I kind of hate giving this a bad review, because to an extent this is an "I hate this style of book" review and I normally find those annoying and inane. You know the sort... "I hate horror novels but I read this horror novel and it sucked, 1 star." What I don't like are relentlessly downbeat books, and this is a relentlessly downbeat book. I didn't know going in; I assumed it was yet another deep sea horror novel, which I usually love. 
 To its credit - It is well written, the writing style flows, and it was immersive enough that I read it to the end, wanting to know what was going to happen. There were cool monsters and the setting was creepy. 
 To its demerit - Nearly every character is either a trauma survivor, an asshole, or insane. Better horror, for me, provides characters you relate to and care about and want to see survive. In this, the narrator is miserable and downbeat and almost everyone else is nutty as a Reeses cup. I badly missed the feeling of really liking someone and rooting for them and wanting them to make it. Instead, misery compounds on misery and we get everything from family trauma, childhood abuse, sexual abuse, animal abuse, emotional abuse... Well, you get the idea. And it doesn't really go anywhere. There's no emotional growth to the characters, no issues get resolved, no one gets any better, they just all careen downhill as worse and worse events take place and the cast gets chewed up one by one. 
 I hate the very concept of "trigger warnings" but I'm going to go ahead and say, if you have a problem with bad things happening to animals, this is not your book. Steer clear.