A huge thank you to the author, NetGalley, and Tides Collide Publishing for providing this e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

An interesting twist on the tale of the Little Mermaid, with a focus on Filipino folklore and the trappings of abusive relationships.

The audiobook narrator did a fantastic job with the voicing and I felt they fit this book extremely well. In many ways the only reason I finished this book is due to the audiobook.

Overall, this book was fine but it just didn’t work for me. I think perhaps this book was a bit too YA for me and felt too young in both characterization and plot - but I think a younger audience could enjoy this book much more.

As I wrote this review I came off meaner than I intended, so don’t read this if you want a positive review. I’ll write here that based on the other reviews my issues are definitely more due to my interpretations and reading, and I would encourage anyone interested in a Filipino twist on the Little Mermaid to check out this novel.

Once the plot kicks off, the pacing of this novel speeds up and improves, but the beginning portion of this book almost made me DNF it. I understand the author putting the warnings near the beginning about the toxic relationship shown in this book, but - and this could be entirely me - I didn’t feel like we were shown enough for how it became so toxic. We just moved from “he’s so sweet” to “and then months later he’s gaslighting me” with no inbetween. In many ways this felt less like an exploration of a toxic relationship our main character wants to escape from, and more like the author had decided “this is the bad boyfriend” and then just told us this.

(Spoiler: This is really prominent when in the other reality this same “boyfriend” is the one who murders his girlfriend on this side - and this is literally never explored or talked about again, despite the murdered character supposedly being a friend of one of the characters. It’s just a “See! He’s terrible! Right??? Right???” thing, and felt shoehorned in. He can be abusive and violent without you holding our hands and telling us this. That was the event that made me feel justified for thinking that the boyfriend was just told to be bad to justify us not liking him, rather than the author actually writing a believable abusive relationship.)

In the same way, we’re simply told that Malaya is too entrenched to break up with him even when she wants to, and we (as the reader) don’t believe this because we didn’t see it happen - so instead of sympathy it’s honestly kind of annoying. (I know! I know! The beginning tells us to not do this, but you can’t just tell us to believe something and then add a forward that tells us that not believing what the author wrote is on ME and not a mark of not great writing.)

And then the very YA feeling happens again with the sudden insta-love our main character gets with the boyfriend she’s “supposed” to have. Their attraction wasn’t that believable, and it threw me for a loop that it took so long for the author to tell us their age difference when Malaya is in HIGHSCHOOL and he’s in COLLEGE. They’re only a year apart, but I spent a concerning amount of the book trying to figure out how he was a better choice if he’s in college already.

(Also, this is me complaining about the plot, but the whole “curse” thing felt extremely fake, and the way the mother handled it made absolutely no sense. She just tells her daughter “hey we’re cursed to fall for a terrible boy and then he’ll ruin your life - and when you fall for a terrible boy instead of trying to help you I’m just going to blame you for everything and push you towards him.” What? If there IS a curse (I don’t believe this part of the narrative one bit) the mom should have been like “Hey there’s a curse that makes us like bad men as our first love - if you do, don’t think it’s all you’re good for and you can find better” since a BIG part of why our main character stays with him is because A) her mom told her she can’t leave him “unless she dies,” and B) her mom is abusive enough that she doesn’t want to prove her right. Bad parenting 101.

In the same vein, at the end it’s the DAUGHTER’S responsibility to coddle the mom about her bad parenting? What? Or the talking about how the other reality’s sister was good because she showed her that actions have consequences by beating her up, and then suddenly that other mom realizes that she’s taking advantage of being the “better” kid. Huh? That part made absolutely no sense, I’m sorry.)

With this being a fantasy retelling, I won’t be too harsh on the plot. I thought the Filipino monsters from mythology were a fascinating touch, and the reasoning done by the sea witch an interesting decision. I wish there was a bit more background or information on WHY the sea witch is trapped, or any worldbuilding at all, but overall it worked for a fantasy retelling.

Side note: Is this cover AI? Because………the hand looks a bit sus.