Hi friends, it’s been a hot minute since I’ve done a tour (not since September 2025!), so I’m excited to be back with a blog tour review today! I’m here to share my thoughts (and a few favourite quotes) as part of the blog tour hosted by Toppling Stacks Tours for The Wicked Sea by Jordan Stephanie Gray.

Thanks to Requited for providing a digital ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review!

^{Click the banner above or here to check out the other incredible bloggers on the blog tour!}

TL;DR: The Wicked Sea is a fun fantasy romance featuring killer mermaids and warlocks, a steamy enemies-to-lovers romance, and a thrilling race against time across this world, trailed by powerful and deadly enemies. Don’t let this (beautiful) pastel cover fool you—this story gets dark and very gory, and covers fairly tough topics, so I would recommend checking content/trigger warnings beforehand. While there were elements I wish had been done better to deliver a stronger story, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed this! If you’re a fan of Quicksilver and Phantasma, chances are you’ll like this too.

Straight off, I have to admit that this book and I didn’t start on the right foot. I was honestly worried after reading the prologue that this would be a DNF, but I’m glad that I pushed on because I was pleasantly surprised by how much I came to enjoy it. The fantasy romance genre feels oversaturated these days, and I’m admittedly not always the biggest fan. 😬 That said, this sounded intriguing enough for me to want to try it, and though I can’t say it was massively different, I happily ended up enjoying it a lot more than I do other books in this genre!

Fair warning, this starts on a very gruesome/gory note that repeats in several instances. Don’t be fooled by this pretty cover because it gets dark, but this grittiness is also what made the story stand out to me. There were a few scenes that had chills running down my spine and my stomach churning with fear and nausea. I truly wasn’t expecting it, but I did enjoy it!

“Be still my heart. An apology from a warlock. What’s next? A sermon from a blowfish?”

The Wicked Sea ticks all the fantasy romance checkboxes, and that’s why I think many readers of the genre will love it. We’ve got a mouthy, sarcastic FMC who’s a killer mermaid, and a stoic, broody MMC who’s a killer warlock—plus, he has wings and magical phantom daddy powers. 👀 There are tropes galore: enemies-to-lovers, forced proximity, ‘who did this to you’, and a few more that I won’t spoil, but rest assured, there are more to discover! The writing was pretty modern, including the use of modern phrases and slang, which took some getting used to. This did make it “easier” to read, I suppose.

“You are more than your magic, Arion Stone, and our lives are worth more than a baguette and some moldy milk.”

Zephyra was an interesting FMC. I wasn’t sure if I would gel with her at the beginning because she’s reckless and the type of sarcastic that I find slightly cringey. I’m happy to say she grew on me and became someone I’d be happy to root for. She experienced some dark things that led her to protect her deep-seated fears and vulnerabilities with a brash and often chaotic surface. I wished we had learned more about how she wound up where she did, before even the “first event” that triggered it all. Similarly, I liked Arion, although I felt his arc really took a backseat the further we got, which left him feeling a bit one-note by the end. He was pretty much a product of the kingdom that made him, and in the process of becoming the king’s warlock, he was made to experience incredibly horrifying and traumatising events. I found the enhancements that were made to turn him into a warlock intriguing—it was very ‘Frankenstein-esque’—and I would’ve liked to learn more about that. Where did/does the magic come from (since clearly not everyone can use or has it)? It’s never really explored.

“I feel like I keep running and running, but it’s never toward anything. It’s always away. Away from the world. Away from death. Away from myself. But ‘away’ isn’t a direction. It’s circles. I’m sprinting through the same mistakes and history keeps repeating and time doesn’t stop. […] I don’t want to be the person I am. I don’t want people to die because of me. But I’ve been running for so long…I don’t know how to quit.”

Perhaps what surprised me most is that I actually liked the balance of romance and plot action! If you consider that all of this happens in the span of roughly a week, I guess you can say it’s pretty “insta”, but their enmity lasts for longer than a few chapters, and it takes work for both of them to look beyond the surface and to see each other for more than a mermaid and warlock. I was also pleasantly surprised that the romance didn’t take over the entire plot. There were a couple of steamy scenes—though again, fewer than I thought there would be—but they didn’t happen immediately, and it felt like a natural, if inevitable, progression of their growing feelings.

“We’re in this together. My darkness can be your darkness. Your light can be my light.”

Our MCs are also accompanied willingly and unwillingly by many side characters who will delight and annoy in turn, and while it made for an odd grouping, they were nonetheless entertaining. That said, some of the events that take place required more than a little suspension of disbelief. Sometimes the logic also wasn’t logic-ing, which I think would’ve been helped a lot if the world-building had been stronger and the pacing had been better. For those who aren’t fussed by minimal world-building though, this will be great! However, I wanted more because there was a lot to explore, and it felt like a missed opportunity that we only got world-building in bits and pieces, “as needed”.

There were a few twists that I surprisingly saw coming very early on, but even more that I didn’t, which made the last section feel even more tense with each new reveal we got. I think my favourite parts did come at the end because the atmosphere felt so tense and the descriptions were so grotesque that it made my stomach churn, lol. That ending was surprising (and for me a bit confusing), but it’s also leading me to believe that the next book is possibly going to take a romantic turn that isn’t my cuppa… I hope that I’m wrong because I’m very curious about where the author will take the story after this! I think things are just going to get even messier and more chaotic, and y’know, sometimes we’re here for that!

Is The Wicked Sea on your TBR or does it sound like something you’d enjoy reading?

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