Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea by April G. Tucholke // A bad boy cliche that becomes problematic

Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (Between, #1) by April Genevieve Tucholke
Pages: 360
Goodreads

You stop fearing the devil when you’re holding his hand…
Nothing much exciting rolls through Violet White’s sleepy, seaside town… until River West comes along. River rents the guest house behind Violet’s crumbling estate, and as eerie, grim things start to happen, Violet begins to wonder about the boy living in her backyard.
Is River just a crooked-smiling liar with pretty eyes and a mysterious past? Or could he be something more?
Violet’s grandmother always warned her about the Devil, but she never said he could be a dark-haired boy who takes naps in the sun, who likes coffee, who kisses you in a cemetery... who makes you want to kiss back.
Violet’s already so knee-deep in love, she can’t see straight. And that’s just how River likes it.
Blending faded decadence and the thrilling dread of gothic horror, April Genevieve Tucholke weaves a dreamy, twisting contemporary romance, as gorgeously told as it is terrifying—a debut to watch.

Pre-Warning*: Personally, I think this book has elements of sexual assualt and abusive relationships. Not everyone sees it this way.

*I will be including this section in reviews of books that I think contain sensitive material that may be upsetting to some so you can decide whether to continue reading

*This is a longer review and not divided into categories because it just didn’t feel right with this one.

After finishing this book, I felt lied to. I felt lied to by a synopsis that promised a dark, mysterious, young man who will trick you into loving him, the Devil. That’s not what this story is, as much as it tried to be that.

Violet was the main character. The story was told in first person POV, which fooled me on several occasions into thinking it was the third person because there was so much telling and not much showing. There were several times that I simply forgot that I was even supposed to be in Violet’s head because it just never felt like that. The story was told through many and’s, such as We did this and then I did that and then he did this and we laughed and then we went home and then we ate food and fell asleep on the couch. Which is both an almost accurate example of the telling and what the plot was actually about.

Here is a more specific example of the writing:

…He just looked like River.
And it was enough.
“You just look like River,” I said.
…”That’s good,…because I am River.”

Riveting.

The setting and plot tried their damnedest to be what the synopsis promised: dark, mysterious, thrilling. They fell flat. The town the book takes place in is one of the most unrealistic, fucked up towns I’ve ever read. Here are some of the things that have occurred in this town, past or present:

1. Little girl goes missing and Violet just doesn’t care
2. A madman who reportedly kidnapped children lives in the tunnels
3. A girl fell from a tree house and died
4. A man slit his lover’s throat
5. Parents just abandon their kids for months & no CPS comes in
6. Everyone talks about the Devil, but oddly enough, no one talks about any sort of God
7. A church burned down because the priest went “mad” for unexplained reasons
8. Young boy’s father kills himself, has no parents left, and CPS still doesn’t show up
9. A town nearby burns people at the stake because they think they’re witches and there is no national outrage

While I appreciate the attempt to make the story seem darker with these crazy events, putting them all together just became a bit silly. Imagine living in a town where you grew up with all of these things happening and instead of saying “I need to get out of here”, everyone just shrugs their shoulders like it’s just another beautiful day in the neighborhood. Don’t you want to be their neighbor?

The characters were not a saving grace for me. Violet White, and the rest of the cast with uninspired names – Sunshine Black, Luke White, River West – were not characters that you fell in love with. If you could get past their silly names, their roles weren’t much better. Sunshine’s only purpose was to be the flirty and promiscuous best friend. Luke served no purpose besides being the cocky brother. River was the mysterious bad boy that Violet was into, and she was into him quickly. This is yet another book that plays with insta-love, and deep insta-love at that.

After all of that, I still haven’t addressed my biggest issue with this book. 

The relationship between River and Violet, and another specific event in the book, really shouted out toxic relationship and near-sexual assault to me. It’s hard to discuss this without spoilers, so I will give a brief version and a more detailed, hidden version. You can choose which one you’d like to read.

First off, the specific event that really made me analyze the relationships between the men and women in this book had to do with Luke, Violet’s brother. At one point, the four main characters are all together drinking alcohol. Then, this dialogue happens: (I’ve edited it to remove the unnecessary bits)

“Sunshine, you’re drunk,” I said.
She raised her eyebrows. “Didn’t you hear, Violet? Boys like drunk girls.”
…Luke stood up…”That’s right, Sunshine. We do like drunk girls…Women are always making it so hard for us men to get the one thing nature intended for us to have. It’s such a shame.”

One would think this would elicit some sort of offended response from the women, but it doesn’t. Everyone shrugs it off. Yet, within the same page, this dialogue also occurs: (again, removed any unnecessary bits)

Luke…reached his arm back and threw the empty bottle into the…sea.
“Luke, what the hell did you do that for?” I gestured at the water. “The bottle will break and someone will walk along the beach and cut their feet.”

Do you see my issue here? Talking about taking advantage of drunk girls didn’t get any sort of emotional response out of anyone, not even the women, but when he litters, it gets an immediate response because of people’s poor feet.

It was at this point that I began taking a closer look at the interactions between the characters. This is where the brief version & spoiler version will be included.

Brief version: There is an incident between two characters in which the girl is unsure of what just happened because she wakes up, naked, next to a naked male. It hints at some manipulation.

Spoiler version: (lots of spoilers, so proceed with caution) View Spoiler »River has the ability to make other people see things. He has to touch people in order to do so. Throughout the book, he purposely touches Violet to use his power, but he doesn’t tell her this at first. Also, his power allows him to soothe her when she is nervous. She eventually finds this out and is okay with it. But really, is she? Since he can soothe people, it seems like her feelings might not be genuine. Then, one night, while sleeping in bed together, not sexually (which is something they do almost every night) she has a dream that they are doing something much more intimate. She wakes up to find that she is naked and so is River, making her question if it was a dream or not. Turns out, River was making her do things while she was sleeping, but he “didn’t know” he was doing it until he woke up himself. « Hide Spoiler

Whichever version you just read, it all comes down to a female possibly not making decisions on her own and being manipulated, or controlled, into doing something that she may not want to do if she were more aware.

This is not sexy and should not be used as a good-girl-likes-bad-boy cliché because it’s too far from that for me. I understand that the male character in question is supposed to be bad, or mysterious, but this takes the bad boy trope to a whole new level. That compounded with the dialogue about drunk women were really enough for me to be turned off from this book.

Alas, I continued to read just to see if it improved. It didn’t.

Rating Report
Plot
Characters
Writing
World Building
Overall:	1 / 5