residents begin hearing chanting and see strange lights and shapes over the nearby ocean. While jogging on the beach early one morning, ghostwriter Anne Hardaway runs across the dead body of a teen and cryptic signs in the sand that no one can decipher. When the best friend of the deceased runs away from her home, her guardian asks Anne to find the missing Tracy. Anne becomes a friend with the coven members and their friends, one of whom is not exactly what he/she seems.

THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP BLUE SEA is an absorbing regional mystery that captures the atmosphere of a tourist town to near perfection. The teens steal the show, as they seem like a microcosm of today's young adults with many of them suffering serious problems. Author Beth Sherman does a brilliant job of portraying teen angst without corn or sentiment.

Harriet Klausner

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Harriet Klausner