I was reorganizing the horror section at the library - we just got a donation of vintage gothic paperbacks, covers with heaving bosoms and crumbling castles, the whole deal - when I decided to throw this on. Merman romance. Horror-adjacent, I reasoned. Creatures from the deep. Ancient races. Surely there'd be some eldritch undertones?
Shirley (my cat, not the author) gave me a look that suggested I was reaching. She was right.
The Depths Are Shallower Than Expected
Look, I went in hoping for horror elements. What I got was paranormal romance that occasionally remembers it has stakes. Torun is a merman warlord - capital W Warlord, the kind who speaks in declarations about claiming and destiny and soul mates. Lucy is a broke divorcee who can't have children, which becomes the central tension because apparently merman society runs on heirs.
The setup has potential. Ancient underwater civilization. A race facing extinction. A woman who's been told her whole life she's not enough, suddenly being told she's everything. That's good bones for a story. Bone Crossed works with similar themes of a woman redefining herself after being discarded, though it actually delivers on the tension.
But the pacing. Oh, the pacing.
At six and a half hours, this should move. Instead, there's a lot of... waiting. Conversations that circle the same points. Internal monologues that rehash what we already know. I caught myself reshelving books on autopilot, realizing I'd missed nothing because the plot had barely inched forward. The "padding" complaints I've seen from other listeners? Valid. There's a solid four-hour story stretched thin here.
Chandra Skyye's Complicated Performance
Here's where I'm genuinely torn. Skyye has moments where she commits - her emotional delivery during Lucy's vulnerability about her infertility actually landed. There's real feeling there. When she leans into the romance, into the intimacy of Lucy's internal struggle between wanting something impossible and protecting herself, it works.
But Torun. The merman warlord who should sound commanding, otherworldly, maybe even a little dangerous? He comes across... flat. Where I wanted ancient power and barely-contained intensity, I got a guy reading his lines. The contrast between Lucy's emotional range and Torun's monotone created this weird imbalance where the romance felt one-sided. Like Lucy was falling for a particularly attractive cardboard cutout.
Some listeners loved her work here. Some compared her unfavorably to Alexa (the virtual assistant, which - ouch). I land somewhere in the middle. She's not phoning it in, but she's not fully inhabiting the fantasy either.
What This Gets Right (And What It Doesn't)
Starla Night understands something about paranormal romance that a lot of authors miss: the appeal isn't just the supernatural boyfriend. It's the transformation. Lucy isn't just getting a hot merman - she's being offered a complete reinvention of her life, her body, her purpose. For a woman who's been discarded by her ex-husband, deemed "broken" by society's standards, that's powerful stuff. That kind of bodily transformation as reclamation shows up in There There too, though in a completely different context—urban Native identity rather than underwater fantasy.
The mermaid transformation mythology is actually interesting. The Lords of Atlantis worldbuilding has legs (fins?). There's a larger conflict about saving the merman race that promises more in future books.
But this is book one, which means setup. A lot of setup. And the setup-to-payoff ratio is skewed heavily toward the former. By the time things actually happen, I'd been waiting so long I'd lost some of my investment.
The mature content, when it arrives, is... fine? Serviceable? It's not pushing boundaries, but it's not shy either. If you're here for the spice, you'll get some, but it's not the main course.
Who Should Dive In (And Who Should Stay on Shore)
If you're a paranormal romance devotee who loves the "fated mates" trope and doesn't mind a slow build, this might work for you. Fans of mermaid/merman mythology who want something lighter than horror will find it pleasant enough. But if you need momentum? If you're easily bored by repetitive internal monologue? If you - like me - were hoping for any actual horror elements in your creature feature? Skip this one. Or at least bump it to 1.25x speed, which I wish I'd done earlier.
I finished it. That's something. Shirley slept through the entire thing, which is either a commentary on the pacing or just because she's a cat.
Back to the Stacks
This isn't horror. It's not even horror-adjacent. It's paranormal romance that occasionally gestures toward stakes without ever making me feel them. The premise has potential, the narrator has moments, and the series might go somewhere interesting. But this first installment? It's treading water.
(My podcast listeners are going to roast me for even reviewing this. Worth it for the merman discourse alone.)
