Book Review: Secrets of the Sealed Treasure

Title: Secrets of the Sealed Treasure

Author: Aggie Parris

Date:: 2023

Quote: "[T]he seal turned back to regard the dead man on the beach. His eyes glistened with sudden moisture."

After telling us that, Parris hardly needs to try to make a mystery of it. He's a selkie. Early attempts to invent the wetsuit probably generated the legend of this race of creatures who were human in other ways, but could put on seals' skins and turn into real seals, at will. 

Carly works as a museum docent and goes deep sea diving and treasure hunting for fun. She tries to find a legendary ship wrecked near her town, and succeeds. She brings back a sack of not very valuable shilling coins. There's something peculiar about one of the coins, though. Her new friend Leo tells her that it's been enchanted; the people on the ship were real witches back in England. "More gray than black, but white hurts their eyes." The coin protects its owner from harm but, since its energy comes from "negative" sources, it will stay with an evildoer and find ways to lose itself from a good-doer. 

So who was the dead man and why did he die? And what's happened to Carly's boat buddy Verity? And what about their other friend, Vince, the good-looking police officer to whom they report the death? That's what the story has in the way of suspense. You're likely to see all the answers coming well before they're answered by the book. 

Selkie lore, you should know, has always agreed that they are fully human when in human form and prefer to mate with humans. You'll see the romance coming a few miles ahead of the book, too. In traditional lore, female selkies were sometimes trapped in fish nets and carried home by fishermen who might be able to hold them prisoners by stealing their seal skins; male selkies were more likely to have hidden their seal skins before they went into human settlements and courted women. Either way, selkies were capable of loving humans but unwilling to limit themselves to human life for very long, so their romances with humans tended to go badly, and if you expect more suspense from a novel than this one has you might think this will serve its characters right.

Anyway, the selkie motif qualifies as "paranormal" and might be part of a Halloween party or costume, so...