Note: This review comes from a white, non-binary person.

*Special thanks to HarperTeen and Net Gallery for the eARC of this book*

TW: Infidelity, cheating, temptations to cheat, misgendering, depression

This book cover has me five times over full-on in love with it. Seriously, the colours, the character poses, the shear emotion and mood this cover emotes is beyond my wildest dreads,

Sadly the book didn't quite match up to that cover hype. And that's ok. I mean, some books are allowed to be just "OK" books. There were ideas I loved, and if you like fake dating tropes you'll love this. But there was a lot of little gripes that had me settle on a 'meh' score.

First being the author tended to do a lot of 'telling' rather than showing. For example, he mentions Sean has an "Accountant" persona in language he puts on when embarrassed, he talks too formally and that's a really funny concept and ok to point out the first time it happens. But then, every time he gets embarrassed he always points out "I'm talking like an accountant again" and the joke falls flat. Then there will be repeated phrasing in the same paragraph such as "Ross's movements were fluid... Such fluid movements." and it would make me do a double take to see if I had accidentally re-read the same line twice. A last critique in the regards to the writing is the explanations being in the wrong places. In the beginning we are told mer folk have names like "Kelp" and "Drop" which seemed more fitting to come out of a Disney Jr cartoon than a YA romance novel (nothing wrong with simple names! Just seemed off). It wasn't till the last third of the book we are told that those are not actually the names the mer-folk say, but rather they mimic the "sound of a drop of water" or "of kelp thrashing in the sea". which makes SO much more sense. That should have been brought up in the beginning rather than so late in the book.

Seans best friend also seemed a lot like the token sassy BIPOC for the first half of the book, but then she changes into a important but uncomfortable main character towards the end.

Lastly were the morals. What were they? It just kept (pardon the pun) flip flopping. Was it about true love? Was it about the corruption of humanity? Was it about the flaws of instalove? I don't know, it was honestly all over and the characters kept shifting their views and the final lesson was literally two pages from the end and I didn't know how long that one was going to stick for them in the long run.

I did love the body positivity and having so many queer characters. This is a great step in normalisation for both those aspects.