"Curious Tides", a Synopsis

Emory is a quiet girl.

All of her life, she has been content to live in the shadows her best friend Romie created. Romie is bright, loud, energetic and loveable. Emory loves Romie, she is her best friend. It's okay that Emory is seen as her shadow, she's happy to bask in Romie's light, as is everyone else. 

But suddenly Romie is dead.

Her light shines no more, and Emory is left in the dark.

In this dark and brooding world, everyone is born with magic. Yet not everyone has enough to attend the prestigious Aldryn College for Lunar Magics. And yet, although Emory has enough potential to attend, she has only ever been average. Romie and Emory attend their first year at Aldryn College together, Romie winning a spot out of dazzling magical prowess, while Emory just hardly passed the bar with textbook knowledge. 

This coastal college has dark secrets that Emory finds herself scouring through after Romie's mysterious death. One of those dark secrets is Dovermere. A shoreline cove that has a reputation for drowning those that enter to explore its dark, beckoning whispers. The high tides usually flood the interior passages of this cave, but during the low tide it's secrets are revealed to all who dare to explore. 

Romie, along with several other students, enter into Dovermere during the spring season of their first year.

As the others enter, Emory follows, uninvited.

When the high tide rushes in much sooner than it is supposed to, Emory is left washed ashore as the only survivor. Romie is separated in death and lost to the ocean. Now boring, mediocre, Emory has discovered a new dangerous potential within her magic. It arrived in the form of a mark on her wrist after Dovermere spat her out onto the cold sand, broken-- but not entirely alone. It simmers in her blood, begging to be used. Yet this magic would spell destruction not only for Emory, but for all of those around her. 

In a desperate race to control this new magic in her veins and discover the cult like activities blossoming around her, she pleads for help from Baz. Romie's older brother. 

Baz is reluctant to help, as he can firsthand understand the dangers of potent magic. It's what killed his father, after all.

As Baz and Emory fight to learn and control this new magic in her blood, new faces step forward and start to reopen old wounds from Emory's first year. Questions on what actually happened that year in Dovermere arise. Who led those students to their deaths? Why did they enter? 

As bodies of the drowning victims from the previous year start to wash ashore, alive, only to die again in Emory's arms, figures from Aldryn College's blood cult start to emerge.

Curious Tides is a beautifully written story full of immersive storytelling and haunting figures, of dusty libraries and cold ocean shorelines, and holds your attention through the intricate symbolism woven throughout the book as Emory searches for answers.

Will she ever find her answers? Or will they just bring her more questions?