INTO THE SUNKEN CITY By Dinesh Thiru

I received this book for free from Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Into the Sunken City by Dinesh Thiru
Published by HarperTeen on 1/23/24
Genres: Action & Adventure, Fantasy & Magic, Young Adult
Pages: 363
Format: eARC
Source: Publisher
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For Jin Haldar, this life is nothing new—ever since her father died in a diving accident, she’s barely made ends meet for her and her younger sister, Thara.

Enter Bhili: a drifter who offers Jin and Thara the score of a lifetime—a massive stash of gold hidden in the sunken ruins of Las Vegas.

Jin knows it’s too dangerous. She stopped diving after her father’s accident. But when her sister decides to go, Jin’s left with only one choice: to go with her.

A ragtag crew is assembled—including Jin’s annoyingly hot ex-boyfriend. From there, a high-stakes heist ensues that’s beyond even Jin’s wildest fears. Crumbling ruins, sea beasts, corsairs, and a mysterious figure named João Silva all lie in wait. To survive, Jin will have to do what she promised herself she’d never do again: dive.

Short and Sweet Review

Ever since Jin’s dad died in a diving accident, she’s been finding it hard to make ends meet to keep the family in and care for her younger sister Thara. Jin swore she wouldn’t dive again but she will if it means keeping her and Thara together. Bhili is a drifter and she gets a room at the inn and she stays for a long time eventually earning the trust of Thara much to Jins dismay. Bhili ends up bringing trouble to the inn, but her solution is to go to the sunken city of Vegas and have Jin dive to get the gold that’s down there. Jin wants nothing to do with this plan but in a rapid pace Bhili gets a team together one that includes Jin’s ex Taim. Jin knows this will be dangerous but she has to go where Thara goes and the gold would be able to help them out tremendously.

Into the Sunken City was an interesting book, I haven’t read a book where the main character was a diver before. Jin is very head strong and she’s not very trusting of other people which drives her sister crazy, this quality in Jin also drove me crazy because it often led to her getting into arguments with other characters. I would say a majority of the scenes with Jin involve her arguing. Thara on the other hand was just naive and too willing to trust everyone around her. When Jin agrees to go to Vegas it’s because Thara is basically done with Jin calling all the shots and Jin doesn’t want to lose her sister. We see Jin, Thara, and Taim be captured by another pirate group and they end up having to do the Vegas dive for this guy. We don’t really know who to trust in this book and it feels like pirates are great liars. The biggest thing we see in this book is Jin’s love for her sister. I also liked that this world is different in that the states we know are basically under water. I wouldn’t really say there was a romance between Jin and Taim, mainly because Jin is still mad at him for joining the coast guard, also there wasn’t anytime for them to rekindle whatever they had.

Overall, this book was good and different. I think the plot was great but I didn’t jive with the characters, I love how different the world was and it was fun living through it and following Jin on her diving journey.