Scan barcode
ghosthermione's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
tense
Someone said horror mermaids? I gotta say it’s a concept I enjoyed since I read Into the Deep by Mira Grant, and so mermaids+horror themes+queer stuff attracts me like bees to honey. This one is more on the YA side but Warner didn’t shy away from depicting some gruesome scenes anyways. It’s a massacre, after all.
The romance itself, while a big part of the story, wasn’t the Main Thing. The main themes were definitely ones of survival, with a side serving of “what makes us monsters” which I really enjoy in books like that. There was some cattishness among the girls, which I think is fair. Put twenty 16 year olds on a boat and sending them to their deaths, while they all think they have the best strategy and the best way to rule over the others. Give them lethal weapons. Put them in the path of even more lethal creatures… shit’s going to happen. The novel deals a bit with the trauma of the situation, though I think it dealt more with the loss of others prior to the trip, than with what PTSD-inducing nightmare the trip itself is, but you can see some of the characters fraying at the seams and to me that was pretty realistic.
I also enjoyed that it had a more nuanced approached to mermaids as monsters than a clear-cut monster-hunter, us-versus-them narrative. Are the humans truly justified in going into their territory to kill as many as possible? is killing a child mermaid ok?
I tend not to go too much towards YA these days but it was still an enjoyable read and I’d recommend it for a good ol’ case of friends to enemies to lovers as well. There was less romance than I expected but it was still pretty cute, and the worldbuilding made it well worth it!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Child abuse, and Gore
autumnrevisited's review
adventurous
dark
emotional
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
It’s an incredibly written book. The story is very Romeo and Juliet with much higher stakes for everyone involved. I loved it, and I’m very excited to read the rest of the series.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Blood, Body horror, Bullying, Child death, Death, Genocide, Gore, and Violence
Moderate: Body shaming, Confinement, and Drug use
More...