TL;DR: Am I kicking off the 2025 spooky season with a monster romance? I sure am and I’m 100% here for it! 🤭 While it did take me longer than expected to finish due to some pacing issues, I overall really enjoyed it and I’m keen to continue the series. I would recommend this to anyone who enjoys a (very) slow-burn, enemies to lovers, mainly character driven monster romance set in a futuristic world where humans live in underwater cities.

The world-building was intriguing and I was eager to learn more about the history of this world and of the history between the undine (a person of the water) and achromos (humans). It’s clear the centuries-long history of animosity and hatred between the two have poisoned both societies. As always, humans are so aggressively destructive in much of what they do—and of course, we never do things by half. The undines have suffered losses due to the destruction of ocean habitats where humans have established themselves in massive structures that leak poison and pollutants into the water, affecting the entire ecosystem around it. And despite history indicating that they should care, humans obviously don’t learn from past actions; especially where power, greed and cruelty are involved. But the undines don’t take their destruction lying down and while I don’t love the tit-for-tat that only creates more death and fuels hatred, they have every right to defend and protect their ocean.

This layered history is what made the romance between Arges and Mira interesting, and I was eager to see how the author would have their relationship play out, considering how much animosity exists between the two groups. I wasn’t disappointed! This was no “five-minutes of being enemies before becoming lovers” romance. This was a very slow burn, so if you’re looking for a quick and steamy monster hook-up, you won’t find it here! That said, it was worth the wait as you get to see them come to grips with their actions—especially for Arges with his kidnapping of Mira and the unintended consequences of that—and to see them challenge what they’ve been taught about each other their whole lives. It was far from smooth sailing and even as they experienced more gentle moments between them, it often turned on a dime as they remembered how much they loathed each other.

Honestly, I loved seeing their mild disgust and general curiosity of each other evolve into a fragile attraction that burned so very hot! 🥵 Even though they don’t officially get together until around the 80% mark, there were a lot of sensual caresses, soft touches, and exploration that turned the heat up!

I really liked Mira. Despite the direness of her situation, she doesn’t easily give up. She’s feisty, bold, sharp and knows her worth despite others in Beta, the “worker city” she’s from, treating her like orphan trash. It was easy to admire her character! Similarly, Arges was really interesting, especially because he feels so much hate for humans and yet, he can’t help but feel pulled towards Mira. As the leader of his pod, he bears a great responsibility to his people but he also has a lot of pride in them and the ways of the People of the Water. There was a very subtle element of “fated mates” in his initial reactions to her, I think, but it didn’t feel like the main reason they got together. No matter how much he tried to deny it, Arges fell first and fell hard and I loved seeing him be in awe of her!

Aside from a few plot holes and smaller elements that were introduced and went nowhere, I think the main issue I had was that the middle of the book considerably dragged. I found myself sitting at the 40-60% mark for so long despite feeling like I’d already read so much! There wasn’t a lot of action where Mira and Arges were concerned and there was a lot of repetitiveness to their interactions that I felt slowed the pace down a lot. That said, the beginning and end were strong and I’m happy with how things worked out because it didn’t feel like “suddenly everything is going to be okay” and they’ve just accepted all the changes with open arms. Clearly, there’s a long way to go for the achromos and undines to willingly co-exist peacefully, but it’s a start and I’m keen to see how the series progresses because I feel like it will be more interconnected with the larger plot line. I hope we get to see more of Mira and Arges in later books too! 😊

Have you read Whispers of the Deep or is it on your TBR?

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