A hot tentacle monster bodyguard on the bottom of Lake Superior? As someone with thalassophobia who grew up on one of the Great Lakes—I felt this premise in my bones 😅

If you want unhinged sexy times, this is your book. A D/s dynamic plus tentacles, weird peen, dirty talk, breeding kink, and even a hint of CNC (she was saying “no” but not their safe word on purpose and… some other stuff 😅).

I’m usually all for the unhinged spice. But unfortunately, by the time the romance plot (and the sexy times) got going, a bunch of pet peeves had taken me out of the story:
▪️ the bodyguard romance wasn’t bodyguard-ing. I wanted lots of interaction but these two spent a chunk of time avoiding each other. So this was more instalove than I like my bodyguard roms to be
▪️ when characters are bored, I’m bored. And the characters were so bored for the first half of the book that they were having boredom-induced mental breakdowns. So, same
▪️ I wanted more atmosphere. This book took place almost completely underwater. Like, in scuba gear. But it felt so normal that I kept forgetting they were even in the lake at all
▪️ I couldn’t figure out the story’s mood. It was half very serious (lots of danger, lots of trauma) and half super campy (they needed to bone to live, for example)—and I never quite got my bearings
▪️ was the plot disjointed? Or did I just ‘temporarily DNF’ this too many times? 😅

But but but—if you ignore all those little things, it was both kink-tacular and sweet. Which is a great quality, so I get why this has received so much love. I’m still intrigued by this author and I feel like October is great time to read more from her.