Another “adult” fantasy that reads as a trite YA. It’s also a very loose (and poorly hidden) The Little Mermaid retelling with splashes of Asian mythology mixed in. I probably would have like that if it had been marketed that way, but it took me by surprise and came off as cliche and cringy. Overall though — not bad for a debut fantasy, and the cover design is gorgeous. 

The story was interesting, but the multiple POVs were hard to follow — especially when two of the three characters have similar names and the remaining character goes by multiple names. I didn’t feel that the third POV was necessary at all, and her motivations were so confusing to follow. It seems like her only purpose in the story is to create chaos and she doesn’t actually want anything.

If I had known how political this book was going to get, I probably wouldn’t have started it. I wouldn’t have found this book at all if not for it being the March Illumicrate selection. I read fantasy books to escape the issues of the real world, and I’m getting so sick of revolution/overthrow stories in YA. However, this didn’t affect my rating as it’s simply my genre preference and nothing inherently wrong with the book. 

I will definitely come back to it again, most likely when the holiday season rolls around again and new stories in the Horned Up for the Holidays world are announced. I just moved on to other reads at the time. 

It was okay. I liked some of it, but it was basically ten straight hours of repetitive smut with hardly any focus on the story.

I get that it’s a paranormal romance with non-human characters, but it was unrealistic. The amount of times they fucked in a row uninterrupted combined with the absolutely insane character jump from “only ever had vanilla sex” to full stalker fantasies gave me whiplash. It went from 0 to 100 without any working up to that comfort level. It just didn’t make sense for a character who is constantly framed as insecure and nervous.

The male narrator’s voice for any female character was super grating.

I’m a little confused how a side character that is constantly referred to as a skinny knockout is suddenly plus-sized on the cover of the second book? Maybe it’s explained in the next book, but I don’t know if I’ll read it at this point.