About this book:
“A Tail Could Tell a Tale
Locklyn Adair has never fit in. The legs she inherited as a result of her great-great-grandmother’s curse make it impossible for her to belong under the sea. When her niece is also born without a tail, Locklyn is determined to save her from similar rejection by sending her to the only place in the Undersea Realm where legs are acceptable—the Lost Island of Atlantis.
Darin Aalto would do anything to protect his family, even spearheading an impossible quest to find treasure that has been lost for over a hundred years. But when his best friend, Locklyn, joins his crew, his ability to keep her safe—and his shot at winning her heart—comes perilously close to being swept away.
A family curse, lost treasure, unrequited love, and a race against time intertwine as Locklyn and Darin seek to save their family, their kingdom, and eventually the entire Undersea Realm without losing each other.”
Series: Book #1 in the “Chronicles of the Undersea Realm”.
Spiritual Content- Matthew 8:17 at the beginning; Prayers to the “Wave Master”; A couple talks about the Wave Master; ’H’s are capital when referring to the Wave Master; Darin isn’t afraid of death because “death is just a door, leading to the realm where we will see the Wave Master face-to-face”; Darin hears/feels the Wave Master talking to him about resting in Him; Mentions of the Wave Master; Mentions of prayers, praying, & praising and thanking the Wave Master; A few mentions of a prophetess at a Wave Master’s temple telling someone about an event that will happen (which comes true); A couple mentions of the Wave Master’s Realm; A mention of a hymn about the Wave Master;
*Note: Fictional phrases are said and exclaimed like: “What in the Wave Master’s name” once, “Master of the Waves” once, and “Wave Master knows” twice; Locklyn is called a “witch” thrice (because of her legs and being able to sing); Most Crura (mermaids or mermen that are born with legs instead of a tail) have a “Land Dweller” in their ancestry, but Locklyn’s legs are a result of an ancestor crossing the Sea Enchantress; Locklyn’s ancestor made a deal with the Sea Enchantress to gain legs for her tail and was supposed to give her voice to the enchantress as a payment, but the ancestor didn’t keep her end of the deal and so the enchantress cursed her lineage; Locklyn is able to sing spells and it affects wild creatures or merfolk to sometimes do what she wants (such as singing them a lullaby to force sleep or calm them from attacking); Falling in enchanted sleep (up to semi-detailed); Many mentions of magic, the Sea Enchantress, her cursing a mermaid for not keeping her part of a deal, her dark magic, spells, enchantments, & sorcerers; Mentions of Locklyn and another singing to control or influence other merfolk or wild creatures; Mentions of sirens (described as a torso of a woman and has the bottom half of a squid); A few mentions of evil; A mention of another kingdom who “worship” science.
Negative Content- Minor cussing including: a form of ‘shut up’, a ‘suck-up’, two forms of ‘blast/blasted’, and eight forms of ‘stupid’; Fictional phrases are all said and exclaimed like: “why/how under the sea” nine times, giving or not giving “two periwinkles” about something four times, “for the love of everything under the sea” once, and “great blue whales” once; Mentions of curses (said but not written, including by Darin); Eye rolling & Sarcasm; Eavesdropping; Lots of Fighting (including for the characters’ lives and against dangerous predators), Being choked, Being held at knife-point and holding others at knife-point, Knocking others out, Being attacked, Being tied-up and arrested, Being drugged, Grief, Major pain, Injuries, Blood/Bleeding, Passing out, & Near-death situations (semi-detailed); Seeing others killed (including by dangerous creatures, merfolk, and magic), attacked, slapped, beaten, killing creatures, & bleeding (semi-detailed); Finding skeletons (semi-detailed); A nightmare (that includes being chased by a merman who means her harm and being squeezed by a giant squid); Main characters imagine the other hurt or other worst case scenarios (including being killed, unconscious, attacked, or grabbed by those that mean ill, up to semi-detailed); Locklyn doesn’t know if she could kill a person and recalls weeping over having to kill a squid; Darin drinks, hopes to get drunk to avoid reality for a moment, and has a hangover (when Locklyn finds this out, she nags him about it); Many mentions of deaths & grief (including a ship wreck and the skeletons, a giant crab being able to shear someone in half with it’s claws, a monster instantly killing someone, & an explosion killing and injuring others; up to semi-detailed); Many mentions of fights, fighting, weapons, threats and threatening others, dangerous creatures and predators, killing, injuries, pain, & blood/bleeding (up to semi-detailed); Mentions of slave traders & kidnappings/abductions; Mentions of a possible war & attacks; Mentions of criminals, crimes, arrests, exile, & death sentences for breaking laws (including being worked to death in a dangerous place & being locked in a chamber with a poisonous octopus); Mentions of stealing, stolen items, & thieves; Mentions of poison, poisonous creatures, & blow darts sedating others; Mentions of fighting, injuring, and killing dangerous creatures (including sharks); Mentions of a rumored monster that devours merpeople; Mentions of having to sacrifice dolphins for a plan; Mentions of explosions & explosives; Mentions of lies, lying, & liars; Mentions of hatred; Mentions of gossip & rumors; Mentions of gambling & betting on fights; Mentions of alcohol, drinking, drunks, getting drunk, hangovers, & tavern/bars; A few mentions of someone seeing their sibling violently killed (barely-above-not-detailed); A few mentions of vomit; A few mentions of being bullied; A few mentions of nightmares; A few mentions of jealousy; A couple mentions of murder and assassinations; A couple mentions of hunting; A mention of someone starting to consider taking their life (suicide) because of a past decision; A mention of a story about a Crura baby being kidnapped and fed to sharks; A mention of a concern that a baby died (she did not); A mention of a woman running away from home because of her abusive father;
*Note: Locklyn was abandoned by her parents when she was born with legs & faces a lock of prejudice because of being a “Crura“ (a mermaid with legs); Along with others calling her these names, Locklyn also calls herself a “freak” and a “social outcast” a few times; Many scenes of prejudice towards Locklyn and others like her who are born with legs & many mentions of it and hatred towards them (many of the negative comments and snide remarks are written out such as calling Crura “spindle-shanks” (derogatory name), a monster, and freaks; Locklyn is very concerned about her niece being hated and having to fight her way through life; A merman says Locklyn should have died when she was born and some of his comments poke at her insecurities (she says he is bigoted and “small souled”); A few mentions of another kingdom hunting Crura for sport); A couple mentions of historical figures (Sosthenes & Plato).
Sexual Content- A forehead kiss; Remembering a forehead kiss (up to semi-detailed); Touches, Embraces, Hand holding, Tingles, Warmth, Nearness, & Smelling (barely-above-not-detailed); Remembering touches & embraces (barely-above-not-detailed); Blushes; Noticing (including muscles and his bare chest, barely-above-not-detailed); Jealousy; A merman often leers and at Locklyn & it’s said that prior, he tried to “come on to” her and propositioned her in her hut; He later asks her for a kiss which disgusts her; When Locklyn comments that he doesn’t even see her as a person, he comments that it doesn’t matter because “you can be a lovely creature without being a person, can’t you?” (implying she does not have a soul and is a mutant of their kind); A man sneers about Darin having a “spindle-shanks” like Locklyn in his bed (untrue); Locklyn is concerned that a guard would let someone into her room to take “their way” with her; Locklyn says that romance is off the table for her until she can “bring a child into the world without being terrified they would be better off never entering it” (a guy grins at this news and says that “all the ladies” come looking for him eventually, implying she will as well); Locklyn is concerned that a guy is interested in her for something she has no interest in giving him without a ring on her finger & doesn’t want to fall for him if he only desires a fling; Darin has a worst case scenario moment where he imagines Locklyn being jerked into a building by a faceless merman; A mermaid flirts with Darin; Locklyn and Darin are hiding their feelings for each other (they’ve know each other since Locklyn was born, but Darin started to fall for her when she was sixteen and he was twenty-four); Mentions of a man leaving his wife for another woman whose older husband wasn’t giving her “the marital satisfaction she craved”; Mentions of unwanted advances & a merman “coming on to” Locklyn; Mentions of lovers; Mentions of jealousy; Mentions of crushes/feelings for the other; A couple mentions of a king having a “fling” with someone that resulted in a child; A couple mentions of a teenage son leaving home to be with a mermaid; A mention of an affair; Love, being in love, & the emotions;
*Note: A few mentions of labor (pain and moans, barely-above-not-detailed); A mention of a mother dying in childbirth; A mention of a queen being “unable to produce an heir”.
-Locklyn, age 20 (?)
-Darin, age 28 (?)
P.O.V. switches between them in 1st (Locklyn) & 3rd (Darin)
286 pages
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Pre Teens-
New Teens-
Early High School Teens-
Older High School Teens-
My personal Rating-
I had pretty high hopes for this book and really wanted to like it, but I ended up not enjoying it as much as I hoped for a lot of different reasons. We’ll get what I didn’t care for out of the way first. 😅
For the first third of this book, I did struggle quite a bit with the plot because there is a lot of information thrown at the reader, but also backstories and history of all the mermaids and other countries and such. Which was interesting because there were also some parts I don’t think were explained quickly enough—like the idea of Atlantis and what is means for mermaids with legs like Locklyn. I definitely just had to keep reading to try to figure everything out and also to learn about the setting.
While usually one POV being in 1st person and another in 3rd person wouldn’t usually bother me, I didn’t care for seeing Darin’s POV because of the writing style change. For his first few chapters, they felt a little clunky and awkward because of it, but it either eventually got better or I got used to it. I couldn’t quite picture what was happening in the action scenes, which I think was due to the writing style as I had a harder time when those scenes were told in Darin’s POV chapters.
I didn’t personally love the romance as it felt strange to me due to Locklyn and Darin being in-laws and growing up together. I kept seeing him more as a big brother figure than a love interest and then their hemming and hawing over telling the other about their feelings got to be a little too “woe is me” for my tastes. I wanted to smack them to get it together or just forget about the other (oops, foreshadowing), I really didn’t care about the end result with their not-yet-a-romance relationship. At one point, she wants to apologize to him for being a “melodramatic, self-absorbed little fool” and I was honestly proud of her self-awareness in the moment because I had been basically calling her that for the majority of the book thus far.
There were more sexual innuendos and suggestions than I was expecting in this book because of mermen who don’t see Locklyn as someone worthy of respect or even as another merperson. It was honestly pretty disgusting how one was always taunting and leering at her and I was just waiting for him to die, if I can be bluntly honest.
Some scenes felt a little dark, particularly the mentions of mermaids being cut in half by a giant crab or a person witnessing their sibling’s death.
I will say that once I was able to follow along, the book went by quickly—partially in part because of the page length being under 300 pages, but also because the author didn’t add filler to the plot. Everything mentioned had it’s importance and matter to the story, which I appreciated.
This book does end on a cliffhanger most readers would probably be upset about and be eager to read the sequel, but it didn’t bother me too much. I might continue to the next book, however, my library doesn’t have it, so I don’t know when that will be.
See y’all on Friday with a new review!
*BFCG may (Read the review to see) recommend this book by this author. It does not mean I recommend all the books by this author.
