Review: Tangled Tides

Tangled Tides
Karen Amanda Hooper
3.5/5.0

Yara Jones doesn't believe in sea monsters--until she becomes one.

When a hurricane hits her island home and she wakes up with fins, Yara finds herself tangled up in an underwater world of mysterious merfolk and secretive selkies. Both sides believe Yara can save them by fulfilling a broken promise and opening the sealed gateway to their realm, but they are battling over how it should be done. The selkies want to take her life. The merfolk want something far more precious.

Treygan, the stormy-eyed merman who turned Yara mer, will stop at nothing and sacrifice everything to protect his people--until he falls for Yara. The tides turn as Yara fights to save herself, hundreds of sea creatures, and the merman who has her heart. She could lose her soul in the process--or she might open the gateway to a love that's deeper than the oceans.Overall, its a pretty good story.  The premise is interesting enough, and I didn't want to murder the characters.  The plot kept me invested, and I got rather anxious towards the end.

I certainly recommend the book to someone into mermaids and romance and the like.

I liked the characters for the most part, although I did find Yara a little whiny.  I let it slide because I could understand why she would react the way she did to things.  I liked Treygan, but he definitely didn't fall into the book boyfriend category.  I felt like he was a good match for Yara though.  I even liked the supporting characters, although I was really unsure about the Sirens up until the bitter end.

I think it was the little things that led to me dropping the rating more than anything.  The "seagarettes" and "c-weed" just seemed silly and somewhat ridiculous to me.

And the whole, "I can't have sex with you or kiss you, so I'm going to write love notes on your skin from head to to toe" was just a little to ewwy-gooey romance-y for me.

The end didn't really do much for me either.  GRANTED, it's not a bad end, and some people will love it.  However, there wasn't much of a cliffhanger, and it doesn't give me a whole lot of incentive to want to read the next book.  It was all pretty much tied up in a pretty bow at the end.  Like I said, I'm sure some people prefer that to the gut-wrenching cliffhangers I prefer, but to me it was a let down.

I certainly wouldn't want to discourage people from at least giving the book a shot, because a lot of people really loved it, and I *liked* it.  It just isn't on my top 10 list.

Review: Keeping Merminia

Keeping Merminia (Merminia #2)

Emm Cole

4.0/5.0

*NOTE: This is BOOK 2 of the Merminia Series, so be warned that this review has book one spoilers.

At the end of Meminia (Book 1) Ulric has possession of Adessia's ring giving him powers over land and sea that no man with his ego and aggression levels should have. He's just gone all creeptastic and waltzed onto shore to start some serious shit with the land dwellers. 

 

Selinne has buried her brother, become lead Merminian, been abandoned by Gabriel, and has just had a friendly chat with her dead father. Her father delivers a message from the Fate's themselves declaring Selinne must get back Adessia's ring, it's her destiny. 

 

Book two begins with Ulric continuing his rampage and seizing Dencur with Adessia's ring. He leaves everything beyond the city walls in complete chaos, because he's Ulric, and he can

.

Selinne must attempt to save Merminia from ruin by journeying into Dencur to battle it out with the crazy warlord giant and finds a hesitant group to aid her on her trek. 

 

However while Selinne works to stop Ulric from destroying all that she holds dear, her friendships are pushed to their breaking points. 

 

With the final battle between humans and Enchanteds looming on the horizon, both Seline and Ulric will find out just how much they both stand to lose. 

 

First of all... I must say, I'm very surprised by this series. I usually can't get into a mermaid series. I'm not sure if it's because they all seem to have that human meets mermaid and falls madly in love romance element or if I just can't connect with fins. Whatever the case may be, they generally just aren't my thing.

Merminia is different though. For one, Selinne is not in love with a human and humans are not in love with her. Why it took so long for me to find a series that operates this way, I don't know, but I'm ecstatic about it.

Also, it's just a good story, and even though the characters possess fins, I found them easy to connect with. Cole does a great job of creating well rounded characters that are flawed enough to make them believable. I found her characters very easy to love... or hate... depending on who we're discussing, but they each did things that completely surprised me.

Speaking of surprise... very few things went the way I expected them to go in this book. If we narrow down to important things that went the way I expected, not a damn one of them went the way I thought it would. NOT A SINGLE FREAKING ONE! So either I'm really losing my touch here, or Cole is a master with plot twists. I'm going with master of plot twists.

Oh, and the end of the book... yeah... it was one of those things I totally got wrong. Yeah, I'm all sunshine and rainbows and then here comes Cole with a big shiny metaphorical dagger to stick in my metaphorical side and twist. Then she just leaves it there... to linger and fester and drive me completely insane. 

Don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking the ending AT ALL. Like I have said before, I love a cliffhanger. I really do. I loved this one too. It was, however, one of the cruelest cliffhangers I've seen in awhile. 

It's really a fantastic Indie read, and I'm so, so glad that I decided to volunteer for it. The only thing that I will say is kind of odd about the series is the POV switch. Book one is 3^rd person, switch POV, and Book two is 1^st person, dual POV. It kind of threw me when I hit chapter one of book two. HOWEVER, I will say that I really PREFER 1^st person POV, so I wasn't too brokenhearted over the switch. It was just strange to see in the middle of the series. Other than that, I give mad props to Emm Cole for creating an amazing story... with mermaids... that I actually want to read.

BTW... Ms. Cole... when is book three coming out???  Ya know... if you need someone to read it...