When Everly is narked on her dive, she hallucinates and sees her best friend. How does this impact her choices? What is the difference between her desire to stay alive and her desire to live?

Everly insisted on diving even though Maddox had a bad feeling about it. When Everly is narked on her dive, she hallucinates and sees her best friend. How does this impact her choices? Why do you think she felt she must see "what is below"? What is the difference between her desire to stay alive and her desire to live?

“Staying alive” is about physical existence whereas the “desire to live,” at least for me, is experiencing and embracing life to its fullest with mind, body and spirit. As a result of Everly’s dive experience, she chooses to live.

As a side note, I thought a lot about Everly’s experience, and while I understand the science behind dive-related nitrogen narcosis, part of me believes it was Mora reaching out to save her friend utilizing the hallucination as a means to reach her.

When Everly is narked and sees her best friend, she is enthralled, somewhat of a hypnotic state, wanting to follow her as they had in her lifetime. She realized in the course of the experience was that Mora was showing her through her ancestral chain, that she needed to live life guilt-free and hope-filled in the present, not the past, that living goes forward.

This was my least favorite part of the book. I had to read it a couple of times to figure out what was going on. I understand that she was hallucinating, but it seemed a little too pat, a convenient plot ploy to solve her depression.

Although I felt this part was somewhat contrived, I guess it served as the epiphany Everly needed to stop blaming herself for Mora's death and get herself back on track to being a functioning human once again.

I also felt that this scene was contrived. It was a disappointment to me that the author felt the need to do this.

I think it provided her a way to overcome her guilt and choose to live her life as Mora would have wanted her to.

I was worried that something would happen to Everly because she wasn't honest about her equipment and diving recency. Now that I think back, maybe it was a bit contrived. I think it did provide some clarity and closure to her guilt about Mora's death.