2.5 stars

First, the positives. I think this cover is absolutely stunning, and I really like the title of the book. I also think there was potential for this to be a really good book, but...

I don't really get the point.

I read Sky in the Deep a year ago, and enjoyed it. It wasn't setting my world on fire, but I thought it was an interesting premise and world that was different from the plethora of palace-intrigue fantasies that tend to flood the market.

When The Girl the Sea Gave Back was added to Book of the Month, I had no idea that this was related to that book. I just remembered that the author had written a book I moderately enjoyed and I was interested to see how her writing progressed from her debut to her second published work.

At the end of the day, I just didn't find this memorable at all. I don't think a week from now I will remember anything substantial about this book, mostly because there isn't much substance to be found. There are kernels of a good story here, but I just never found myself hooked by the world or characters. I read another review that said the world building in this felt very shallow in comparison to SITD, which was strange considering this is the follow up and if anything it should feel richer. I totally agree with that. And really, not much happens here. There are a couple of battle scenes and characters prepping for battle scenes, and that's pretty much it. It feels like I just read the first half of a book, even though the story is wrapped up at the end.

Oh, there's also our two protagonists who see each other for like two minutes and form some sort of bond, to the point that the only meet a handful of times throughout the book and at the end we're supposed to believe that

they're fated to be together. Like...they've had like two conversations, neither of which is them actually getting to know one another. It's all in preparation for a battle...not exactly the stuff forever love is made of.

I don't know why the author made the choices she did with regard to their relationship, but if she really felt the need to write a romance into the story, shouldn't the characters have more than two or three scenes together?

The characters themselves are mostly one-dimensional, which is weird because the male protagonist is a character who was in SITD, so you would think she would've been able to create a little depth, but he never felt like a real person to me. The only real inner conflict he has is that he doesn't feel worthy of being named the successor to the chieftain, but even that feels surface-level.

Ultimately, I go back to what I said at the beginning of this review, and that is that I don't really get the point. The first book was fine on its own, and if the author wasn't going to dig deeper into the world that would've been one thing, but she didn't. Yes, she introduced two new clans. But aside from one of them being mystical and living their lives consulting runes to glimpse the future, we don't really know much about either of them.